Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Coronavirus and Politically Unsolid Ground

Things have become so strange with politics in recent weeks that it's hard to get a feel for solid ground under one’s feet. Spin and propaganda utterly dominate facts and reality.

The AP reported yesterday that the White House is muzzling public health officials to make the Coronavirus pandemic look like it isn’t a pandemic or anything to worry about: “NEW YORK (AP) — The White House overruled health officials who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, a federal official told The Associated Press. 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention submitted the plan as a way of trying to control the virus, but White House officials ordered the air travel recommendation be removed, said the official who had direct knowledge of the plan. Trump administration officials have since suggested certain people should consider not traveling, but have stopped short of the stronger guidance sought by the CDC. 

The person who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity did not have authorization to talk about the matter. The person did not have direct knowledge about why the decision to kill the language was made or who made the call. 
Administration officials disputed the person’s account. In a tweet, the press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence, Katie Miller, said that ‘it was never a recommendation to the Task Force’ and called the AP story ‘complete fiction.’ On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci — the head of infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force — said ‘no one overruled anybody.’”

As is often or usually the case these days, the American people are presented with two completely opposed versions of reality. Either the CDC wanted to warn people at risk to not fly, or it did not want to give that warning. Who should be trusted? A narcissistic and self-centered, incompetent, liar president with a track record of well over 16,000 false and misleading statements or a federal agency employee trying to get information out to warn people of real world risks? Who should one trust?

Under the circumstances, including the known and undeniable susceptibility of elderly and physically fragile people to the Coronavirus, it is reasonable to believe that the president is muzzling health care professionals to serve his political and economic interests at the expense of public health.

Given the bumbling incompetence of the president personally and his cowed, inept administration in dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic, it is also reasonable to think it is more likely than not (maybe about a 60% chance) that within about a year, the American people will have herd immunity. The bumbling and fumbling Trump administration is probably going to allow this virus to spread free and wild. That will give rise to herd immunity. Of course, tens or hundreds of thousands of susceptible Americans will die in the process. If that scenario comes to pass, it is fair and balanced to blame the president personally and every single person in his administration who enabled this incompetence and failure.

Actually, since the president neutered America’s capacity to deal with a pandemic by firing the US pandemic response team in 2018[1] and trying to significantly defund the CDC, he and his enablers deserve blame for the death of every single American from the Coronavirus. Based on the facts, one can now reasonably and fairly call our incompetent narcissist president a killer.

Questions: Is calling the president a killer hyperbolic, unfair and/or not reasonably supported by the facts? Or, does a president have limited or no accountability for his actions that later turn out to have been unforced mistakes due to incompetence or any other cause?


Footnote: 
1. “It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.”

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