The COVID-19 Pandemic : It Did Not Have to Get this Bad

I am getting pretty tired of writing articles about this issue and having to continue to tell the grim story of all the dead and sick in our country as well as all of the other damage caused by this virus.

I am tired of this for several reasons, but most of all, I am tired of reporting on this because it could have been prevented, or at least it did not have to get this bad and reach this point.

As of today, the numbers are as follows.

• 3.68 million Americans are infected
• 141,400 have died
• Cases are rising in 40 of the 50 states
• 23 million U.S. citizens are unemployed

These numbers tell a sad and sobering reality and that is that this is the serious threat that we were told that it is and that it is not going away like some in the federal government tell us that it is.

These numbers combined with the reports that there are cases rising even higher in places like Florida, Texas, and California show that this pandemic is not going away anytime soon, but we did not have to get to where we are now with this if we had done things differently at the start.

Ignoring Reality is What Made Our Current Situation What it is

Besides talking about this pandemic and how bad things are, there is one other thing that I do not like to discuss as often as I do and that is the weak, inadequate, and negligent response to this crisis by Donald Trump and his administration.

I know, Trump supporters reading this will fall out of their seats reading that previous sentence, but it is true.

I know that I have some really negative articles about Trump and have especially written several articles about his failure on this pandemic response, but that is because he really dropped the ball here and failed when it comes to responding to this crisis and the truth is not always popular, especially with those in pro-Trump circles.

Trump failed in his response to this and the failure has been so profound that it must be discussed for what it has been, a failure of epic proportions and a complete lack of leadership.

He had an opportunity to right so many of his wrongs that he has carried out throughout his presidency with this pandemic and he failed to do so and the fallout has been tremendous. I believe that if he had done things differently from day one, then we would be in a much different place with this crisis at the present time.

One of the things he could done different was to take it more seriously from the start.

Trump never has taken this as the serious threat that it is and has downplayed it from the very beginning. He sat there and called it things like a “hoax” and a “harmless flu” back at the start of this while knowing that Americans were at risk of dying and had been getting sick.

Even just a few weeks ago he called it harmless and said that “99%” who came down with the virus ended up being “Just fine”. Trump has never taken this virus seriously and has certainly not shown any type of leadership as we seek to find our way out of this pandemic that has been like a raging tornado on our nation.

The Actions that Trump took Sent us Down a Path of Death and Chaos

I should say, the inactions that he took have caused the death and chaos that we are seeing in our country today as there has been a lot of inaction on his part and very little action with this pandemic.

As I stated above, Trump basically ignored this crisis for two and a half months while he blamed everyone and everything under the sun for the problems in our country and then when he finally did decide to take some action, it was too late and was not enough and that is because it never is with him.

Trump supporters always say that his China travel ban was him taking the right actions to protect our country, but when we take a good look at this step that he took, it was in fact not even close to be being enough as it was late and inadequate.

Trump and his supporters use that China travel ban narrative to get people to believe that he acted when in fact that was the only thing that he did do and that was even a failure as it did not work. The ban was late and it was not even a complete ban as it only banned Chinese nationals and the Americans that he let back in were not put on a mandatory quarantine as they should have been.

You did not see Trump having a mask or social distancing mandate back in the early days of this crisis, nor did you see him calling for states to lockdown, and you certainly did not see him listen to experts like Dr. Fauci who were calling for these measures from the very start.

Instead, what you had was a president who denied that the crisis was even a problem and did the bare minimum from when this thing first began and when he was asked to do more, he simply refused to do so and this is where we are as a result. The truth is that if we had a competent leader then we would not be in the chaotic situation that we find ourselves in today and we would likely be out of this pandemic.

The inaction of this president sent us on a dark path where we have seen tens of thousands of our citizens lose their lives while seeing hospitals become overwhelm and our economy crash and then to make matters worse, we have a president who continues to take no action other than blame others and come up with insane “cures” for the virus like injecting disinfectants.

“What Would You have Done Different?”

This is the response from Trump supporters when they are confronted with the mess that he has created with this pandemic.

They ask what we or what Joe Biden or Hillary would have done differently to address the pandemic instead of facing the facts of what Trump has done and what he has not done during this public health crisis.

These people fail to acknowledge the grave situation that we are currently in with this crisis and actually think that Trump has done a good job managing COVID-19 and that the situation is not as bad as people say that it is and that is just amazing that they think that.

The fact is that someone like Joe Biden would have taken some different steps and would have been more decisive in managing this crisis that we are all in right now. I say to these people that if they want to look at how you have an effective and successful response to a pandemic, then model the actions that Barack Obama took with H1N1 back in 2009.

Obama managed that crisis in the way that a public health crisis should be handled, so when the people defending Trump ask if we or any Democrat would have done it different or better then the answer is that yes, they would have.

The fact is that they have before and the evidence with other outbreaks prove that Trump has botched this entire thing while others did not do that with past health situations of similar nature.

Just look at the numbers of H1N1 compared to the numbers of this pandemic and you will see that we were in a much better situation back then, than we are today with this situation. The reason that the numbers are so much higher now than they were with previous outbreaks like that one is simple, we had a competent and common sense response then, now we do not.

We Have a Leader that Plays Games with Our Lives

The main reason that it did get this bad is that Trump plays games with our health and our lives. He does not get how serious this thing is or he does get the seriousness of it and just does not get it.

He plays political games and thinks that it all comes down to right vs left and politics, when what it comes down is public health and protecting the people of this country and that should never be a political issue, not when the stakes are so high.

Trump loves to play the victim and make everything about him and even as we are in the middle of the worst public health crisis in decades, perhaps in our lifetimes, he just does not get it and does not care what happens to the people of America and the way that he has handled this crisis shows that more than ever.

The pandemic has shown that the stakes are higher than they have ever been and at a time when the stakes are high, Trump is playing games at a time when the country needs a real leader and one who will put the people of this country first, above his own selfish desires of power and being in control and playing games with people’s lives.

We Had an Great Opportunity to Get it Right — We Failed to Do So

Early on in this pandemic when the cases were low and before we had begun to see any deaths or serious health issues, we had a chance to get this under control and if we had a real leader who made smart choices, we would have done so.

Sadly, we failed.

We failed because Donald Trump was the one calling the shots and when that happens, things do not tend to go well and this is for sure the way things have gone down with this crisis we are in now.

The guy who is a self-proclaimed, “Deal maker”, failed to get this deal done and failed to protect our people when it counted the most and because of that, we may never find our way out of this crisis that has taken the lives of more American lives than in the Vietnam War.

It really did not have to get this bad. We had a window to get it right back in the early months of this pandemic, but our mistake was that we listened to Trump and not the experts like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx and that is why we now have an out of control crisis that is sure to take the lives of many more people throughout this nation.

The opportunity to contain the virus and save lives was there for us to grasp, but then we lost our chance and we lost our chance because Trump was the one making the decisions and as we know, Trump is not the most competent person that there is and to have him making the choices at such a time as this is not a good thing for our country.

If Trump had come out at the start and let his ego go and instead of blaming others had taken responsibility for ignoring the crisis, for dismantling the Pandemic Response Team that President Obama had put together, and had told people to wear masks and social distance then we would be out of this and able to get on with our lives but instead , there appears to be no end in sight.

What is Next in the Fight Against COVID-19?

This is where we are at. We are at a place where we cannot see a way out of this crisis and that is because of how we failed to get it right when the crisis first began and since then.

We cannot change the past, but we can change the future and where we go from here.

I believe that it is obvious that we cannot trust Donald Trump to get us out of this crisis and improve testing, encourage the use of masks, and make the smart decisions that we must make to defeat this monster virus and end the worst public health crisis that we have seen as he has proven that he is not the one who will make the right choices.

We must make the right choices and take control of this on our own, because it is clear as day that Trump will not get us out of this crisis and Trump will not save us.

Things got this bad because of one thing and that one thing is that the cure was actually the disease.

That is right, the cure as was as Trump is concerned is himself and in fact, his actions and especially his inaction with this pandemic from the start have been just as bad as the virus itself. That is right, Trump is a virus all by himself and has caused this pandemic to be so much worse than it would have been if he was not in charge.

The way that we defeat this virus is by doing it on our own.

The states, the local communities, the scientific community, and local leaders are the ones who will help us to defeat COVID-19 and end this pandemic that has caused so much damage to this country. You and me and our ability to be thoughtful of others and wear a mask, to stay home, to social distance, and so on are the key to recovery.

We defeat this virus by coming together and rising above the lies, the bad leadership, and the division of Trump.

We come out on top by taking it seriously and by valuing the leaders on this virus like the World Health Organization, The CDC, and smart governors and other leaders.

We got it wrong and it did get this bad, but we can get it right from here on out and get it right once and for all.

Now is our time to defeat this plague, but we only do so by ignoring Trump and doing it on our own. Trump is as much the problem as the virus itself has been and we only can right the wrongs that got us all of this death, sickness, and more by taking the lead that the one supposed to lead has failed to do since day one.