To hear Donald Trump’s daily blatherings, otherwise known as White House briefings, one might not get from his buoyant and uninformative stream of consciousness that about 35,000 Americans have died in the last month of COVID-19.
There is no hint of anguish to his shpiel. Any moments of empathy are over-shadowed by self-congratulatory recitations of his alleged accomplishments, liberally sprinkled wi8th the word “incredible.”
In fact, the public health tragedy in which this country finds itself is in no small part due to grand-scale Presidential abdication of responsibility.
President Trump was warned by two previous administrations about the possibility of a pandemic.
From the Obama administration came a strategy for addressing such a calamity. Donald Trump ignored these warnings; he proceeded to eliminate the global health security program, responsible for dealing with pandemics.
When the World Health Organization, which has saved untold numbers of lives, offered testing kits for COVID-19, Donald Trump rejected the offeR.
Instead, he opted for Center for Disease Control kits, which turned out to be defective. At the same time, he was describing COVID-19 as ”the latest hoax.”
But his most serious failing has been his unwillingness to institute national, low- or no cost testing for the virus, followed by contact tracing (finding with which people those testing positive had recent contact), and isolating those who were positive.
First, he said, anyone who needed a test could receive one. When that proved quickly false, he decided testing was not a Presidential responsibility after all.
He also could have begun a national Marshall plan, by using the Defense Production Act to manufacture, procure, and distribute vitally need medical supplies. Now we have medical providers who are testing positive, more than 1500 on the staff of Northwell for example.
During the campaign, President Trump said: ” Only I can fix it.”
In a way, he’s correct; only the President can institute a national, coordinated program designed to reduce the death rate and the spread of this virus.
But now that he’s facing a crisis, responsibility for fixing it is suddenly “up to the governors.” He no longer is interested in “fixing it.” He is impervious to the cries of nurses who have called out loudly and repeatedly for personal protective equipment.
Which leads me to say that by contrast to the stunning lack of leadership and absence of enlightened policymaking on the part of the President, I want to offer a shout out and deep gratitude to the nurses and other medical providers in this country.
They have gone to war against a killer virus, often at mortal risk to themselves, often without requisite armor.
We are in their debt. President Trump, wake up.
Rev. Ben Bortin
Port Washington
