Trump's COVID Response Was Worse Than We Remember
By Mona
Charen
Here are Trump's words from that infamous April 2020 press
conference about Covid:
"So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous —
whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light. ... And then I said,
supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either
through the skin or in some other way. ... I see the disinfectant, where it
knocks it out in a minute. ... And is there a way we can do something like
that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning."
Yet here we are, a little more than four years later, and
the narrative about how COVID was handled has shifted. It now seems to be
conventional wisdom that the worst errors we committed concerned massive
shutdowns and school closings. We hear comparatively little about the large
discrepancies between Republicans and Democrats in death rates because of the
former's resistance to public health measures and vaccination.
A serious country would look back at Trump's greatest
challenge during his presidency and remember what an embarrassing failure it
was.
It began with denial of the problem. Trump told Bob
Woodward in a February 2020 phone call that "You just breathe the air and
that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate
one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. ... This is deadly
stuff."
But in his public statements, Trump repeatedly downplayed
the seriousness of the virus. On Jan. 22, 2020, he said, "We have it
totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it
under control. It's going to be just fine." On Feb. 7, he tweeted:
"Great discipline is taking place in China, as
President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation."
On Feb. 10, he again reported on a chat with Xi, reassuring
Americans that "I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the
sense that they have everything under control."
On Feb. 26, he urged people to wash their hands (fair
enough) but then suggested that the new virus was "the same as the
flu" — exactly the opposite of what
he told Woodward.
On Feb. 27, he predicted that COVID would "disappear
... it's like a miracle."
On Feb. 28, Trump said the Democrats were politicizing the
coronavirus, calling it their "new hoax."
Trump's principal actions as chief executive in the early
days of the pandemic were to enact travel bans from China and later Europe. He
did nothing to initiate a testing program, though he did assert falsely that
anyone who wanted a test could get one.
In March, Trump urged that the Grand Princess cruise ship,
with sick passengers aboard, not be permitted to dock in San Francisco because
he didn't want to increase the number of cases counted in the United States.
"I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers
double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."
Also in March 2020, citing a small French study, Trump
declared that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, taken together with an
antibiotic, could be "one of the biggest game changers in the history of
medicine" and should "be put in use immediately."
On April 3, Trump mentioned that the CDC was now
recommending that people wear masks but said that he would not wear one.
By July, with the number of cases rising sharply, Trump
suggested that the tests were picking up trivial cases: " They have the
sniffles and we put it down as a test." By that point, 3.7 million
Americans had been infected and more than 140,000 had died.
Also in July, Trump elevated Dr. Stella Immanuel on
Twitter. Dr. Immanuel touted hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID and denied
that masks were effective. She also believed that gynecological problems like
cysts and endometriosis are caused by people having sex in their dreams with
demons and witches.
In a September 2020 campaign stop, Trump said that COVID
affects "virtually nobody," mainly just "elderly people, elderly
people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems,
that's what it really affects, that's it."
Trump modeled contempt for masking, mocking reporters and
others for wearing them. He held huge rallies and White House indoor parties
that became superspreader events. When he himself became infected with COVID,
he failed to disclose it to associates like Chris Christie (who wound up in
intensive care) and arguably attempted to infect Joe Biden at the first
presidential debate.
Trump denied the problem, failed to coordinate a federal
response other than banning travel, embraced quack cures and modeled antisocial
behavior. After first praising Xi Jinping to
the skies for his "strong" control of the virus, he switched to name
calling — the "Kung Flu," the "China virus" — to incite
xenophobic responses. He really did only one big thing right — backing
Operation Warp Speed, which hastened the development of the vaccine.
Now his party has gone full nutcase, demonizing Anthony
Fauci. These are unserious people in thrall to a sociopathic clown. The U.S.
death rate from COVID far exceeded that of peer nations. That was not due to
excessive lockdowns or masking. It was due to incompetence in the White House.
Time for a great remembering.
