Looks Like a Funeral Home, But It’s the Clubhouse Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia

100,000 COVID-19 U.S. Deaths and Rising

“When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going

to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” 

Donald Trump (February 26^th)

Saturday morning, May 23^rd, was a perfect late spring day for golf. Memorial weekend. The President, never wearing a mask, headed out to one of his many golf properties, in Sterling, Virginia, not that far from the White House. Was this an appropriate time to play golf? No matter how many Americans have died – more than double the fatalities of any other nation on earth – Donald Trump touts success. Seriously? Massive death tolls are a measure of success? Almost nothing that Donald Trump has said about the pandemic, from predictions and suggested medical treatments to recommendations to reopen the economy without restrictions has been correct.

Minimizing the reality of the threat, Trump’s false CV-19 messaging delayed a concerted federally led response by two months, a delay that a Columbia University assessment tells us that cost us 36,000 American lives. So many other nations reacted immediately, severely limiting the CV-19 infection and death tolls in their countries (e.g., South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, etc.). Trump’s malfeasance killed people. Trump has just continued to minimize the risk, seeking to blame others and not promulgating meaningful solutions.

Shortages of essential medical supplies, amplified by a federal policy that supports pandemic profiteers, have underscored the ineptness and lack of preparedness of this presidency, one that has actively cut and defunded some of the federal government’s traditionally most effective anti-pandemic response programs. Trump has withdrawn US involvement internationally, from cutting budgetary allocations to federal bureaucrats charged with coordinating international identification of pandemic hot spots and controlling cross-border risks to threatening permanently to pull US support for an admittedly less-than-perfect United Nations World Health Organization… but is fixing and working. It’s all part of the Trump’s administration’s battle against globalism. No one seems to be able to explain how a global pandemic, one that crosses national borders wantonly, can be addressed other than by a globally coordinated response.

The highest levels of the federal government knew that a pandemic was brewing back in late 2019, and Trump’s senior advisors sent the President memos to this effect in January of this year. As we cross a staggering 100,000 American COVID-19 deaths, more than double the number of any other country on earth, it seems appropriate to look back at Donald Trump’s leadership, his false assurances, misstatements and dramatically incorrect recommendations.

“On Wednesday [February 26^th], in front of a packed White House briefing room, President Trump told the country there were only 15 cases of coronavirus in the US, and ‘within a couple days [it is] going to be down to close to zero.’ This contradicted both the CDC’s Anne Schuchat, who’d said minutes earlier from the very same stage that ‘we do expect more cases,’ and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who’d said ‘we can expect to see more cases in the United States.’

“The next day, on the White House lawn, Trump told reporters that Democrats were trying to weaponize the situation to hurt him and said the media was ‘doing everything they can to instill fear in people, and I think it’s ridiculous.’ The people who weren’t giving him credit for his handling of the situation ‘don’t mean it. It’s political.’” Mother Jones, February 29^th.

“During a Feb. 28, 2020, campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying ‘this is their new hoax.’ During the speech he also seemed to downplay the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu.” Snopes.com, March 2^nd.

On April 20^th, as FEMA ordered 100,000 body bags, President Trump suggested that the US CV-19 death toll might rise to 60,000. Less than two weeks later, having already suggested that the entire country could reopen by Easter,  “President Trump… radically revised upward his estimate of how many Americans would die from the novel coronavirus, saying that anywhere between 80,000 and 100,000 people could die—after he cited a death toll of 50,000 to 60,000 roughly two weeks ago. ‘That’s one of the reasons we’re successful, if you call losing 80 or 90 thousand people successful,’ Trump said in a Fox News town hall at the Lincoln Memorial [on May 5^th].

“‘I used to say 65,000,’ the president added, ‘and now I’m saying 80 or 90 and it goes up and it goes up rapidly, but it’s still going to be, no matter how you look at it, at the lower end of the plane if we did the shutdown.’ He later added: ‘We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing.’” Daily Beast, May 3^rd, updated.

“As the virus spread, Trump began to redefine success. ‘You’re talking about 2.2 million deaths,’ he has said several times, referring to a projected toll if he’d done nothing to mitigate the epidemic. ‘If we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000 — that’s a horrible number — maybe even less, but to 100,000; so we have between 100- and 200,000 — we all, together, have done a very good job,’ he said on March 29. While one early model included the figure as the upper limit of a potential death toll, most models had half that amount as an upper limit. It makes anything less than 100,000 deaths look good by comparison.” Washington Post, May 1^st. When Trump made those statements, the US CV-19 death toll had passed 60,000.

As the country responds to CV-19 fatigue, as every single state begins to reopen at one level or another, as death tolls seem to be entering what is a traditionally a “between the waves” lull, experts are warning that until there is a cure or a vaccine, opening up too soon could easily transition the pandemic, with a parallel secondary shock to the economy, into a more virulent second and potentially third wave that could double or even triple the number of American CV-19 casualties to date.  As businesses come back, Americans are not wearing masks or honoring self-distancing practices in sufficient numbers to continue the containment of the virus.

“I fear the worst is yet to come… There is a very real chance there will be a catastrophe.” WHO Assistant Director-General Stewart Simonson on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS, CNN, May 24^th. Indeed, evidence is mounting that daily death tolls in some aggressive “reopening states” are reaching their highest rates (e.g., North Carolina) or rising to near record rates (e.g., Arkansas). Has that dreaded second wave already begun?

Meanwhile, Mr. Blame Others (Donald Trump) meets Mr. I’m Tougher than You Are (China’s Xi Jinping). Aside from blaming the Obama administration, the Democrats and escalating restoring the economy to full strength before the election (measured by stock prices) at all costs (regardless of medical risks), Donald Trump has laid blame for the entire pandemic on China. China clearly covered up the earliest evidence of the outbreak, not too much different from the early denials from the White House.

But what’s in that policy of blame that will benefit the American people… that will make this situation better? China will never accept responsibility or write checks to the United States as “reparations” for their “malfeasance” any more than Mexico wrote checks to cover a border wall. Why is a feud between two major powers, together accounting for over one fifth of the world’s entire population, going to accelerate an end to the current pandemic and coordinate a response to future outbreaks of diseases yet unknown? And exactly why are the Democrats buying into this destructive global conflict of national egos?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and the coronavirus seems dramatically unmoved by the desires and intentions of masses of people and political leaders unwilling to accept scientific facts.