Your fixation with attacking the Trump administration is becoming a caricature. Why don’t you just save the opinion page for more ads and just have your opinion pieces read: Trump Bad! Democrats Great!
You state in the editorial that “Epidemiologists say that if the U.S. shutdown had taken place two weeks earlier, 90 percent of the deaths would have been prevented as well as the collapse of the economy.” Are these the same epidemiologists who predicted 2.2 million deaths or the same ones who originally said that wearing masks was not necessary nor useful and then reversed course and now say everyone should wear masks in public. These are among other contradictory and/or wrong pronouncements made by epidemiologists. But we are to believe that this one is correct?
So let me get things straight: When Trump banned certain flights from China early on before any deaths in the United States had occurred, he was lambasted and called every kind of pejorative imaginable by the Democrats and the media (one in the same). When he later banned European flights, it was round two of the pejorative fest. But we are to believe that Trump acting two weeks sooner in spite of his main medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, publicly and repeatedly downplaying the dangers of the virus and very few deaths having occurred, would not have been greeted with accusations of tyrant, wanna-be king, dictator, etc. And that the public would have been understanding and compliant. I think not.
Let’s talk about the results of the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis. Approximately 43 percent of deaths have occurred in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut (with NJ and CT commuters being exposed in NY) and most of those can be laid at the hands of Gov. Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio for their documented incompetent handling of the situation. Cuomo, because he made the fateful decision in 2015 to ignore the recommendation to stockpile respirators due to a severe shortage and for making the even worse and deadly decision to place COVID-19-positive patients in nursing homes and adult care facilities where the most vulnerable folks reside and the majority of deaths have occurred. This, in spite of the fact that the Jacob Javits center and the USS Comfort ship were available and severely underutilized. Unconscionable!
Mayor de Blasio, because he not only downplayed the dangers of the virus and encouraged New Yorkers to continue living their lives normally and urged people to go to restaurants, movies, plays, etc. but even after the seriousness of the virus was apparent due to information coming out of California and Washington state, refused to shut down schools and the subway system, which is where your vaunted epidemiologists believe the majority of cases where transmitted.
So, if we assess these facts (pesky little things, aren’t they?) and rightly not blame Trump for the majority of deaths in NY NJ & CT, we are looking at less than 40,000 deaths in a country of over 320 million. As sad and tragic as those deaths are, that is not a bad outcome. Will you put aside your blind hatred for Trump and reconsider your views? Sadly, I think not.
The Trump administration is not without fault and has had missteps and, in hindsight, could have handled some things differently. Would the outcome have been much different. Probably not but who really knows? And one thing that you cannot accuse him of is not listening to the experts. He often doesn’t but in this crisis he has (almost to a fault).
He has endeavored to provide the states with everything that they’ve asked for, worked well with many Democrat governors and has been more accessible to the media and the American people than any president ever has. You would engender some credibility in your criticism of him if you occasionally gave him the credit that he deserves.
John Mangin
Great Neck
