Quote:
Originally Posted by lagtight
True. If you don't criticize Trump in at least half your posts, you are branded a "Trump supporter" by many around here.
In the two presidencies preceding Trump, which both oversaw serious outbreaks, the US was the world's front for fighting epidemics and pandemics on an international scale. The recipe is largely based on a basic recipe that the relevant personnel worked to make happen on the ground in various countries: Generate trust in medical authority, get both citizens and officials people to report correct numbers, get trained personnel on the ground quickly. In the other end you of course have actions taken at home: Monitor travel, inform public and screen travel hubs.
This competence did not magically disappear overnight and is still there. It was simply gagged and hand-cuffed by an administration whose only response to bad news is to lie about them, and has a complete absence of leadership regarding any agenda that isn't about the president himself.
No, the US could not have prevented all COVID deaths. But it could have prevented a lot of them and it could have prevented the lockdown from getting as costly as it has gotten. Instead all response was delayed by a president worried about negative headlines and an enabling administration. It is more than likely that this administration's complete absence of honesty, trustworthiness and integrity will run up to a cost of 100,000+ lives and and many hundreds of billions of dollars.
I've said it before and I will say it again. In crisis there is never a substitute for facts. The world does not care about what someone
wants to be true, and when a situation is critical that isn't just a nice saying - it is essential to avoid catastrophe.