Trump, not Woodward, botched COVID response

I just read Kathleen Parker’s column “What Bob Woodward owed the public,” Sept. 13. In what seems to me to be a veiled attempt to deflect from yet another example of this President Donald Trump’s gross ineptitude and deceit, she tries to make the case that if Woodward had revealed “...the president’s calculated deceptions sooner

[it] might have forced Trump to act earlier and led more Americans to take greater precautions.” Really?

Now that the recordings have come out, how has Trump changed his behavior or what he says about COVID-19? How have his followers changed their behaviors or attitudes toward this scourge? Did it dissuade Trump from holding more of his open rallies? Did it dissuade those under his spell from attending in close quarters without masks and proclaiming, as their fearless leader has said, that the virus is a hoax?

All clear-thinking Americans, including Parker, have known for months that the pandemic is real and deadly serious and that it wasn’t going to go away. We listened to the experts: the scientists and the doctors and nurses on the front lines and the career government health employees. Those who choose to blindly follow their leader are continuing to help spread the virus and thereby doing a great disservice to their community and their country. Shame on the members of Congress who sit silently by as he bumbles through this American crisis.

Tom Abballe Halfmoon