A DETAILED ACCOUNT OF TRUMP’S MISHANDLING OF COVID.
I am rather sick of hearing Trump apologists trying to claim
that poor Donald did not know how bad the virus could be and that governors and
others are just as culpable.
Nonsense. Anyone who thinks Trump
hasn't grossly mishandled this crisis, costing many thousands of American
lives, simply hasn't been paying attention.
So below I provide a summary
with support in the record in case you want to respond to those who try to
defend what Trump did and did not do on COVID.
Overview.
In late February, Trump called the corona virus a hoax and
said the infections were going to go down from 15 to zero. We know now from his
taped interviews with Bob Woodward that Trump himself knew the virus was a huge
problem; he just pretended with the public otherwise. He had received daily
security briefings which confirmed this.
His administration's failure to prepare during the months of January,
February and March was inexcusable and inexplicable.
Donald Trump and his Administration’s handling of this crisis
has been incompetent in virtually every way and led to much of the illness,
death and economic losses that have resulted. Let's look at a few facts...
Testing.
Testing is a great example of Trump’s failure. The US and
South Korea discovered their first COVID-19 cases the same day – January 20th. Almost two months later, the Koreans were
testing 10,000 people a day; the U.S. had only tested a total of 14,000 total. The
result is that – as of today – South Korea has had 26,416 cases. The U.S.: 8.85 million or 335 times more
cases. Yet the US has only 6 times the
population of South Korea. To read more:
How the Trump Administration bungled testing and
then lied about it.
The Trump Administration rejected the World Health
Organization test that most of Europe has used successfully then lost almost a
month of critical time, developing a failed test and then failing to fix the
problem, while the virus spread. Trump's people enforced regulations
that paradoxically made it tougher for hospitals, private clinics and
companies to deploy diagnostic tests in an emergency. Other countries that had
mobilized private industry were performing tens of thousands of tests daily,
compared with fewer than 100 on average in the United States, frustrating local
health officials, lawmakers and desperate Americans. Almost every developed country in the world
has been far ahead of the U.S. in testing from the start.
The Trump Administration’s idiotic bungling of the critical
task of making COVID-19 testing widely available is really hard to
understand—unless it was caused in whole or in part by Trump’s own desire to
downplay this crisis. Worse, Trump and Pence lied about the availability of
testing over and over again. On March 9th, Trump said: Anyone who wants a test
can get a test” – even though a total of about 10,000 people had been able to
get tested and tests still are widely unavailable months later.
This article sets out the pathetic job that Trump and his
people did on testing. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pandemic.html
This is why the US has 20% of the cases, even though we only
have 4% of the world’s population, according to the CDC itsellf. (8.7 million US cases out
of 44 million worldwide). Much of this nightmare was preventable through
adequate testing and social distancing like they did in South Korea and other
countries like Canada and Germany that have much lower rates of infection.
Anyone who doesn’t see that Trump administration's mishandling of this epidemic
caused much of this unnecessary suffering and death is just ignoring
reality.
Protective Equipment.
Another major Trump Administration failure concerns the
woefully inadequate supply of hospital protective equipment and ventilators for
our sick and those caring for them. Trump had the power to mobilize industry,
first by requesting their assistance, then by forcing them to do
help produce ventilators and protective equipment under the Defense
Production Act. This is how the federal government could have prevented the
crisis in hospitals occurring now and getting worse by the day. Their own
modeling and reports showed years ago that this was necessary. But Trump lost
precious weeks, refusing to do so; now the entire federal stockpile is gone,
and it will take months for these industries to gear up. This was an inexcusably-negligent failure on
the part of Trump and his team that will add to the unnecessary human suffering
caused by COVID-19.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a32006538/coronavirus-trump-defense-production-act/
And by the way, the states could do none of this. They could
not mobilize industry to produce needed supplies. They didn’t have that power;
they were required to bid against each other and have exhausted the supply
industry had available. States also could not do testing until recently—the
Trump Administration forbade them from doing testing in the critical early
weeks.
Masks and Social Distancing.
Almost 3 months ago. Scientific studies showed that at least a
third of COVID deaths could be prevented just by people wearing masks and
social distancing. https://www.livescience.com/wearing-masks-save-tens-thousands-lives.html
Trump has thwarted efforts to get people to do these simple
steps—refusing to consistently wear a mask even in close proximity to others;
dissing those who wear masks; and holding mass rallies and other public
super-spreader events,
Studies say we could save 130,000 lives between now and
February by just wearing masks. https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/23/universal-mask-use-could-save-130000-lives-by-the-end-of-february-new-modeling-study-says/
Still Trump refuses to issue a national mandate, and worse mocks
Biden and others who do the responsible thing and wear a mask.
Trump’s Lies about the Virus.
Moreover, words matter.
Trump’s messages to the nation on this virus have been
criminally-reckless. His lies and misstatements about the danger of this virus
– amplified by Trump TV (Fox News) and other right-wing media– have caused
people to not take this seriously, fail to socially-distance, and undeniably
have caused more deaths. Here’s a great
video summary of those misstatements: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/03/18/president-trump-evolution-coronavirus-response-jm-orig.cnn
In case you don't want to watch the video, here's a list:
January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from
China. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from
China.”
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in
the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of
handling Coronavirus.”
February 25: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go
away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a
vaccine.”
February 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days
is going to be down to close to zero.”
February 26: “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
February 28: “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering
a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was
something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of
medical.”
March 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that
could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
March 2: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very
exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of
people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work
— some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go
to work.”
March 5: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases…
and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as
possible!”
March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this
country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs
a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are
all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right?
This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I
understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about
this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of
running for president.”
March 6: “I don't need to have the numbers double because of
one ship that wasn't our fault.”
March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan
at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
March 9: “This blindsided the world.”
March 13: “National Emergency”
One is being blind to the obvious if you deny the role that
Trump’s misleading the American public about this deadly epidemic has played in
causing it to spread more widely and thus cause more people to get sick and
die. That’s certainly not his only serious failure of Presidential leadership
in the last 4 years – but this one has had very deadly consequences for our
country.
