Awhile back, maybe a month ago, I remarked that no one I knew had yet tested positive for Covid-19.
That was back in June when President Trump was proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” over the coronavirus. “We’re on top of it”, he said, and “besides, when it gets warm it will just go away”.
It’s Summer now, and that is not what has happened.
I now know a bunch of people who now have or have had Covid-19. Our CPA friend, Joe and his wife and family, are now sick. Our friend Sandy’s friend “Pete” from Las Vegas contracted the virus while she was heading there to see him. Our neighbors Al and Cindy Howa, who begged out of that neighborhood potluck on the 4th like we did, found out a couple of days ago that they were exposed to Covid-19 while at a family gathering in Idaho. Wow, if they were infected and attended that party here with 20 senior citizens, it could have been a disaster.
We have learned that our contractor Adam may have been exposed. He is looking to be tested. Gee, that guy stayed in our house for two nights last week!
Anyway, Charlie and I have decided to get tested, just to be sure.
Good luck with that!!
One must get an appointment to get tested, and then there’s a considerable wait time before the test results are known. We got an appointment yesterday for a test in two weeks, then we’ll have to endure another week or so to find out if we’ve been infected.
By that time, if we had been infected, we’d likely be very sick, in a hospital ICU (if there were any beds left!), or we could be dead from complications.
When some writer pens the history of the Covid-19 pandemic decades from now, there will be many mistakes to be discussed, I’m sure. The biggest fuck-up of all, though, will have to be the “testing program”, which must have been designed by the Keystone Cops.
According to epidemiologists, testing is key to identifying who has the virus, tracing where the infected person acquired it, testing and quarantining all of those infected, and treating those who have become ill.
This is how a civilized nation handles a serious epidemic. The countries who observed these protocols religiously have done well and have “re-opened” their economies gingerly. They trusted science and their citizens didn’t act like spoiled children.
Of course, the United States is “exceptional”, and those rules of thumb don’t apply to us, evidently. Our President and his Administration at first pretended that the coronavirus was “just the flu”, there was scant infection in America, and that the virus would simply go away when the weather got warm.
When news of a spreading pandemic went viral, President Trump publicly stated that “anyone who wants a test can be tested. And the tests are all perfect.” His Administration, he claimed, was providing any and all states with the test kits that they needed.
That March 6th statement was a lie. It is now July 8th, four months later, and my wife and I must wait two weeks to get our test.
Donald Trump was probably confused because instantaneous testing was available at that time…for the President of the United States. According to statements he’s subsequently made, he gets tested every day! This is why, he says, he doesn’t need to wear a facemask in public.
(And, by behaving that way, he scoffs at the recommendation of his own Coronavirus Task Force, setting a poor example for all citizens. That’s Presidential leadership in action, folks: encouraging citizens to mistrust science.)
As we have learned in the past few months, there was not only a dearth of Covid-19 test kits available to doctors and emergency rooms back in March, but the CDC-approved kit was defective: it found some infected people to be non-infected and non-infected people to be infected. So, the results were highly suspect, in effect…useless to doctors.
Not “perfect”.
Even today, four months later, tests being administered routinely show false negative results (i.e. no infection detected) of 30 percent. So, retesting, particularly if the patient shows symptoms, is often required.
Still, not “perfect”.
Improved test kits are now more plentiful but are still in short supply. Since the “re-opening” of the economy that President Trump badgered governors into doing in June, Covid-19 infections have skyrocketed throughout the country, and test kits are becoming scarce in many localities.
Now that massive testing is in progress, the medical labs that process such tests are overwhelmed by the volume.
And those labs are experiencing shortages of critical supplies like chemical reagents and pipettes.
As I recall, months ago, President Trump appointed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to lead a special logistical task force to make sure our public health system got all the supplies necessary to do its job. It appears that nepotism, as usual, isn’t as effective as finding the right guy for the job.
Maybe that is the reason why the President, at his recent Tulsa rally, stated, “I told my people to slow down the testing!” Fewer tests, fewer supplies required, less embarrassment for Jared. I can see how it may have made sense to his father-in-law.
It is Summer now, it is scorching hot all over the Nation, and the epidemic is going full speed ahead. According to “Doctor Trump”, the virus was supposed to magically disappear in hot weather. That’s not happening, at least not in Nevada and Arizona, where the daytime temperatures are now in the 100’s.
The Nation has been experiencing 50,000 new cases per day in the past week, and the death toll now exceeds 134,000 Americans. Epidemiologists are now predicting 200,000 victims by the Fall…when the normal flu season will be upon us.
Looking an epic failure in the face, and needing someone to blame for it (besides himself), the President has begun to throw public spidwads at the CDC and it’s chief epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci. It’s his fault, the President wants us to believe, that our Chief Executive (and titular leader of the fight against Covid-19) has failed to wear a face mask in public.
Since Dr. Fauci, a world-reknowned scientist, is more respected and popular with the American public than he is at this moment, President Trump has engaged other Administration lackeys to publicly snipe at Dr. Fauci and the CDC, as if they caused the pandemic, the 140,000 deaths, and the economy that can’t reboot because people are still sick and afraid.
This past week, Peter Navarro, one of the President’s chief economic advisors, authored an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times which blamed Dr. Fauci for the Administration’s lame effort against Mr. Covid. Navarro said that virtually everything that Dr. Fauci had told the American public about the coronovirus had been wrong.
Wrong.
I’ve listened to Dr. Fauci for the past five months or so, and pretty much everything he has been allowed (by the President) to say has been on point considering that that Covid-19 is a new coronavirus that scientists are learning about on the the fly.
Actually, it was Peter Navarro and his buddy, Donald Trump, who went “all in” on the supposed hydroxychloroquine “game changer” (to quote the President) back in March. It turned out to be fake news, like most of the stuff Navarro and Trump have been broadcasting for the past three years.
By the way, how are those tariffs that you recommended working out, Mr. Navarro?
Donald J. Trump, M.D. weighed in again this past week, announcing that “99 percent of Covid-19 cases are benign”. Once again, that insignificant “one percent” factor that justifies the President’s dismissive attitude relative to a number of subjects.
Truth be told, the mortality rate of Covid-19 in the United States presently exceeds 4 percent of known infections. Additionally, almost one million patients have been hospitalized and have recovered. That is a lot of suffering from something that is so “benign”.
I’m sure the kin of the 140,000 Americans who have died (thus far!) would like to debate the benign-ness of this plague.
Which begs the question: If Covid-19 is essentially harmless, why is President Trump being tested every day?
For some reason, the Trump Administration is running “Operation Warp Speed” to quickly develop a Covid-19 vaccine, hopefully in the next few months, so that it can announce a “miracle” before November 3rd.
Yeah, that’s right: spending a billion dollars to find a cure for a… benign illness!
This curiosity begs an even bigger question: When/if a Covid-19 vaccine is developed, should Americans trust it?
After all, the Nation has been browbeaten by its President to not trust science, whether it be about the pandemic itself, its seriousness, the recommendations of experts, wearing face masks in public, and the safety of re-opening the economy in the midst of high infection rates.
The Trump cult believes that scientists and experts cannot be trusted on any subject: only trust the word of Donald Trump.
So, it doesn’t take much imagination to predict what is coming down the pike: a pre-Election announcement by the President that a miracle vaccine has been developed to put an end to the horrible pandemic.
Don’t laugh. It’s coming.
But, why should we believe that this hastily-developed vaccine will work and not have negative side effects? After all, it will have been developed by…scientists.
Because Donald J. (Hydroxychloroquine) Trump, amateur physician and epidemiologist, says so.
Testing 1-2-3…
