When Trump was elected, I predicted, and many of our readers agreed, that Trump’s presidency would not end well and that his supporters would have to explain to their children and grandchildren why they enabled this charlatan to take the White House. Well, his presidency is not quite over, but we’re there. Trump’s gross negligence, erratic behavior, and malignant narcissism have take their toll and continue to do so. COVID-19 just became the leading cause of death in the US, and has reached that point for one primary reason – Donald J. Trump. His negligence has been well documented. His idiotic declarations, then reversals of those declarations, have shown him to be the complete fool he is, and who is unimaginably ignorant, cruel, and unstable. And his foolishness has been on full display through national television on a daily basis.
After declaring himself having “total” control over the states and ready to punish governors who don’t do what he orders, he reversed himself yesterday, issuing “guidelines” which were simply pablum for mass consumption, dumping ALL responsibility back on the governors including testing. Testing has been just one of Trump’s massive failures, but is probably the most dangerous. Lifting stay at home orders without massive testing is nothing short of negligent homicide. Since Trump woke up from his Stupid Coma in mid-March he has promised massive testing. Those promises are also lies, and he has missed every single date he has established for availability of testing. Yesterday, The Atlantic published the results of their own studies that showed that the curve of infection in the US is shown to be “flattening” only because we’re not testing enough. In that article, one key quote was, “The high positivity rate also suggests that new cases in the U.S. have plateaued only because the country has hit a ceiling in its testing capacity.” That means that cases show to be declining only because we don’t have enough testing. Even as Trump has failed so miserably at leading the federal testing effort, he has incessantly lied about it. Even yesterday, one of his many lies was this –
“We built the most advanced and robust testing anywhere in the world and we’ve done more testing than any country anywhere in the world.”
That statement is a lie. A dangerous lie. The US government is bungling the effort to get out testing, both infection and antibody, not because everyone at CDC and FDA have suddenly become incompetent, but because that is by design. From the very beginning, Trump has tried “to keep my numbers down”. To Trump, life and death issues are just a gameshow that he has to “win”. That’s why he wanted to keep a cruise ship full of at risk Americans offshore so they wouldn’t add to his infection “score”. The Atlantic said that our “test positivity” rate in the US is 20 percent. That is a terrible rate, but it is that terrible because most states are only testing those who are symptomatic. We know that asymptomatic Coronavirus carriers can infect many others. Why then, are we not testing far more extensively to identify those people? We are not testing because Trump believes that will make him look bad.
Yesterday, Trump reversed himself on “reopening the economy” because someone finally got through to him that his claim of total authority over the states guaranteed he will be blamed for the disaster that will ensue by lifting restrictions too early. By minimizing testing, infections are grossly underreported justifying lifting restrictions when they should be left in place.
The only way we can begin to lift restrictions on stay at home and social distancing is through massive testing. First, we need to test to get infected people isolated and treated. Second, we need to identify those who were infected but have recovered and carry antibodies. That can only be accomplished by massive antibody testing. Besides critical care, massive testing is the number one goal we should be trying to achieve, but we’re not. Why? Because in Trump’s gameshow world, the most important thing is to report the lowest numbers and avoid responsibility so he can “win”.
And that, dear readers, is ACTUALLY getting people killed.
