This is why we need to drain the swamp. Ian Brownlee, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Consular Affairs, in Japan overruled President Trump and the Center for Disease Control that ordered him not to return coronavirus victims to the United States on the same plane with those who do not have the disease. If new cases emerge from the passengers and a death results, he should be tried for murder or at the very least, manslaughter.
Since we have little information on how the disease spreads and the closed small area inside a plane and after warnings from the CDC, Brownlee should be fired immediately and disqualified from future government employment as well as losing his pension. He does not have the power to overrule the President of the United States, especially in what could be a life threatening situation.
Brownlee rationalized his decision to override the President and the CDC and allow individuals sick with the coronavirus to return to the US:
‘It’s important to remember this was an emerging and unusual circumstance,’ said Ian Brownlee, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Consular Affairs.
‘We had 328 people on buses, a plan to execute and we received lab results on people who were otherwise asymptomatic, un-ill people on a bus on the way to the airport.
‘The people on the ground did exactly the right thing…in bringing them home.’
People who had tested positive were put into isolation units on board the two cargo planes, which then flew to Joint Base San Antonio – Lackland in Texas and Travis Air Base in California.
Although officials reassured the press that the sick passengers were thoroughly contained and every precaution had been taken to ensure the safety of the healthy people onboard, reports later emerged that people on the flights had no idea they were sharing yet another even more confined space with infected individuals.
When the planes landed at their respective destinations late Sunday night, six ‘high risk’ passengers from Lackland and seven from Travis were ushered onto an additional flight to Omaha Eppley Airfield in Nebraska.