Persimmon Alley Press
Persimmon Alley Press
  • About Persimmon Alley Press
  • Books
    • Close Encounters with the Cold War
    • Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times
    • Encounters: Ten Appointments with History
    • Killer Protocols
    • Clean Coal Killers
    • The Killer Trees
    • A Feast of Famine
    • Molly Malice in Alterland
    • Alligator In My Basement
    • Sudden Addiction
    • The Flesh of the Cedarwood
  • Smoke the Dottle
  • Richard's Rants
  • Contact

Rant 572: The Trump Infection Goes Viral

3/6/2020

1 Comment

 
Picture
The Trump administration’s botch of its first crisis not of Trump’s own making is both predictable, appalling and terrifying. And it has been three years in the making. Ever since Trump came to office, he has been determined to eviscerate the very agencies and programs that are in place to protect us from potentially deadly scourges like the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Each Trump budget has called for draconian cuts in these programs and now, Americans are suffering the consequences of this short-sighted policy.
 
Specifically, Trump has slashed the relevant government agencies tasked with protecting us against pandemics:

  • He eliminated the National Security Council’s Global Health unit, which coordinated U.S. responses to pandemics.
  • He decimated the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Emerging Threats Division.
  • He defunded 80 percent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) efforts to prevent global disease outbreaks. Now, instead of working in 49 countries, it only has enough money to monitor 10.
  • His budget proposal for the next fiscal year calls for another 16 percent cut in CDC’s budget and a 10 percent cut in the budget of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The CDC’s Public Health Preparedness and Response Program, responsible for the agency’s laboratories and public health surveillance and epidemiology would be cut by $25 million, and HHS’s Hospital Preparedness Program is in line for an $18 million cut.
  • Trump is also proposing a $3 billion cut to global health programs, including a 53 percent cut to the World Health Organization and a 75 percent cut to the Pan American Health Organization.
 
Couple Trump’s blowing up of these first-line pandemic defenses with his “management” of the coronavirus crisis and it is not a pretty picture. He--
​
  • tells Americans to go to work even if they’re sick (Sean Hannity Interview, March 4, 2020);
  • fails to assure enough test kits despite knowing two months ago they would be needed;
  • calls coronavirus a Democratic hoax;
  • puts Mike Pence, the ex-governor who (1) took a meat axe to his state’s public health programs, (2) said “smoking doesn’t kill,” and (3) failed miserably in dealing with an HIV outbreak, in charge of managing the federal response;
  • tries to muzzle the scientists who are the sources of all accurate information about the virus and how to protect against it;
  • lies about when a vaccine might be developed;
  • claims the coronavirus death rate is much lower than the 3.4 percent World Health Organization figure (34 times higher than the death rate from flu);
  • believes that the flu vaccine can be used to combat coronavirus;
  • goes to court to destroy Obamacare, which would increase the coronavirus danger many times because people without health insurance don’t see doctors; and
  • flails around with no clue as to how to manage or how to lead.
 
What a mess.
 
Despite ample warning that the disease was inevitably going to affect the United States, Trump ignored the experts and, as always, went with his ever-expanding “gut,” which he has often claimed provides him far better advice than any of the professionals whose expertise he disparages. His gut told him we didn’t need to test Americans for coronavirus and isolate those who had contracted the disease. Until recently, only 500 Americans had been tested compared to millions of Chinese and tens of thousands of Brits, Italians and South Koreans.
 
The Trump Administration’s unpreparedness has also prompted it to steal $139 million from programs that help the poor to apply to fighting the virus:

  • $37 million from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that pays for heating and cooling assistance for the poor;
  • $4.9 million from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services;
  • $4.2 million from Aging & Disability Services; and
  • zero from his bonehead border wall.
 
So the poor—the most vulnerable to disease—are being hung out to deal with a threat to their lives with no resources to fight back.
 
Meanwhile, Pence had to be pressured into adding the Surgeon General and the Food and Drug Administrator to his coronavirus task force, two positions key to combatting a pandemic.
 
We are in a very bad fix thanks to Trump’s perverted view of government, his obsession with the non-existent deep state and his pathological concern only for himself. The virus is spreading rapidly at the worst possible time—while the government is directed by a bungling incompetent and malicious paranoid who is in denial after dismantling the very institutions established to keep us safe. His daily chaos, confusion and resort to lies, crazy claims and insults will only exacerbate the crisis and cause needless suffering.
 
Bottom line: We should listen carefully to what our health experts tell us and ignore what our political leaders say about the coronavirus.
 
Dick Hermann
March 6, 2020

1 Comment
The Electronic Tragedy link
12/19/2023 03:25:44 pm

Hi nice reading youur post

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author

    Richard Hermann is the author of thirteen books, including Encounters: Ten Appointments with History and, most recently, Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times. Soon to be released is his upcoming Close Encounters with the Cold War, a personal reflection on growing up in the nuclear age. He is a former law professor and entrepreneur, and the founder and president of Federal Reports, Inc., a legal information and consulting firm that was sold in 2007. He has degrees from Yale University, the New School University, Cornell Law School and the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School. He lives with his wife, Anne, and extraordinary dog, Barkley, in Arlington, Virginia and Canandaigua, New York.

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed