The
Best People, Also Labradoodles
We take heart in the
consistently crackerjack team leading us in this unprecedented health crisis.
There’s the mad king
who just fired a
leading doctor for arguing against
the king's fave quack theories to the sycophantic anti-science zealot who
dutifully insists the
coronavirus is almost behind us.
Now there’s the racist
wacko newly
appointed HHS spokesman to one Brian Harrison, a former Texas
dog breeder with no public health experience,
It turns out Harrison was
tapped by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to run the federal
pandemic task force, which maybe helps explain the disastrous, multi-faceted,
weeks-long delays and
blunders that experts say could have prevented 90% of this
country's early COVID-19 deaths.
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| Photo from Dallas Labradoodles website |
Azar himself belongs
right up there on the list of murderous dolts not yet held accountable.
As head of the massive
HHS and its $1.3-trillion-budget, Azar, a Republican lawyer and former Big
Pharma lobbyist who clerked for the right-wing Antonin Scalia and hangs out
with blackout drunk Brett Kavanaugh, is tasked with overseeing almost every
federal public health agency, including the key Center for Disease Control and
Food and Drug Administration.
But Azar botched it
from the start:
He downplayed the virus - it's "potentially serious" but "we have a playbook for it" - fatally delayed testing, finally came up with a test that didn't work, and wasted almost six critical weeks producing one that did; created a medical equipment shortage that watchdogs say “put staff and patients at risk”; and promised Congress a virus surveillance program that failed to materialize.
According to a surreal
new Reuters report, he also appointed as
main coordinator for the government's response to the worst health crisis in a
century...Mr. Labradoodle.
Harrison, 37, has no
formal education in public health, management, or medicine. In 2006, age 24, he
became a "Confidential Assistant" to then-deputy secretary Azar.
He also worked briefly
for Dick Cheney, the Department of Defense and a Washington PR company.
From 2012 to 2018, he
ran Dallas
Labradoodles in Waxahachie, TX, a "boutique, home-based
breeder" of Multigenerational Australian Labradoodles, which sells puppies
for $2,700 plus tax per pop/pup. He sold the company in 2018
Its current owners
explain that, "Because of some life changes" - Look! We're
governmenting! - "the Harrisons had to move to the east coast."
At HHS, Harrison was
initially Azar's deputy chief of staff.
In 2019, he replaced
chief of staff Peter Urbanowicz, a longtime hospital executive with decades of
experience in public health. The move reportedly dismayed many
public health officials, who often derisively, entirely understandably called
him "the dog breeder."
In his baffling new
job, officials said Harrison took multiple, questionable steps, including
sidelining key agencies that could and should have played key roles in managing
the virus, most vitally the FDA.
Rather than share
information, six current and former government officials charge, “Everyone
had to report up through him...It was a mess."
“It’s Azar’s
operation,” said Lynn Goldman, a public health expert and former FDA and CDC
advisor. “The buck stops there.”
Harrison has defended
his background of being a small-town dog breeder as perfect experience for
managing a global pandemic.
Though he cited no
inaccuracy in the Reuters story, he blasted the effort to "use that
experience to attack (me) and distort the record."
On social media,
others praised the ever-impressive ability of Trump and his minions to scrape
the bottom of the governmental barrel; in this case, some marveled he
actually found someone less qualified for his job than Jared.
And bonus: If you need Labradoodle advice, you know where to turn.
And bonus: If you need Labradoodle advice, you know where to turn.