Into the Pandemic - Finger Pointing

Isolation Manor - April 7th, 2020

Total cases: 1,511,333    Total Deaths: 88,400

Yes, it's already started.  Actually it started awhile ago with President Trump

First, he was gushing with praise about how well China was handling the virus.  Then it changed when he started calling it the Wuhan virus.

Donald, of course, wasted close to 2 months not taking the virus threat seriously.  Fortunately, he doesn't get to decide many things that matter.

The Democrats, of course have put this denialism into campaign videos already.  Count on seeing it until November.



And for inexplicable reasons, the far right seems to have decided that the messenger should be blamed for curtailing their "freedums"....

Just the other day, a Texas woman died, a self-proclaimed MAGA Trump supporter.  She basically went to her grave claiming that the virus was a hoax, nothing to worry about, nothing that common sense and good sense and...of course...guns...couldn't handle.  She's now dead.

And, if that wasn't enough, Trump was claiming that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were sure-fire treatments for the virus.  Two people drank aquarium cleaner (which contains chloroquine sulphate).  One dies, the other survived.  There was a saying, years ago, that loose lips sinks ships.  These days loose lips can kill, especially when your deluded followers actually believe everything you say.

The USA's National Security Council actually had a 69-page document outlining how to handle a pandemic, and, god knows, they do have people in that country with the knowledge and experience.  Trump and his administration ignored all of that advice.

The Daily Beast weighed in with some rather uncomplimentary remarks about Trump and his "handling" of the entire mess.  Kind words were very few and far between.  One out of many of my favourite quotes:

The catalog of excuses for Donald Trump's mishandling of the early, vital weeks of the Coronavirus story will go down in the annals of political mendacity, in part because the evidence is so abundant, so much video exists, and the change in tone from complacency to panic is so evident. 

As this whole mess continues on into April, The Atlantic has come out swinging.  In an article by Republican David Frum, dated April 7th, Trump and his Administration is, essentially, pilloried for it's inaction and lies. 

The failures and self-serving behaviour doesn't even stop there.  According to this story, there could be an underlying reason why DJT was so enthusiastic about hydroxychloroquine a few days ago.  Significant, hard to say, but it would fit a pattern.

And every day it gets worse.  I suppose I'll have to bring this post to some kind of conclusion because there isn't really an end to the egregious things that keep happening.  For instance, there was this article in the LA Times which reported that medical providers are finding orders for equipment not sent, orders taken away and equipment being seized.  They don't know if the equipment and supplies will come back when they're needed because nobody is talking about this with them.  And people affected by these actions can't talk about it because they fear retaliation from the White House.  What can one say, other than WTF?

Some people take a more humorous approach, as in this short piece from The New Yorker, saying that you need to sanitize your TV (and yourself) after Trump has been on.

And then there is Boris Johnson.  On April 6th, the news carried the story that Mr Johnson had gone into Intensive Care.  Now, Mr Johnson, some will surely believe, has been doing a great job managing the crisis in the UK.  The truth isn't so flattering.  In the beginning, Boris was suggesting that Britain should just let the virus run its course until heard immunity prevailed.  Obviously a person with no head for maths, Boris seemed to forget that such a tactic (if one can call such negligence a tactic) would have resulted in several hundred thousand to a million deaths.  He dropped that notion pretty quickly.  But he wasted time.  Time that could have been spent preparing.

Moving on, there is the President of Brazil.  I'm not a religious person, but in this case, all I can say is: God help Brazilians".  They have a belligerent idiot for a leader.  And if that wasn't bad enough, Brazil has "evangelicals" to make things even worse.

In Israel, there is growing criticism of some of that country's political leaders.  Seriously, people who should know better.

And there is more.  Always more.  Gone is the era where whole countries suffered in isolation.  Now we are in isolation with the actions of everyone else in the world on full display.