Trump Fiddles While America Burns

Nero Lives, Act II by Nancy Ohanian

-by Brian Baxter

I have not been happy with the performance of our current president since he got elected. In January of 2017, I wrote letters to newspapers, cable news hosts and a variety of senators and congressmen to inform them that Trump was suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder along with a quote from the DSM 5. I wasn’t guessing, I have about thirty years of experience in the mental health field. Not only did I not get an answer, it was several years before I even heard anyone in the news apply that label to Trump.

I watched Trump brag about how well the economy was doing, taking credit for the "Obama Boom" which President Obama constructed out of the rubble that President Bush had left him. I expected Trump to crash the economy, but I couldn’t figure out how. Now I know.

I watched as scandal after scandal emerged. I watched as the scandals were never resolved, they were replaced by new scandals. An online news service-- Prospect-- put out a summary back in the fall. The list, a brief sentence describing each scandal, ran twelve pages long. I watched as the other Republicans in office stood by the president. My conclusion was they were willing to follow him into hell. Then came the coronavirus a situation where appropriate action was required.

I stare in disbelief every time I see the summary of the coronavirus cases in the US and coronavirus cases in the world. I am struck by the fact that while the US only has about 4% of the world’s population, it has about 25% of the cases. Giving it more thought, I am not interested in comparing the US to, say, Africa, or South America. I took a closer look. At the end of this brief summary, I have a comparison of the success other countries, technologically advanced countries, have made in dealing with the coronavirus. It is in the form of a table. The eighteen countries came from one of the many lists in US News and World Reports online of the most advanced industrial countries. I found a chart which had the information on coronavirus cases in all the countries in the world. At first, when I was putting in the numbers, the US didn’t look that bad. With 34% of the population of the most advanced countries, we had 68% of the coronavirus case. Bad, of course, but not that disastrous. Then, I started tabulating the number of cases on one day in early July. Those numbers are in the last column. The US had over 50 thousand cases. The total for the other 17 highly industrialized countries? Less than 5 thousand in total. The US had 91.8% of the cases. This is a spectacular difference.

The reason for the difference is straight forward. The governments in the other advanced countries took appropriate action when the coronavirus hit. First, they shut down their public activities. Second, they required masks and the governments supplied them. Third, and highly important, they did testing. Back in the early spring, I repeated, over and over, “The three most important thing needed to control the virus are testing, testing and testing. Recently, I heard Nancy Pelosi make a similar comment. Today, she briefly explained the steps the country needs to have taken. In the other industrial countries, the testing is extensive. They were able to identify those who are carrying the virus, quarantine those people, and trace the people they had been in contact with. There is still social distancing and masks, but testing is key.

Essentially, what happened in other industrial countries when the virus broke out the leaders met, discussed what to do and implemented a plan. Obviously, in the beginning when things were really bad, they shut the countries down. Afterwards, they cautiously opened while doing testing. Now, they are pretty much returned to normal.

Here in America, the Trump administration fired the Pandemic Response Team shortly after he was elected. I heard Donald Trump tell a reporter that he did so to save money. Not surprisingly, after the coronavirus struck, he denied firing the Pandemic Response Team.

We simply do not have a plan. The number of cases keeps climbing. We do not have sufficient tests and the results come back too slowly to use the tests to control the spread of the virus. The reason Donald Trump gives for not doing testing is it increases the incidence as though testing causes the virus. More testing makes him look bad. We also do not have the personal protective equipment the other countries ensured was available.

Now, masks and social distancing have taken on a political dimension. Republicans are refusing to do it. The result is things are going to get bad, really bad. I have been saying for some months we are heading into the trifecta come late August, September. First, the number of coronavirus is going to be unimaginably high. Second, the economy is going to fall through the floor. And third, hurricanes.

The coronavirus cases are going to increase dramatically. The Republicans don’t seem to grasp the concept of exponential growth. In the beginning, the numbers don’t look too bad. But after they keep doubling the numbers are suddenly huge. Then, it’s too late to do anything. The Republicans have made a political statement out of wearing masks, in part, because of the lies from Fox News. The Washington Post had a recent article about their lies. Their viewers are refusing to wear masks or to social distance. The virus numbers will be enormous by fall. The Republicans really are following Trump into hell. If the Senate had done their job and removed Trump from office, we wouldn’t be in this situation. After Trump leaves office, he should be arrested and charged with 100,000 counts of criminally negligent homicide. Family members of the dearly departed should file a class action lawsuit against Fox News.

Yes, the economy is going to get much worse, but it isn’t doing well now. Here’s what CNBC had to say about unemployment: “Unemployment is still higher by more than 10 million people from February. Furloughs are turning into permanent job loss. States are starting to pull back on their reopening plans. And federal aid may soon expire.” The senate has no interest in extending the aid. It runs counter to the main Republican tenet: rich people don’t have enough money. Nancy Pelosi pointed out that the Republican tax cut increased the deficit by 2 trillion dollars and 80% of the money went to the richest 1/10 of 1%. Meanwhile, it isn’t just layoffs. Businesses all over America are cutting back on hours and wages. There’s a large number of bankruptcies, everything from big companies like Hertz, Neman Marcus, J. C. Penny, Whiting Petroleum, Chesapeake Energy to thousands of small companies. Still more small companies are just shutting down.

Finally, we are expecting 9 major hurricanes in the fall, the kind of storms Republicans call “hundred-year storms.” The rest of us call them annual storms. Trump did a poor job of responding to them when the economy was in good shape. They are going to be total disasters this year. Where will people go to evacuate? The only hope is few will come ashore.

Below is a list of the best countries in the world, put out by Us News and World Reports. These are the industrialized countries, those with the best living conditions, etc. The table gives the figures about the Corona Virus by country:

The US has 34% of the population in the developed, industrialized world, 68% of the total corona virus cases with 34% of the population. The number of Corona virus cases in the US in July is 50,864. The number of cases in the developed world in July was 55,386. The US had 91.8% of those cases.