Two things must be mentioned here. Much of the public criticism of President Trump has been opportunistic criticism. That is that the criticism is not as much about raising awareness and trying to be objective, it has been about criticizing apparent flaw. This is especially true regarding the President's response to Covid-19. And I am speaking as one who sees Trump as the worst, and most dangerous, President I've seen in my lifetime.
So far, Trump's record on Covid-19 is mixed. Trump began with a slow response after having ignored intelligence briefings as well as an alert from the World Health Organization. And currently, Trump is in too much of a hurry to reboot America. The decisions on how to reboot must be made at the state or even county level lest we try a one size fits all recovery. The stats clearly show that the states with the largest number of infections are those that have major cities that serve as transportation gateway hubs to the rest of the world. And this has been shown in all areas of the nation. In fact, New York City has distorted some of America Covid-19 statistics.
However, in between his poor start and his hasty remedy, Trump showed that he could listen to and take the advice of scientists--medical experts to be precise. And he made some good policy decisions when he allowed himself to be guided by expert advice.
The statistics also show that the US is in the middle of the pack in terms of Covid-19 results. This is especially true when one considers the percentage of the population that has been infected, the death rates, and the number of dead per 100k people. America is neither the worst nor the best statistically speaking.
We should note that how the virus impacts a nation depends on multiple factors, many of which we cannot identify today. And though the US has the largest number of infections and deaths from Covid-19, we should note that the results from some of the nations are suspect because of the authoritarianism of those nations' regimes. The Covid-19 results for Russia, North Korea, China, India, and Cuba should be 'under the suspicions' as Detective Clouseau would say. That would leave the US with one of the largest populations where the Covid-19 results could be considered to be reliable.
However, one would be remissed if one criticized Cuba's honesty without mentioning how Cuba has often taken a significant role in battling past international health crises.
However, both at the national and state level, we are beginning to see a blinking light at the end of the tunnel. And we should hope that our response to that blinking light does not make that light into a oncoming train. We are now not just talking about reopening, we have plans and we are seeing a downward trend in infections in some areas. Of course that reopening will not see an immediate resurrection of life as we knew it. After all, none of us want to return to this life after things begin to reopen. Thus reopening must be done very carefully. But it is better than nothing.
We should note the subgroups of some conservatives who want to deny the dangers that exist and the suffering that has been experienced. But we should note that we all have moments of denying reality especially when we have too much skin in the game. We should seek to understand them first before trying to correct them. The whole situations has caused too much cognitive dissonance for them to not want to accept a dream world rather than the real one. One of the biggest sources of dissonance for some of these people is that their President has been listening to scientists more often than usual.
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