How the US Screwed Up:

A Litany of Fumbles

By Shlomo Maital

Ooops…fumbled the ball!

  The United States, led by the Trump administration, has fumbled the ball in dealing efficaciously with the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is the terrible litany of fumbles, mistakes and bad decisions, which in the end cause the deaths of many people. Needlessly.

    April 2018. Some nine or ten months before the crisis arose, Trump and his National Security Council advisor John Bolton (later fired himself…justice?) fire the NSC team charged with pandemic preparation; on April 8 Tim Bossert is fired, as Home Secretary Advisor, in charge of “comoprehensive defensive strategy against pandemics”. Bye bye strategy and plans. In May Rear Amiral Tim Ziemer, who headed a ‘health security team’ was fired and not replaced.

   Fast forward: China experiences early COVID-19, and, rather late, in late December, informs the world of it, and warns. On Jan. 20 the Center for Disease Control, in the US, announces the first case, a traveler from Wuhan, China. “We shut it down”, Trump says on Feb. 2. In February the CDC sends out its COVID-19 test, to public health testing labs in the US states; it doesn’t work. The US, (pride? Ego?) fails to purchase tests that are proven to work, from South Korea and other countries. The test is fixed, finally – but valuable weeks are lost. The public health labs work at developing their own test, something that has never before happened.

“When the CDC rolled out its tests, a component in them turned out to be faulty. That was unfortunate, but it put a big spotlight on the CDC’s decision to use its own test kit instead of test kits other countries have used, reportedly in an effort to create a more accurate test.”

   As of March 9, well into the US pandemic, only 4,300 COVID-19 tests had been carried out.  Trump says, “the tests are perfect”  (like his phone call to the Ukrainian President).

    Press reports:   “Testing is crucial to slowing epidemics. First, it lets public health officials identify sick people and subsequently isolate them. Second, they can trace that sick person’s recent contacts to make sure those people aren’t sick and to get them into quarantine as well. It’s one of the best tools we have for an outbreak like this. It’s also something that the federal government has done well before — recently, with H1N1 and Zika. “It’s been surprising to me that the administration’s had a hard time executing on some of these things,” Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said. “

America dropped the ball on testing. Press reports: “In the months before the coronavirus outbreak, the administration cut a public health position that was meant to help detect disease outbreaks in China, where the pandemic began, Even without such cuts, experts and advocates argue the US generally underfunds disease outbreak preparedness and public health programs more broadly. Further cuts just deepen the risks of pandemics. The common refrain among experts is that other countries’ actions, such as China’s draconian measures, gave the US a bit of time to do something, but the federal government has failed to get even the basics right in that time.”

What was President Trump’s role in this? “Trump “did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that’s partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear — the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall.”

   Hospitals, especially in New York City, complain they lack equipment. Why? There is a large US strategic stockpile of lots of useful things. However, “While the administration has said it’s using federal authorities and tapping into its stockpiles to get more of this gear to the places that need it, health care workers on the ground complain that they still don’t have enough — forcing them to reuse possibly contaminated equipment and choose between working in unsafe conditions or not show up to work at all. All of this at a time when the country needs to, according to experts, boost health care capacity.”   There are rumors, Trump dislikes Washington state and New York State and that this is impacting federal shipments.

   In a pandemic, preparedness is crucial. The US Defense Department has contingency plans for a huge variety of threats. What about the health area? “….. this reflects on the lack of preparedness: A shortage of medical equipment is one of the many problems government simulations and exercises warned about before the current outbreak. But Trump simply didn’t prioritize pandemic preparedness beforehand. The US … was not prepared … A good preparedness plan would have helped address this and had things in place to allow for that increased need to be met.”

   US health care system is inadequate, even with Obamacare (imagine if Trump had succeeded in annulling it!?). “With the outbreak growing, the US’s lack of universal health care has become an even more obvious problem: If people can’t get testing, they’re less likely to find out they have Covid-19 and take precautions to avoid spreading the virus. If they can’t get treatment in case of complications, they’re more likely to suffer, potentially spread the disease, and die.”

   Fighting the poor, rather than the virus: “The administration has pushed forward on measures that will kick people off food stamps. This will not only lead people to suffer if they lose their jobs as a result of a coronavirus-caused recession, but it could lead to sick people going to work and spreading the disease, because they won’t have a safety net if they don’t bring in a paycheck.”

  Chasing immigrants, instead of virus: “Experts also pointed to the “public charge” rule, which effectively discourages immigrants from seeking public services, including health care, by threatening their immigration status if they are “likely to be a public charge” by relying on those services.”

   Yes, the United States has dropped the ball – fumbled it.   And this litany is very very partial – it’s only 1,000 words, it could fill a book.

   And the sad part, again, is that when a halfback fumbles in football, worst case, his team loses the game. In the US, when the administration fumbles, people die. Many people. And then ? Excuses. Boy, are we going to hear excuses, all the way to November and beyond.

Dr. Anthony Fauci predicts, as many as 200,000 Americans could die in this pandemic.  Many of these deaths could have been prevented, if the Administration had simply held onto the ball.

   There has to be accountability. At the very least, at the ballot box in November.