Reason # 68: Evolving Trump Response to COVID
Why do we need to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House?
We saw yesterday how Donald Trump mismanaged the early response to COVID 19 in the U.S. People infected with the virus entered the country and were not quarantined until they were no longer infectious. It was apparent very early that the virus was highly transmissible, primarily by cough. Worse, the virus was highly lethal, killing many, particularly among the elderly and those weakened by other illness.
Spread of the disease could have been curtailed by universal wearing of masks, closing schools and businesses and not allowing people to congregate in churches, athletic and entertainment venues and political rallies. Donald Trump consistently undercut the ability of public health officials to do these things. The result was inevitable.
Look at the math. If each COVID 19 patient infects two others in one day (this figure turned out to be accurate), then starting on day one, we would expect to see 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8200, 16,400, 64,000, 128,000, 256,000, 512,000, 1 million, 2 million, 4 million, 8 million, 16 million, 32 million, 64 million, 128 million, 256 million, by the end of a month – everybody!
Because the majority of the population acted responsibly, under the guidance of CDC officials and Democratic leaders, despite Trump, things weren’t quite that bad. Only about a million had contracted the disease and 57,000 had died by the end of April 2019. These numbers were greatly underestimated since we did not yet have the capacity to test for the virus at the time.
Then Trump went completely off the rails of responsibility and leadership. He began touting outlandish remedies, like treating patients with ultraviolet light – entirely unfeasible. Even more alarming, he discussed injecting toxic disinfectants as treatment!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177
Then in May, when COVID deaths exceeded 100,000 Trump announced that he was taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent the disease. There was zero evidence of the drug’s effectiveness.
Despite skyrocketing numbers of cases and deaths, Trump irresponsibly held a large indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was later determined that six of his staff had tested positive for COVID. At the rally many attendees did not wear masks. Three weeks later, there was an enormous spike of COVID cases in Oklahoma and multiple deaths.
Despite all of this misery, Donald Trump persisted in downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic and promising that it would all go away on its own in the near future.
https://time.com/5865890/oklahoma-covid-19-trump-tulsa-rally/
In October, Trump was hospitalized after he and his wife tested positive for COVID 19. He presumably received oral and perhaps intravenous treatments. This occurred shortly after he had given a rally in Sanford, Florida, where he and most of the crowd were maskless. His callous carelessness put not just himself but the country at risk of a transition crisis, had he died.
This is just a tiny sample of all of the foolish, irresponsible and plain outright crazy nonsense from our former president. He survived his encounter with the virus, but many of his constituent Republicans did not. Mortality from COVID in precincts that voted in a majority for Trump was much higher than in precincts voting for Biden. It has been estimated that excess mortality among Republicans exceeded two hundred thousand. He has to answer for these deaths.
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/25/1189939229/covid-deaths-democrats-republicans-gap-study
The obvious reason is that they were not given appropriate guidance by their leader and president and suffered the ultimate consequences.
Have a heart; use your mind, search your conscience, and vote for Democratic candidates – across the ballot – on November. 5th.
I want you not to vote for Donald Trump – but not because you have died because of his rash foolishness.
Please share this message with your friends and please, add your thoughts, to expand upon what are only brief sketches here.
To date, I have written 68 Reasons NOT to vote for Donald Trump . They are
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Why have I committed to posting 100 Reasons NOT to vote for Donald Trump? Because I do not have time to post 10,000.
Fred Grannis
September 27, 2024