OK.
Let's check out a great Orwellian moment on cable television, seem of Burma is a pro from
health care consultant.
She's on Donald Trump's White House rotavirus task force.
She's very articulate.
She's very good at masking and hiding the failings of the Trump administration by dressing
them up with flowery language and consultant speak.
So very often when Sima Burma is talking, it sounds, number one, like she's actually
saying things.
And number two, it sounds like she's actually making sense when she's not.
Here's an example.
It's a few days old.
I haven't had time to get to it until today.
Sima Burma was on Fox News.
She was interviewed by Ed Henry.
And Ed Henry asked about Mike Pence saying the best model of coronavirus for the United
States is what happened in Italy.
Now, you might be confused.
You might wonder, shouldn't our model be South Korea, which had the first case within hours
of when the U.S. had its first case, South Korea immediately developed a test.
They established fever clinics.
They isolated and quarantined people.
They did contact tracing.
And still to this day, South Korea doesn't have 200 deaths.
That's not an error.
Not I'm not talking about 2000.
South Korea still does not have 200 corona virus deaths.
But for some reason, Mike Pence, Pence's our model is Italy.
So Seyma is asked about this and she says something completely wacky.
She essentially says, we suck at dealing with Corona virus because we are a free country.
And countries that are managing it well are not free countries.
Listen to her.
Say it.
Don't take my word for it.
But as the vise president referring to when he says the best model we have for America
is what's happened in Italy.
Well, I think that if you look at these other countries, if you look at China and South
Korea.
Right, though, they had very different approaches.
We're a free country.
We're giving recommendations to the American people and hoping that they're going to adhere
to those in terms of what happened in Italy.
The strain on the health care system.
Those are the things that the lessons that we are trying to learn from.
We're trying to prepare our health care system.
Some of the recent regulations that we pulled back from just earlier this week are going
to have a really big impact on our health care system.
It's giving them that flexibility at the local level.
China and South Korea are different, she says, because we are a free country.
China is an authoritarian country for sure.
But South Korea, South Korea ranks higher than the United States in the democracy index
in twenty nineteen.
South Korea ranked 23rd in the world in the democracy index.
The U.S. ranking behind South Korea, 25th in the democracy index.
How are we a free country?
And South Korea is not.
And in fact, on that same ranking, Italy ranks thirty fifth in the democracy index, lower
than both South Korea and the United States.
This is what happens when health care consultants manage your response to a pandemic.
You get garbage like this perpetuated in the media.
And the real difference is that in South Korea, you don't have incompetent, slow, failed leadership.
You don't have people whose ignorance is weaponized such that they are packing churches and beaches,
bragging weeks into what should be self-isolation.
And Seyma is not the only person attacking the freedom of South Korea.
Here is the surgeon general, JAHREN Atah Jerome Adams, also saying, listen, we're not authoritarian
like South Korea.
Why the shift from local autonomy to the federal government giving very strict recommendations
and perhaps the more draconian ones coming up?
Well, that's a great question.
We are not an authoritarian nation, so we have to be careful when we say let's do what
China did.
Let's do what what South Korea did.
A lot of our public health authority lies in the state and local level.
And I've worked for a local health department.
We are not authoritarian like South Korea.
They rank higher than the United States on the democracy index.
This is really ugly stuff.
And what it comes down to is they're just desperate to find any way to deflect blame,
whether it's saying no one could have predicted this, whether it's saying we're not an authoritarian
country like South Korea.
They don't care that it's just a game of deflect, deflect, lie and distort.
And this is what happens when you put people like seem of Burma in positions of power when
you're dealing with a public health emergency.