Twelve thousand
The television news just announced a million Americans have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic started. That’s a chilling milestone, but the tragedy may not be fully understood.
Trump followed a popular President, Barack Obama. Unfortunately, Trump had a very thin skin, and invidious comparisons with Barack Obama filled him with fear and rage. President Obama couldn’t be allowed to look better, or even to look competent. So everything that had his mark on it had to go.
He cut taxes by more than a trillion dollars; most of the benefit went to the wealthiest Americans and to corporations.
The North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) was shredded, soon to be replaced by Trump’s version, which had a different name but was virtually identical.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provided protection for the children of illegal immigrants, was rescinded.
He reversed Obama’s order restricting the transfer of military equipment to civilian police departments.
He canceled the order requiring large corporations to report worker pay by race and gender, which was intended to reduce illegal wage gaps. He quit the Paris Accord on climate change. He removed restrictions on offshore drilling that had been enacted after the BP oil spill.
He rolled back Obama’s Clean Water Rule, which had extended pollution controls on waterways.
He withdrew from the Trans-pacific Partnership.
But the worst things he did related to the COVID-19 pandemic. President Obama had established a Pandemic Task Force, modeled after the one developed by the Taiwanese government. It called for testing, social distancing, working from home, temporarily closing some businesses, vaccinations as soon as safe and reliable ones could be developed, contact tracing, and a few other means of controlling the spread of the disease.
Trump assumed any restrictions on business would hurt profits, and that would diminish his chances for a second term. He started by saying the number of cases would soon be “close to zero.” (It has reached 82 million so far). He ridiculed people who wore masks, and wouldn’t allow people sharing a stage with him to wear them. He organized huge rallies where tens of thousands of unmasked followers passed the virus around like trays of canapés. He bungled virtually every attempt to remediate the situation. He even got COVID himself.
The sycophants surrounding him competed to see who was the biggest brown-nose. When Dr. Anthony Fauci began to appear more competent than Trump, one of Trump’s most fanatic supporters, Peter Navarro, published a letter with more than a dozen references from medical journals that purported to discredit Fauci. It turned out they all were heavily redacted and misquoted. It was so convincing a local doctor friend of mine read the article in question and thought it was true. The one thing Republicans are good at is lying.
So what’s up with the twelve thousand? Here it is: Taiwan, the country where my wife Yingying was born, had an epidemiologist for their vice-president. Thanks to him and others like him, Taiwan quarantined EVERYONE coming from abroad, telling them to stay indoors for two weeks. If they ventured out the door, the fine was 5,000 U.S. dollars. If they went back in and came back out five minutes later, it cost them another five thou, their freedoms and their Constitution notwithstanding.
As a result, Taiwan has had 876 deaths due to COVID-19. Taiwan has 24 million inhabitants; we have 330 million. Divide 876 by 24 million, and multiply the result times 330 million, and it predicts a little more than 12,000 Americans would have died. Not one million. Twelve thousand.
Les Pinter is a contributing columnist and a Springville resident. His column appears weekly in The Recorder. Pinter’s book, HTTPV: How a Grocery Shopping Website Can Save America, is available in both Kindle and hardcopy formats on Amazon.com.contact him at lespinter@earthlink.net.