Americans have been giving Trump a "pass" on Covid. They consider it an "act of God," so it doesn't count against his performance as president.
Americans remember his "real" presidency as the year 2019, pre-Covid.
How Trump mishandled Covid matters. We are living in the economic aftermath of it. We are also living under its health effects. The U.S. had "excess deaths above baseline" far in excess of our peer countries.
People can argue about "cause of death." Was Covid the cause or was it a complication? Was it really Covid and not the flu? Did the underlying heart problem cause the Covid? There is a method for resolving the question; that is by not asking it. Instead, simply look at deaths from all causes, period. During waves of Covid outbreaks the U.S. experienced about 1.3 million deaths above the baseline of expected deaths. One thing is sure: Extra people died.
Joe Yetter responded to my question "Are you better off today than you were four years ago." I had answered that question by citing economic indicators. He cited public health data. Joe Yetter is a retired Army physician and a former Democratic candidate for U.S. representative.
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| Joe Yetter |
Peter asked me to flesh out a comment I made a few days ago in response to the quadrennial question: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? I’m answering as a retired physician with a continuing interest in public health.
Hell, yes, I am better off! And so is our country.
Trump has tried to memory-hole that annus horribilis of 2020, but most of us can recall: neighbors fearing the breath of neighbors, the late-night calls from relatives across the country announcing hospitalizations or deaths, the lined-up refrigerated trucks chilling the dead against spoilage, the pots-and-pans and cheering celebrations for nurses heading home after excruciating double/triple shifts.
CDC: Excess deaths above baseline, coincidental with waves of Covid infections
Later, of course, medical personnel were sometimes assaulted or beaten for telling families that their relative had the coronavirus. And other anger and threats were directed at school boards, public health officials, medical experts, and, especially, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In May of 2018, Trump disbanded the Global Health Security and Biodefense Unit, and he threw out the playbook for handling a pandemic.
Vanity Fair, May 1, 2020
In January 2020, when he became aware of the gravity of the COVID pandemic, Trump chose to downplay it, insisting that it would “disappear like magic” or that one might eliminate the virus inside bodies with bright lights or by ingesting bleach, “almost like a cleaning.” It was an absurd and deadly exhibition of his anti-science, anti-intellectual, solipsistic character. It killed Americans.
Trump properly gets credit for Operation Warp Speed, and for economic stimuli.
GAO: Operation Warp Speed accelerated development
But I’d also award him a pile of demerits for downplaying the importance of the vaccine and other measures, and for delaying those checks in order to try to get his name on them.
Are we better off than we were four years ago? When was the last time you worried about finding toilet paper at the store?
Never forget: Four years ago, the U.S. had the highest COVID mortality rate in the world, by far: 2.44/million/day. Our COVID mortality rate peaked at 9.29/million/day, the second-highest in the world, on January 23, 2021--call it 72 hours into the Biden presidency, when we were losing 3,000 Americans daily. It was a 9/11, every day! I’d call that worse off than today.
Trump did not create the global pandemic, but he did give it legs here at home. Trump’s mismanagement of the crisis caused the additional deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and the Trump legacy of vaccine-denialism and antipathy to masking is killing us still.
It has also killed us in far greater numbers in the places that are the "Trumpiest." According to JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, "Excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults." Trump and Republicans made the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci into villains, and they criticized the vaccines. Fewer Republicans got vaccinated. They are still more likely to die of COVID than are Democrats. As a physician and as a human being, I find that tragic.
Anyone who cares about his fellow Americans knows that we are better off today than we were four years ago. Denying this invites further tragedy.
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8 comments:
Thanks for the memories. I remember the whackos demonstrating outside Asante while inside, healthcare workers risked their own lives trying to save those dying of COVID, most of whom had refused the free vaccines. Dying of stupidity, I call it. Now it’s happening to our democracy.
Excellent essay and a timely reminder of Trump's unclean hands. A physician friend who is a renown epidemiologist at UCSF said that it is practically certain that Trump's scandalous mismanagement of the pandemic crisis makes him directly responsible for over 400 thousand unnecessary deaths. Unforgettable and unforgivable. What are the Dylan lyrics? "Steal a little and they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you a king." What of murder? Let's not make him a king....
While it may seem heartless, anybody too stiff necked to get a readily available potentially lifesaving vaccine, because an ignorant peckerwood like Trump says so, is doing the world a favor by expiring earlier than would normally be expected. And now one of the loudest anti vaccination voices of all is trying to gain a National level Leadership position. Mike is right in tagging it " dying if stupidity".
Yesterday we were treated to Trumplicans ragging on Biden because a suicide bomber killed 13 service members, but they give Trump a pass on the hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths due to COVID, not to mention all the service members (or "suckers" and "losers," as he calls them) killed on his watch. It’s called cognitive dissonance – but what can you expect from people who want to make a rapist president.
I completely agree.
It may sound heartless, but during the height of the overcrowding of hospitals I was pretty strongly in favor of denying access to people who chose not to be unvaccinated.
If you don't believe in medical science, don't go to a hospital when you get real sick.
Mike and Ed like the phrase, "dying of stupidity"--but we must always remember that it is also *killing* by stupidity. Every infected person offers the virus billions of chances to mutate, and every infected person is a threat to other people---even those who are vaccinated, as was Colin Powell. Stupid people don't really deserve to die because they are stupid. Nor should stupidity excuse their killing of their friends and family. Stupid kills.
Woke, I felt the same way,because selfless Docs and Nurses were working untold hours, exhausting themselves and being exposed to a lethal disease for people too stubborn and ignorant to have gotten vaccinated, while folks who had break-through infections waited on gurney in Hallways.
You make valid points. Although I think Darwin might argue that stupid dying is Nature's way of helping thin the herd. I've been fortunate in not having contracted any of the various COVID bugs, but I have friends who did, and several years later are still suffering various side effects.
An interesting note; I've had occasion to be hospitalized a couple of times since May, and not once in the ERs or in my room did any of the Medical Staff wear masks, while at the VA Clinic just a couple of days ago, I was required to wear a mask on entering the building, and all the Staff were masked
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