A Failure of Epidemic Proportions

Original Photo By Shealah Craighead — White House, Public Domain

Almost every president is tested in the Oval Office. I think of Barrack Obama and the Great Recession or George W Bush and the 9/11 attacks. Opinions will differ on how these presidents handled their respective crises, history will not be so kind to the current occupant of the White House.

Donald Trump’s crisis is upon all of us. The Coronavirus pandemic has reduced the President’s sordid impeachment trial to a speck in the rear view mirror. It will merely be seen as a harbinger of the incompetence and absence of character now being foisted on the American people.

The President cannot be blamed for Coronavirus, its origins will only be understood in years to come. However he willfully negated the seriousness of COVID-19 which threatened the booming stock market he considered central to his reelection prospects. I have no interest in enumerating the President’s repeated denials of the pandemic danger. Others have documented this epic stupidity which preceded the grudging March 13th announcement of a national emergency

Now the President is attempting to sell the notion that a death rate of 100,000–200,000 people should be considered a successful response. That dog won’t hunt!

South Korea, a nation of 50 million has been able to hold it’s death rate to 162 people. They had less time to react than America. Now I know the counter argument will state that Korea has a much smaller population and that is correct by a factor of ~6.5. Using that factor, to scale up their death rate would yield 1,053 deaths. As of this time of writing, the United States has 3,431 deaths. We’re already worse by more than a factor of 3 and the optimistic outcome is a factor of 100–200? This, without question, is a failure of epic proportions which lies at the desk of the man in the Oval Office.

For those that would excuse this failure, please ask yourselves these questions:

1. Should our government have been able to respond at least as effectively as South Korea?
2. How come front line medical personnel are putting their lives at risk due to the continued failure of the Federal Government to supply emergency Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)? In what world is that acceptable?
3. Why was the White House’s NSC’s directorate responsible for pandemic response disbanded in 2018? Did the possibility of epidemics simply disappear?
4. How come it took until the middle of March to create and distribute COVID testing kits at scale? Wasn’t that understood as being key to controlling the spread of the disease?
5. Why was the initial directive on Social Distancing undermined by the fantasy of reopening the economy by Easter? Why did anybody think the economy would recover as millions died?

Like many New Yorkers, my blood is boiling

We have close to 1,000 deaths in New York City and now the daily toll is numbered in the 100s. Assuming the situation deteriorates further, we may be confronted with the unthinkable of more than a 1,000 daily deaths. Yesterday the President suggested that front line medical personnel were stealing PPE and suggested that the news media investigate. How dare anyone engage in such a baseless accusation of people putting their lives at risk. The insinuation shames the Office of the President. Governor Cuomo requested 30,000 ventilators based on his understanding of the infection curve and current trends in hospitalization. The president disparaged that request without any hint of an understanding how the crisis was going to scale in New York nor any attempt to explain why the request was invalid. His dismissive arrogance is beyond comprehension and makes my blood boil.

Never has a president been as psychologically, intellectually and organizationally incapable of handling a crisis. His poorly formed psyche is incapable of handling basic journalistic questions which he construes as being critical of his performance. He lack’s basic understanding of science which leaves him fantasizing about untested drug combinations that will deliver the dying from his failures. He appears to have no understanding of how to leverage the public and private sectors in a coordinated manner to deliver equipment and services to outbreak hot-points. His narcissism does not allow any room to consider the disaster that is befalling this country’s citizens. He has no humility, no empathy and no decency.

He is simply: “A Failure of Epidemic Proportions”