It’s terrifying, this pandemic, which is
spreading all over the world, as you’ve
so comprehensively reported.
And it’s doubly terrifying that we have
a complete nitwit as president, who understands
nothing, listens to nothing, judges nothing,
except by the stock market, and is endangering
the American people.
So, it’s just hard to believe what a colossal
mess our country is in, not only a virus to
which the world population is immunologically
naive — in other words, one that can spread
wild and rapidly everywhere because there
isn’t acquired immunity, there isn’t experience
with this virus — but a president who is
certainly the most incompetent president in
the history of our country, who not only has
personal incompetence but is completely unable
to bring together and listen to qualified
people, like Dr. Fauci and others, who should
be helping to control this pandemic.
Instead, we have one ignoramus after another,
without guidance, without strategy, so every
mayor and governor in this country is on the
frontlines without federal support.
And Congress, it’s just bewildering.
There should have been money available immediately
to the states and cities for every emergency
step to actually fight the pandemic.
Instead, they’re talking about the airline
industry.
They’re talking about which bailouts of
which sectors,
instead of fighting the spread of the virus.
The focus should be seriously on stopping
the spread of the disease, keeping people
protected, helping the health workers, and
especially helping the mayors and the governors
around this country who are on the frontline.
There should have been immediately an emergency
$100 billion, $200 billion for the governors
and the mayors to quickly be able to get financial
flows so that they can hire emergency social
support, they can take whatever measures are
available given the supply constraints for
the hospitals, for requisitioning safe space,
for enabling there to be a viable and civilized
shutdown so that people who are in isolation
can survive this period.
That’s the first order of priority.
It should have been one day to recognize this.
It should be supervised, if we had a functioning
CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, by CDC,
by NIH, by the National Academies of Science,
National Academy of Medicine.
We could have improvised a kind of supervision,
not the dolt of a president who says,
“I am the one responsible.”
My god, it’s shocking, with all the expertise
in this country.
But Congress went off on some kind of a mind-boggling
economic excursion of $2 trillion rather than
focusing on the epidemic.
They just don’t understand what’s actually
happening.
They should be listening to the mayors and
the governors, because those are the political
leaders truly dealing on the frontlines.
And they should be helping those on the frontlines
to keep the health workers alive, to get the
social support and to help people to stay
home, to shelter in place, and to break the
transmission and to stay safe personally.
Those are the points of the shelter in place
— stay safe individually and end this transmission
— because this transmission, if everybody
that now has symptoms and is infected could
be kept sheltered in place in some kind of
isolation, given, of course, hospitalization
as needed, the epidemic then goes away.
Most people recover normally.
Some are hospitalized.
Tragically, some will die.
But the epidemic does not spread then.
This should be the order of business for the U.S.
And if it is a bit abstract, all one has to
look to, the countries that are actually succeeding
in doing this, to get some lessons, because
there are several, as I’ve mentioned.
