The US dives into the dark Covid pit – and there are no plans to get out

It is inconceivable that other modern Presidents would handle things like this. Most will throw every dollar the federal government, resources, and experts at it. But Trump seems to believe his re-election relies on creating alternative realities where tens of thousands of Americans – now mostly in countries where he is very popular – are not infected rather than completely defeating the pandemic.

The President’s claim that 99% of the Covid cases are harmless is not only wrong, it is also an insult to death and illness caused by viruses – and lifelong conditions that might arise among those who survived.

The US leads the world in some cases, death

Surprisingly, the United States – the richest country in the world that has more than 4% of the planet’s population – has a quarter of global cases of Covid-19 and nearly a quarter of the deaths. The intensive care unit is filling the entire southern and western states. It took 99 US days to reach one million cases, 43 days to get 2 million and 28 days to add another million. That’s a terrible rate of increase.

In mid-May, in what was considered the darkest day of the crisis, the US recorded around 20,000 new cases a day. Now it averages around 60,000. American competitors in Europe and Asia and the Pacific experience their own horrors, but most have been more successful in suppressing the infection curve. They are quick to isolate the plague, for example, in Melbourne, Australia, where a six-week lockout has been enforced.

While US researchers and medical companies are at the forefront of efforts to find therapy and cure, the US effort to quell the deadly march of the virus is nothing but a political disaster that humbles the world’s most powerful nation in the eyes of allies and them. who wants it sick. The major break between federal and state and local officials made Hurricane Katrina President George W. Bush’s disaster seem like a trivial matter.

Under such circumstances, humility might be expected from the Oval Office, where responsibility for the failure is used to stop. Instead, Trump not only salutes himself for fantastic success, he is committed to returning to the counter-scientific strategy to open the country in every way that triggers the latest disaster. His mind, as usual, was fixed on Election Day.

“We did it right,” Trump stated at the Rose Garden White House on Thursday, adding a series of false claims about testing, death rates and overly optimistic predictions about effective treatment for Covid-19 and the possibility of vaccines “very, very, very soon. “Trump’s aides are critical of any criticism, reflecting how important it is for a President who has navigated the state of rejection, ignorance, ignorance, and neglect about viruses more than seeing reality in the eye.

“Certainly the US remains the world leader in a pandemic,” Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo stressed on Wednesday.

Fauci pleaded differently.

“As a country, when you compare us with other countries, I don’t think you can say we are fine. I mean, we are not,” the government’s infectious disease specialist told the FiveThirtyEight podcast on Covid-19. on Thursday.

There is no sign that the US will do what works

In some parts of the country – in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts for example – there is some hope that after proper mitigation efforts and a close hand on reopening the virus can be kept at low levels, at least until the dreaded winter outbreak. The Republican Governors in Ohio and Maryland who heeded epidemiology suppressed the vicious epidemic. In states and cities where trusted leaders give a simple and honest message, progress is possible.

But the desperate development exacerbated by the leadership vacuum destroys hopes that Americans can return to school, college, the workplace and sports in the coming months – the absence of some amazing developments in therapy or vaccines.

It’s no secret what works in the US and elsewhere in extinguishing viruses. Early closure, social distance, the use of masks and wise opening plans have helped reduce new infections to manageable levels from New York City to Italy. Aggressive testing and tracking operations have closed the pandemic in South Korea and allowed officials in Singapore and Germany to quickly extinguish hotspots.

There is no sign that the competency will soon arrive in the US. The administration, which has relinquished responsibility for fighting the virus to countries, does not appear to have the desire or capacity to build such a system.

Only a firm national leadership can plan a way out of the crisis and help countries that are currently heading into the hot zone join those who have suppressed the virus, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of tropical medicine at the Baylor School of Medicine.

“We just don’t have the leadership to make it happen,” Hotez told Wolf Blitzer of CNN in “The Situation Room.”

The constant loss of Trump’s advisors has also exacerbated a situation where people did not take viruses seriously or indulge fatigue with lockdown by letting their guard down.

“I think sometimes thinking it really sends the wrong message and confuses the public,” Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan told CNN’s “New Day” on Thursday.

“If everyone in the government says it’s not safe and we need to do … these things and the President says to ignore all those suggestions and do what he says, I just think it was a mistake made by the President.”

School opening disaster

The CDC Guidelines offer a comprehensive plan for social distance and barriers in the classroom, staggered learning, smaller class sizes and prohibition of students from interacting outside the classroom. A glance at the guidelines explains Trump’s anger. There is no way that in the beaten cities that closed bars, barring large gatherings and other events, it would be appropriate for schools to open even in this diminishing way. The fact that the White House is now only concentrating on problems – the week before classes should be continued – is typical of delays on major problems in a pandemic.

“I would say that when we talk about autumn, it seems like a long time,” Trump told Nexstar Media this week when it failed to devise a plan that could be applied to opening a school. But he still insisted that if children in Denmark, Norway and Germany could return to school, American children too should – while ignoring the fact that the countries were not trapped in the midst of a raging pandemic.

Administration officials repeatedly pointed out that children are less susceptible to complications from Covid-19 than their parents. They correctly show the severe emotional, educational and psychological effects on children who have not been to school for months. It is also true that school closures and childcare issues as a result have disproportionately affected parents on low income families.

But officials have never given a direct answer to the question of what happens to teachers who, as adults, have a higher risk of actually being sick because of a virus. There is also no answer to what parents have to do to stop their children coming home from school and infect them and their older siblings. Such negligence is typical in an administration which prefers to avoid difficult questions that might dampen its political aspirations.