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Outgoing Chief of Staff John Kelly says Trump's border wall is 'not a wall'
Dec 30, 2018 | 12:05 PM
Outgoing White House chief of staff John Kelly says President Trump's promised Southern border wall is "not a wall," and that Trump never ordered him to do anything illegal. (Evan Vucci / AP)
President Trump's coveted border wall would not actually be a wall at all, outgoing White House chief of staff John Kelly now says.
"To be honest, it's not a wall," Kelly told the Los Angeles Times in an interview out Sunday timed to his departure from Trump's administration this Wednesday.
The remark hints at some of the tensions between Kelly and the President leading up to Trump's Dec. 8 announcement that his top aide would leave the post at the end of the year.
"The president still says 'wall' — oftentimes frankly he'll say 'barrier' or 'fencing,' now he's tended toward steel slats," Kelly explained. "But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it."
Kelly — who headed Homeland Security for six months until July 31, 2017, when Trump appointed him chief of staff — is referring to meetings he held at the time with those on the ground securing the border, Customs and Border Protection agents, to get advice on the the country's Southern border with Mexico.
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"They said, 'Well we need a physical barrier in certain places, we need technology across the board, and we need more people,'" he told the Los Angeles Times.
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway also remarked Sunday that the wall is more of an idea than a physical structure.
"It is a silly semantic argument because people who just want to say 'wall, wall, wall' want it to be a four-letter word and not respect what Customs and Border Patrol and ICE tell us they need, which is enhancements at the border," she said on "Fox News Sunday."
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"There may be a wall at some places, there may be steel slats, there may be technological enhancements," she added. "But always saying 'wall' or 'no wall' is being very disingenuous and turning a complete blind eye to what is a crisis at the border when it comes to the drugs pouring in."
Kelly added that while he believes the U.S. does "have an immigration problem," "illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly, are not bad people. I have nothing but compassion for them, the young kids."
The retired Marine Corps general also told the L.A. Times that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was the mastermind behind the White House policy to separate children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
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"What happened was Jeff Sessions, he was the one that instituted the zero-tolerance process on the border that resulted in both people being detained and the family separation," Kelly told the paper.
"He surprised us."
Kelly said the administration was unprepared for Sessions' announcement of a zero tolerance policy in May, which he claims is why DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen falsely denied the existence of such a policy.
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At the time, Sessions, who was fired in November, said the separations would act as a deterrent to families.
Kelly also said in his new interview that Trump never demanded he do anything illegal, "because we wouldn't have." He added that he would have resigned "if he had said to me, 'Do it, or you're fired.'"
The soon-to-be retired chief of staff said he attempted to leave politics out of his tenure even while clashing with other aides.
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"I told the President the last thing in my view that you need in the chief of staff is someone that looks at every issue through a political lens," Kelly said.
Kelly served in the Marines for 46 years until retiring in 2016. Trump has announced that Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, will be the new acting chief of staff following reports that he was having a tough time filling the position.
With Kate Feldman
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Individual biocontainment unit protects health care workers against aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 virus
Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Sep 3 2020
Especially in settings where personal protective equipment, or PPE, is in short supply, intubation -- inserting a breathing tube down a patient's throat -- poses a major risk of SARS-CoV-2 exposure for doctors and nurses as viral particles are released into the air.
Researchers from UPMC and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory (CCDC-ARL) created an individual biocontainment unit, or IBU, to keep front line health care workers safe while they provide life-saving care. The device is described in a study published today in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Earlier attempts to minimize exposure to health care workers involved placing a plexiglass intubation box over a patient's head and shoulders. Clinicians slip their hands through two large holes in the box to intubate the patient inside. While such a device may contain the worst of the splatter, it can't keep aerosols from leaking out.
The IBU is designed to suck contaminated air out of the box with a vacuum and trap infectious particles in a filter before they seep into the room.
Simulating a COVID-19 patient, the researchers placed a mannequin inside the IBU as well as in a commercially available intubation box. Near its mouth, they piped in an oil-based aerosol which formed tiny droplets in the air, similar in size to the SARS-CoV-2 particles in breath that spread COVID-19.
The IBU trapped more than 99.99% of the simulated virus-sized aerosols and prevented them from escaping into the environment. In contrast, outside of the passive intubation box, maximum aerosol concentrations were observed to be more than three times higher than inside the box.
Having a form of protection that doesn't work is more dangerous than not having anything, because it could create a false sense of security."
David Turer, M.D., M.S., study co-lead author, plastic surgeon who recently completed his residency at UPMC
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Because of concerns about the potential of airborne viruses to leak from the plexiglass boxes, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently revoked their Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for these enclosures.
Several months ago, Turer and colleagues submitted an EUA application for the IBU and are preparing to manufacture the devices for distribution.
"It intentionally incorporates parts from outside the medical world," said Turer, who now is at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. "So, unlike other forms of PPE, demand is unlikely to outstrip supply during COVID-19 surge periods."
Besides protecting providers during intubation, the IBU also can provide negative pressure isolation of awake COVID-19 patients, supplying an alternative to scarce negative pressure hospital isolation rooms, as well as helping isolate patients on military vessels.
"The ability to isolate COVID-19 patients at the bedside is key to stopping viral spread in medical facilities and onboard military ships and aircraft," said study co-lead author Cameron Good, Ph.D., a research scientist at the CCDC-ARL.
Devices similar to IBUs were first used in practice by military personnel in the Javits Center field hospital in New York City when local hospitals were overrun with COVID-19 patients during the first wave of the pandemic.
Once the EUA is granted, hospitals and military units will be able to use the IBU to protect health care workers caring for COVID-19 patients.
Turer, D.M., et al. (2020) Improved Testing and Design of Intubation Boxes During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Annals of Emergency Medicine. doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2020.08.033.
Posted in: Disease/Infection News | Healthcare News
Tags: Breathing, Children, Emergency Medicine, Health Care, Hospital, Laboratory, Medicine, Pandemic, pH, Research, SARS-CoV-2, Throat, Virus
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