Failed leadership

Dear editor:

If you want to look at a country whose leader has handled the coronavirus pandemic well, you need only look at South Korea. They were infected with their first case of the virus on the same day as America. And by immediately isolating people and testing and tracing to see who had the virus, South Korea limited the infection of COVID-19 to 211 people per million. The U.S., on the other hand, by not immediately isolating and testing, acquired 3,587 people per million to be infected. Right now, while America has six times the population of South Korea, we have over 300 times the number of deaths. So it was South Korea’s quick response that protected its people and its economy. That is good leadership.

With Trump’s “America First” leadership, we are “First” in the world in the reported number of cases and “First” in the world in the reported number of deaths. So while the U.S. is less than 5% of the world population, we have (as of May 12) 32% of the number of reported cases and 28% of the number of reported deaths in the world. You can understand why the world no longer looks to America for direction. With our stable genius’s supervision, we now have over 80,000 deaths in less than five months. How many will we have at years end? If we continue at the current rate we will be approaching 190,000 deaths by December.

The virus isn’t going away until there is a vaccine. And a vaccine is not expected until maybe next year or possibly years in the future. The people of the U.S. will determine whether their jobs or their lives are more important. Since I know Americans are not stupid, I have to believe the normal interplay that people usually have between one another will not happen until the virus is to a greater extent under control. That means no big gatherings of people standing or sitting close to one another in the near future.

Donald Trump says he has done a great job. He demands praise. In March Donald Trump said: “If you want a test, you can get a test.” This was just another of his outright lies. And while he now gets tested daily, regular people cannot. And while he may be right in saying we lead the world in the number of tests given, he misses the point. The testing needed to happen at the beginning of the outbreak. That is what South Korea did. South Korea saved its people and its economy. With America at 300 times the number of deaths as South Korea and with our high unemployment and struggling economy, one has to surmise that the Donald Trump administration failed us.