This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated February 27, 2020
As I write this, more than 80,000 people worldwide have contracted the coronavirus and nearly 2,700 have died. Unfortunately, whenever you read this, those numbers will have increased.
China has recently slowed the spread of new infections with harsh restrictions that include closures of businesses and schools, mandating citizens remain indoors, and locking down entire cities.
Such draconian measures are difficult to enforce in democratic countries with more freedoms. After a surge of 150 cases in Italy, officials closed schools, canceled sporting events and sealed off 10 towns, but their measures were nowhere near as unforgiving as China’s.
Iran recorded its 12th death from the virus this past week, the most anywhere outside of China. South Korea recently identified over 200 cases in a short span, with nearly 900 overall.
Such a deadly outbreak can jump the globe quickly and spread wildly, which is why it is imperative that those in positions of power take this deadly seriously and allocate the resources to combat it now.
The Director General of the World Health Organization warned several days ago that we must “prepare for a potential pandemic.” President Trump’s recent budget proposal would slash half of our annual funding to the World Health Organization, while reducing CDC funding by 16 percent.
Two years ago, Trump eliminated his administration’s entire pandemic response team. He had also shut down the National Security Council’s global health security team and its counterpart in the Department of Homeland Security, and cut funding for a CDC program that helped countries prevent infectious disease threats from becoming epidemics. One of the 39 countries that no longer benefits from that initiative is China.
Allocating money for our country to help ensure epidemics don’t begin on the other side of the world isn’t a case of the U.S. having a “bad deal” with China. Besides being the right thing to do, using our expertise to help prevent outbreaks in other countries is in our own self-interest because once an infectious disease begins to spread, no wall you build can keep it from crossing our border.
“This is not leadership. This is ineptitude. This is not a steady hand steering the ship through the storm. This is someone who is asleep at the wheel.”
As with most of this administration’s bad decisions with terrible consequences, it is hard to discern if they are nefarious in nature or simply the result of gross incompetence.
The State Department recently allowed 14 American passengers from a quarantined cruise ship on which the Coronavirus had been diagnosed to fly back to the U.S. with healthy passengers. Trump, having not been told of the decision, was reportedly furious.
Without informing local leaders or making sure hospitals were prepared, the state of Alabama was told by the Trump administration that Coronavirus patients would be sent there. Officials were shocked and after the state GOP complained, the decision was reversed last week.
Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli tweeted, asking if the Johns Hopkins online coronavirus map had stopped working for other people or just him. One of the top officials responsible for keeping 330 million Americans safe from a burgeoning outbreak is relying on information from a non-government website that he is not sure is even accessible.
This is not leadership. This is ineptitude. This is not a steady hand steering the ship through the storm. This is someone who is asleep at the wheel.
On the very day this past week that Trump tweeted, the “Coronavirus is very much in control in the USA… Stock market starting to look very good to me!” the Dow Jones plunged over 1,000 points. It had fallen considerably less when, on Nov. 7, 2012, Trump tweeted, “The stock market and US dollar are both plunging today. Welcome to @BarackObama’s second term” on a day when the stock market fell 313 points.
As the markets around the world plummeted this week, reports surfaced that Trump is worried a strong response to the outbreak would hurt the economy and spook the markets, and could hurt his reelection campaign.
We need our President to be focused on stopping the real-life viral moment threatening us all, not trying to create viral moments on Twitter that will help his personal political fortunes.
