To My Honorable Republican Friends - COVID is Not a Hoax

Today is May 7, 2020 -- I am writing this to you because I believe you are not Trump Cult members, and hopefully will be able to escape his propaganda long enough to hear some facts.

You tell me this Covid-19 thing is "overly hyped", and that the Death numbers are overblown because you heard Hospitals get $13,000 (from the Government) for every person - that dies there of COVID-19.

Let's think about this. Are Hospitals now being compensated when they lose a patient? If I am a Hospital Administrator: Do I really want to exaggerate the number of patients we have lost in our hospital, for any reason? Do I want to be the Hospital that has the most deaths in my area?

When this is all over, that number will remain out there forever. Will you & your family want to get your cancer treatments in the Hospital that had the most deaths, or the least ? How about that neo-natal care you are needing? Taking your infant to Hospitals with the high death rates from COVID, or the lowest?
  
And the 50 Governors? Is there a race for whose State had the most deaths from COVID-19 ? Is that the record they want to stand for?  No. I believe they want to control the outbreaks in their states and minimize the death toll. If anything I believe COVID deaths are under-counted. Here's why.

With the US death toll, (highest in the world), now climbing to and passing 80,000... is this number being hyped? By whom ? By the mainstream media,  other than FOX?  That depends on what you think is being hyped? Are they ALL going wall to wall with covering every aspect of this Pandemic, in never-ending soundbites and heartbreaking stories? Yes, for sure; because it sells.
But are they making this stuff up ?

Not if you can believe your own eyes, your local Public Health Infiormation website, or the words of experts like Dr. Fauci. You must conclude they are not.  If any heart attack or pneumonia deaths were recorded with COVID as the cause - and surely there have been some - these will easily be offset by deaths NOT recorded as COVID because there weren't enough tests around for the living, never-mind testing the dying or dead.

Lots of people died in their homes and doctors who could not test them, did not. Furthermore, unless you believe the Chinese propaganda, this disease may have been spreading and arrived here in December or early January before we even had a name for it. It was the Wuhan Flu then. How many of those deaths were not counted?

SPEAKING of China, the data and the DEATH Toll there are surely both manipulated the way authoritarian regimes always do. In a crowded Nation of 1.44 billion people, it is not unusual for people to disappear all the time and never be heard from again; and no one can question these things in China or you will disappear too.  So - for that reason alone we know they are lying.

Chinese were probably dying in droves there before they clamped down - as only an organized Dictatorship can do - and got it under control . How many Deaths there ? I'm guessing hundreds of thousands, but no one will ever know because they lie, obfuscate and mislead everyone, including the World Health Organization, and including Trump, who was then still trying to right his mistaken Tariff Policy disaster by kissing up to Xi.... until the outbreak got too much for America to ignore.

So now he wants to blame it all on China; or on Speaker Pelosi because she went to Chinatown San Francisco (the District she represents) to show moral support for the Chinese community there that was being blamed and threatened as if they were the cause of the virus.

Trump likes to congratulate himself for seeing the problem early-on,  and closing off flights from China in late January. But he did not. The USA allowed over 40,000 Americans, green-card holders and ex-patriots to return AFTER the ban, but did not order them all to be quarantined for 14 days upon arrival like he did later with the Cruise Ships occupants,  who were also largely Americans.  Additionally, after the so-called Ban on Travel from China, Trump still allowed Chinese tankers to unload their cargo AND THEIR CREWS, into American ports. That kind of Ban is like putting a picket fence around your vegetable garden to keep out the rabbits and squirrels.   

As for the FOX News theory that Obama could not have done any better or that he "left the cupboards bare" when Trump got in, here's the truth. Susan Rice, Obama's National Security Advisor, says that is not true and can prove it.  She and others who were there said Obama's transition Team gave Trump a 67 page Playbook - and a live briefing by the then White House Pandemic Team - on what to do if it looks like a Pandemic might be spreading anywhere on the globe. They had just successfully kept Ebola from reaching our shores. But Trump didn't follow any of the Playbook suggestions. In fact, he fired or pushed out the Team he was given,  simply because they were experts appointed by Obama. Meanwhile, Trump had three years in Office to restock what he claims he was out of stock on, but he did nothing.  Who does he blame for that? The World Health Organization.

Trump tries to blame the WHO, but they were doing the exact same thing he was doing in January, downplaying it. Only they changed their tune a full week before he did, declaring it a World Health Emergency while Trump was still saying it would go away magically in April.  Now he cuts the WHO Aid that Congress allotted, which means the WHO will be underfunded and unable to contain it in Third World Nations when the next Ebola or Coronavirus breaks out there. In some places the WHO is the ONLY line of defense they have. Good idea? 

ALSO, Trump and his Staff were given a lengthy briefing early in 2017 on what would be in his PDB (President's Daily Brief) about threats to our National Security from cyber-attacks to viral attacks. Trump chose not to hear them, and didn't want to read them,  unless they were reduced to one page with bullet points and pictures, and had his name all over it. He dismissed those who tried to warn him, even his own appointees-  from DNI Joseph MacGuire, whom he fired -  to the head of our vaccine Development at HHS, Dr. Rick Bright, who he demoted. A dedicated public servant, Dr. Bright is suing to get his job back because he knows how important it is that he be there still.   

Trump's errors didn't stop there, and his lies and disinformation campaign goes on to this day .
 But the truth will all come out eventually when Congress launches it's 9/11 style Commission to examine what really happened, and how to learn from it .

Unfortunately, what we learn will be too late for 100,000 Americans and the families that have had to bury their Dead without a proper Goodbye. Many of them were our First Responders, EMT, Nurses, Hospital and Grocery workers. There will be no righting that wrong, or undoing that hurt. Not ever.