As it happens, I was recently composing a list of such things to send to my parents, who are Trump supporters and refuse to hear anything negative about him. But now they’re endangering their lives with their willful ignorance, so I wanted to point out the following to them:
• As a nation, we were aware of the outbreak in China 3 months ago, yet the administration did almost nothing until about 3 weeks ago. Sure, they suspended travel for China – but that was much too late. The virus was already here. Still, that didn’t stop Republicans from mocking the epidemic by wearing gas masks on the floor of the House and deriding concerns about the virus at CPAC as a “Democrat(ic) hoax.”
• There were perfectly good test kits being manufactured in Germany and available to us through WHO, but instead of importing those, the administration insisted on making their own.
• Their first attempt at making test kits failed. The kits had to be recalled due to giving many false positive results.
• Private industry/research facilities finally ramped up manufacture of test kits. But the administration insists that all approval for testing must go through the CDC. It takes weeks to get results, even for the very few that have been tested so far.
• Trump said anyone who wants to be tested can be tested because there are enough kits. That is a lie. To date, there are 75,000 kits (they claim without evidence) with a promise to increase to 2 million by next week. (NEXT WEEK!!) Go ahead. Try and get tested. You won’t be able to, yet.
• The administration currently plans to charge for both test kits and any vaccine that is developed. Can you think of a single other epidemic where individual citizens were charged for these things? Hint: You can’t, because no administration has ever allowed that to happen. Disgusting.
• The administration removed any reference to how many people have been/are being tested from the CDC website, saying only that the number “keeps changing.” Umm, duh.
• The CDC concluded that older Americans shouldn’t fly. Trump’s White House BLOCKED CDC officials from making that recommendation.
• As best can be determined, fewer than 5,000 people have actually been tested to date. This is a huge problem, since no one, including medical personnel and/or business people can get a handle on the vectors where the disease is most active to make the best plans for dealing with it.
• Trump tried to keep the Grand Princess cruise ship from docking, because he worried it would affect “his numbers.” I’m kidding, right? No.
• As of this morning, the administration still could not articulate a clear plan via Ben Carson for how to handle the passengers disembarking from the cruise ship. They will disburse them to various military installations around the country for quarantine. That’s pretty much all we know at this point.
• Trump continues to push the lie that COVID-19 is “just like the flu.” It’s not just like the flu. No one has any immunity to it. There is no vaccine for it. We don’t even yet know how long the virus can survive on a surface.
• Trump continues to push the lie that a vaccine will be available in “a month or two.” There will not be a vaccine for at least a year, and more likely 18 months. That’s if we get lucky.
• The administration deactivated the White House pandemic task force that President Obama had put in place to proactively deal with upcoming new diseases in the wake of H1-N1 and Ebola epidemics. Oops.
I listed these about a week ago so they are obviously already much out of date. I did not remove my own editorial comments. But at least it will give you a starting place.