“It will end,” President Donald J. Trump said during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the headquarters of the federal government’s efforts to combat the Coronavirus. “People have to remain calm.”
The President has insisted anyone can get a test, everything is going well. CDC officials said 700,000 tests are available and could grow to four million by the end of this week.
Predictably Trump his allies on FOX News have claimed COVID-19 is an instrument by the Leftists to destroy the Dear Leader of the United States.
As President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence meander along, the administration’s demands for calm have fallen upon deaf ears as Americans are worried about the unnerving impacts of COVID-19.
Such impacts can be felt with hospitals lacking Coronavirus tests, schools closing down because teachers have the virus, major festivals like SXSW and Ultra canceling, the stock market has hemorrhaged gains due to uncertainty surrounding the Virus.
Lastly, Georgians who live from paycheck to paycheck are worried about slowdowns in the gig economy that could impact their lives.
The United States now has more than 1,000 people infected with coronavirus and the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic Wednesday. As a matter of fact, there have been 300 new cases of COVID-19 during a twenty-four hour period this week.
In Georgia, there are 22 confirmed cases of coronavirus. In total, 30 people — 24 in Washington state, two in Florida, three in California and one in New Jersey — have died in the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump’s visit to the CDC highlighted the musings of a leader who is more concerned with maintaining power, his obsession with the Stock Market and his personal optics rather than listening to the medical experts he’s long-claimed he’s loved surrounding himself with. However, there could have been a solution, had President Trump not claimed the Coronavirus was a hoax.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, president of the World Health Organization said on March 5, “that although public health authorities across the globe have the ability to successfully combat the spread of the virus, the organization is concerned that in some countries the level of political commitment does not match the threat level”.
“This is not a drill. This is not the time to give up,” Ghebreyesus said. “This is not a time for excuses. This is a time for pulling out all the stops. Countries have been planning for scenarios like this for decades.
“Now is the time to act on those plans,” Ghebreyesus continued. “This epidemic can be pushed back, but only with a collective, coordinated and comprehensive approach that engages the entire machinery of government.
To that end, the CDC and Trump have instructed individuals to call their doctors if they feel any kind of discomfort. That is problematic because the cost of care in the United States is so high, the barrier for prevention and care is prohibitive at best. Notably, a Miami man was charged $3,200 for getting tested for coronavirus.
As life in Italy has been halted, sports leagues plus financial markets Europe and the United States grapple with the ramifications, the Trump Administration must come to grips with the fact the successes won’t be on the back of the Dear Leader of the United States.
For somebody obsessed with power, the President should know better than getting in the way of the health experts. But, the failures will be magnified to the point the U.S. Government’s shambolic response to this acute health crisis will be Donald Trump’s version of Katrina.
