PRESIDENT TRUMP + COVID-19 = AMERICA’S FALL FROM GREATNESS

…The CDC was previously seen as the “premier public health agency in the world”

The Covid-19 pandemic under Trump has exposed the depth of America’s decline.

An op-ed writer for The Washington Post  wrote the following that I’m afraid is the real truth: “No amount of patriotism or pride can change the appalling facts. The pandemic is acting as a stress test for societies around the world, and ours is in danger of failing.”

Let’s face it, only a few nations on this earth have done a worse job of handling the Covid-19 pandemic than the United States. What has happened to America? How did we become so dysfunctional? When did we become so incompetent?

The answer is at the feet of our president and his cronies in this administration.  It is all well documented and history will show just how incompetent this administration has been.  It all started when we didn’t isolate, then we didn’t test, and we didn’t contact trace, finally we waited too long to lock down.  

The president’s gross unfitness is just a small part of the problem.  As The Post’s writer put it: “The phrase “American exceptionalism” has always meant different things to different people — that this nation should be admired, or perhaps that it should be feared. Not until now, at least in my lifetime, has it suggested that the United States should be pitied.”

One of the examples of all this is when we compare two countries that both found that they had the coronavirus on their soil at the same time.  Our ally and friend, South Korea and the United States found that issue in the same week.  But South Korea did what they needed to do, while we did not.  Today, the United States has the death tolls from the Covid-19 that exceeds 85,000, while South Korea has only 260 deaths.

No, that’s not a typo.  How could a nation with barely half of our per capita income have done so much better?  Washington has been Seoul’s patron and teacher for more than six decades, yet somehow we apparently have unlearned much of what we taught.

So, let’s not forget about the president favorite boasting item, his precious “Border Wall”.  He says the border wall is, “protecting all Americans”.  Well, it’s not working with protecting us from the virus.  Mexico’s death rate from covid-19 is a small fraction of the US rate.  In addition, at the border town of Nogales, the Mexican authorities are using disinfectant spray to sanitize all the visitors that are arriving from Arizona.

How could it be that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has always been thought of as the premier public health agency in the world.  How could they so completely botch the development of a test for the novel coronavirus?   Yes, to quote President Trump, the United States has by far the biggest economy in the world, and we believe we have the most advanced science. However, for the first months of the pandemic, as the coronavirus silently spread, those in the Trump administration kicked back and we were totally kept in the dark.  By the time we had our eyes on the enemy, it was way too late.

Yes, we did finally manage to slow the spread of the virus, but do we have the social ability to stay the course?

Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out Gov. Tony Evers’s (D) extension of his stay-at-home order. By that evening, some bars in some Wisconsin cities were packed with no social distancing and no masks.  And the cases of the coronavirus have continued to rise.

In Milwaukee and several other jurisdictions, the orders by local officials did keep the bars closed.  But what are these Wisconsin cities that remain closed supposed to do next?  Do they set up roadblocks to keep all outsiders away?

Now, as an example, to get to the Florida Keys, there is only one single road access.  Since late March, they have set up checkpoints to keep visitors from entering the island chain.  The result is that they have only seen 95 cases of covid-19, and they’ve had, only three deaths.

The America I thought I knew, is one of free movement and open roads. Until there is a vaccine, and a vaccine that is tested and works, post-Covid-19 America will be very different.

Thanks to our president, we have no coherent national plan to survive the pandemic. But also thanks to the US Congress, as well as the president, we lack a kind of sturdy economic safety net that protects unemployed workers. 

Shut-down business owners in some of the hardest-hit European countries, yes those nations that once looked up to the United States as a model, they are doing what’s right by their citizens.  As an example: In the Netherlands, the government is granting employers up to 90% of their payroll costs, just so they can keep paying their workers rather than resort to furloughs or layoffs.  That kind of attitude ought to speed recovery when reopening actually becomes safe.   

Instead, here in the United States, nearly 40 million workers have filed for unemployment and they have lost their employee provided healthcare coverage.

The European Union (EU) is working with the World Health Organization (WHO), (the same WHO that President Trump has called a liar.) and other wealthy nations such as Japan and Saudi Arabia in a crash program to develop a covid-19 vaccine, with initial funding of $8 billion.  

But because of our president, the United States has decided to go it alone with its own vaccine program called by President Trump: “Operation Warp Speed.”  In the past, one would have bet on US ingenuity and drive to win this race, but today the US is not looked to as we have been in the past.

Given our failures in testing, would anyone still make that bet on the US now?

The question is: Why is there a race at all, rather than a US-led global effort?

The Covid-19 pandemic under this administration has exposed the real depth of America’s fall from greatness.

If we are fortunate enough to rid ourselves of Trump and his cronies in November,

it will just be the beginning of decades of work to restore the nation to its previous position in the world.

If that’s even possible….?

Copyright G. Ater 2020