Delusional president celebrates ‘end of pandemic’ while a thousand Americans die daily

Screenshot / New York Times & CleanPNG

Trump thinks he ended COVID-19. At least, that’s what it says on the White House website.

According to the Hill, the White House science office listed “ending the COVID-19 pandemic” as one of Trump’s achievements while he was in office. The press release claimed that Trump “has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.”

But reality paints a different picture. Every single one of those statements in the sentence in the press release is out of line with the truth.

Here are a few walks down memory lane that prove that COVID-19 isn’t over yet.

‘Decisive actions’

Trump giving a coronavirus briefing

Screenshot / NPR

The White House press release claimed that Trump made decisive actions. But the only decisive actions he seemed to make were ones that hurt the country’s readiness for a pandemic. According to Vox, Trump and his administration had drastically injured the pandemic preparedness by making cuts to the government and eliminating a department meant to handle pandemics.

Furthermore, Trump wasted time in the beginning, taking no decisive actions whatsoever. He claimed the virus would disappear, “like a miracle.” All control was left up to the state governments and businesses.

Former Pence advisor Olivia Troye said, “ It was shocking to see the president saying that the virus was a hoax, saying that everything’s OK, when we know that’s not the truth.”

Engaging scientists

Trump standing behind a podium

Flickr / van huy nguyen

Trump bragged about not listening to scientists on the campaign trail. Among his many condemnations of the things that Biden would do as president, one of them is apparently listening “to the scientists.”

“If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression instead of — we’re like a rocket ship, take a look at the numbers,” he opined.

Jared Kushner also told Bob Woodward that Trump had taken back control of COVID-19 from the scientific experts.

Health professionals

Dr. Fauci standing behind a podium with Trump looking on

Flickr / White House

Trump’s war with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert, disproves the White House claim that the administration listened to health professionals. The president has refused to attend meetings held by his COVID-19 task force. He has also publicly said that he disagrees with Fauci, saying, “I think we are in a good place. I disagree with him.”

He said in an interview, “Dr. Fauci said don’t wear masks and now he says wear them. And he said numerous things. Don’t close off China. Don’t ban China. I did it anyway. I didn’t listen to my experts and I banned China. We would have been in much worse shape. You wouldn’t believe the number of deaths more we would have had if we didn’t do the ban.”

Academia

Flickr / The White House

If Trump thinks he consulted academia about COVID-19, he needs to know that Rudy Giuliani doesn’t count.

A Wired story went through the degrees and qualifications of the people that Trump listened to about COVID-19. The only person on the list with a Ph.D. was Peter Navarro. Everyone else had either a law degree or a bachelor’s degree.

Industry

Trump speaking at a coronavirus press briefing

Wikimedia

While Trump thinks he’s good at economic recovery, business experts disagree with him. The unemployment rate is at 8 percent. The GDP fell. And COVID-19 cases are on the rise again.

“We’re not going to fully get the economy back on track until we bring the virus better under control, and [Trump’s diagnosis] illustrates that it’s very hard to insulate yourself from possibility of infection if you’re outside and active,” said economics professor Maury Obstfeld to NBC News.

Government

Office of the Governor

Trump seemed to have no respect for government officials who tried their best to contain and control COVID-19. When the protests broke out in Michigan, he tweeted out “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” When people at his rally started chanting “Lock her up!” about Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, he responded with, “Lock ‘em all up.”

It was later revealed that extremists had devised an actual plan to kidnap and potentially kill Whitmer.

Whitmer told CBS, “Every time he sets his sights on me, I get more death threats. The violent rhetoric has an uptick. And there’s no question that it’s had an impact.”

Understand

Screenshot / YouTube

Trump’s method of “understanding” COVID-19 seems to be to break as many rules as publicly possible. He has held several rallies with large numbers of people in different states, where not many are masked and he certainly is unmasked. He caught COVID-19 and instead of following the rules and remaining quarantined, he went out in a car.

Because of his failure to follow and enforce mask and social distancing rules, the White House had an outbreak of COVID-19 cases.

Treat

Man getting a coronavirus test in a drive-up facility

Stock Photo

The one thing everyone learned from COVID-19 was that the United States healthcare system was not prepared to help.

It became overburdened by people suffering from chronic conditions and COVID-19. Health insurance could not cover the expenses incurred by the tests and the care needed for each patient. And some people, out of work and out of money, didn’t even have health insurance to treat their conditions.

Defeat the disease?

Trump during the 60 minutes interview

Screenshot / YouTube

With more than 225,000 dead from COVID-19, it seems as if the pandemic is still ongoing.

Trump’s team agrees, according to the Daily Beast. “There’s no world in which anyone can think that [statement] is true. Maybe the president. But I don’t see how even he can believe that. We have more than 70,000 new cases each day,” said one anonymous member.

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