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Due to the coronavirus, the world is facing a pandemic and a major economic downturn. This is happening all over the world, but the implications for the U.S. may be the greatest in terms of the American people’s health, the country’s economy, and the upcoming political elections. A lot of these are the results from the actions of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article has 4 sections. Part I has Sections I and II, and Part II has Sections III and IV.<\/p>\n\n\n
This article first summarizes significant timelines of the coronavirus (Section I).\u00a0 Then it discusses several of President Trump’s specific\u00a0 remarks or actions with respect to\u00a0 the coronavirus (Section II).\u00a0 Then it discusses the implications of these remarks and actions upon the health of the American public, the people’s livelihood and their pocket books, and the impacts on this fall’s American elections (Section III).\u00a0 The article ends with some comments on the need to eliminate discriminatory double standards (Section IV).<\/p>\n
Because this article is long, we have separated the article into Part I and Part II.\u00a0 This is Part I (placed in the “Political\/Social Commentary” page) and includes Sections I and II. \u00a0 Part II (placed in the “Other” page in this same March 2020 release of this website) includes Sections 3 and 4.<\/p>\n
Section I:\u00a0 Significant Timelines<\/strong><\/p>\n Before we discuss President Trump’s actions and various impacts, we first provide a timeline of significant events during the last four months.<\/p>\n In summary, in 3-4 months, the new coronavirus has spread rapidly all over the world.\u00a0 It is going to get worse before it can get better.\u00a0 It is going to take drastic national and international leadership to overcome this pandemic.\u00a0 Currently in only a few countries, like China and S. Korea, the situation seems to be stabilizing and improving (e.g., significant reduction in the number of new infections, or the number of recovered cases becomes more and more than new cases).<\/p>\n Section II:\u00a0 President Trump’s Significant Remarks or Actions<\/strong><\/p>\n As our country’s top leader, what President Trump does or says has tremendous impacts on the directions and operations of the whole governing apparatus of the country, and therefore on the\u00a0 livelihood, physical and mental health, and spirit of the citizens of this country, including the pocketbooks of our citizens and the bottom lines of our businesses.\u00a0 Therefore, let’s recall many of President Trump’s actions and words since the beginning of 2020 when the new coronavirus became known to the U.S. and the world.<\/p>\n 1. On 1\/22\/2020, the day after the first coronavirus case was confirmed by the CDC, President Trump, when asked “are there worries about a pandemic at this point,”‘ in a CNBC TV interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, responded “No, Not al all.\u00a0 And we have it totally under control.\u00a0 It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control.\u00a0 It’s going to be just fine.”<\/p>\n 2. On 1\/24, Trump again told Americans that there was no reason to worry, and “it will all work out well.”\u00a0 On 1\/30 in a speech in Michigan, he said “We have it very well under control.\u00a0 We have very little problem in this country at this moment\u00a0 — five.\u00a0 And those people are all recuperating successfully.”<\/p>\n 3. On 1\/31, the day after the WHO declared the coronavirus a global emergency, President Trump put on a travel restriction on China, to and from China, effective starting on 2\/2\/2020. This was a positive step, but it was far from enough as clearly shown below.<\/p>\n 4. On 2\/10 on 3 different occasions, Trump made the remark “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets little warmer, it miraulously goes away.”\u00a0 However, his statement is not supported by science or infectious disease experts in his administration, and presently there is no indication that the coronavirus may diminish significantly with warmer weather, like the common flu.<\/p>\n 5. On 2\/19, Trump told a Phoenix TV station “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.” Four days later he said the the situation is “very much under control” and “we had 12, at one point.\u00a0 And now they’ve gotten very much better.\u00a0 Many of them are fully recovered.”<\/p>\n 6. For several weeks starting around mid February, President Trump and some of his officials on several occasions said that testing is available to anyone who wants such a test.\u00a0 That was just not true, although that statement was repeatedly made.\u00a0 First, the testing kit was not available to anyone who wants a test.\u00a0 It was not necessarily available even if a doctor has prescribed such a test and the patient has symptoms of the infection.\u00a0 The testing kits were only distributed by the CDC to selected agencies.\u00a0 Furthermore, there was a serious problem with these test kits because the tests were not accurate.\u00a0 The U.S.’s development of their test kit should be compared with what S. Korea did, who has been offering free testing of about 10,000 people per day since the middle of February, with a test cost of about $20 each.\u00a0 Furthermore, in S. Korea once a test has been proven in the laboratory, normally it takes a long time (e.g., many months) to get it approved for general use for the public.\u00a0 In the case of the coronavirus test kit, it got approval in one week! [3]\u00a0 It is a little unclear what is the cost of each test.\u00a0 It is $20 according to the first article in Ref. [3], but the cost is listed as $134 in Ref. [4].<\/p>\n The federal government via CDC and FDA (Food Drug Administration) set down very strict guidelines on who can prepare such test kits, diallowing reputable research labs on the forthfront of such research to conduct more general testing even when they have shown success in their laboratory.\u00a0 More information on this problem is described in [5].<\/p>\n 7. Even on 3\/6 after a briefing in a visit to CDC in Atlanta, Trump mentioned again that “anyone who wants a test can get a test.”\u00a0 But that evening at the White House VP Pence, who is leading the administration response, knows better and would not commit to that, but said doctors treating potentially symptomatic Americans could contact local officials and have state labs do the testing.<\/p>\n 8. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has repeatedly said that the test program that CDC has been working on has not met what has been advertised, and in a testimony in Congress on 3\/11 said that any vaccine for the coronavirus is at least a year to a year and a half away.<\/p>\n 9. On 3\/11 evening, in a nationwide address from his White House desk, Trump for the first time acknowledged the seriousness of the coronavirus situation in the U.S. and that the problem is not going away soon.\u00a0 At this time, the whole country was cancelling large gatherings including the NCAA basketball tournament and the NBA, and everyone was planning to cancel various gatherings, including schools and even medium size gatherings.\u00a0 Yet, in his speech there was no mention or guidance on this important issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n The only major action announced by President Trump was additional traffic restriction from and to Europe, effective starting at midnight 3\/13.\u00a0 Even on that, President Trump made three important mistakes.\u00a0 One mistake in his announcement is that the restriction does not apply to Americans who are returning from Europe.\u00a0 That caused a lot of anxiety for Americans who were in Europe at that time, and caused many of them taking very expensive flights home.\u00a0 The second mistake is that the restriction applies only to people, and does not apply to trade and cargo.\u00a0 The third mistake is that Ireland was also exempt, just like Great Britain.\u00a0 But there was no explanation for the announced exception, even though Great Britain has more infections than some of the other countries in Europe.\u00a0 Just like many decisions of Trump, his decisions are arbitrary, and not well thought out.\u00a0<\/p>\n His justification for the travel restriction is that there are more infections today in Europe than in the U.S., but ignoring that perhaps we have lower infections may be due to our behind in the testing.\u00a0 There was no mention of any other step to reduce the seriousness of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n It is then not surprising at all that on the next day on 3\/12, the DJIA dropped by 2,352 points (or 10%), the worst drop since 1987.<\/p>\n 10. On 3\/13 afternoon, reacting to the large dissatisfaction shown all over the country to his performance on his 3\/11 nationwide address and to the next day’s huge market drop in the stock market, President Trump gave another nationwide address from the White House.\u00a0 He declared a national emergency that will provide $50 billions to fund various support programs. He waived interest on student loans.<\/p>\n Together with a large group of CEOs, he also announced a series of measures to help protect the health of our citizens, e.g., Walmart and Target would allow their parking lots to be testing sites.\u00a0 Trump also made two mistakes in his announcement.\u00a0 One mistake is that he said that insurance companies will waive all copays for coronavirus treatments.\u00a0 In reality, insurance companies only agreed to waive the copays for coronavirus testing.\u00a0 The second mistake that he said that Google has 1,700 engineers working to develop a website to help people find a test location.\u00a0 In reality, Verify, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, with a total workforce of only 1,000 people is working on a website related to the coronavirus.\u00a0 More information about this disparity can be found in [6].<\/p>\n Declaring a national emergency is necessary, and some of the proposed actions are necessary.\u00a0 However, what President Trump said was again full of false information or half truths.\u00a0 Furthermore, in response to a question, Trump said he is not responsible for any delay, even though it was his administration who in May 2018 canceled the pandemic preparedness office within the National Security Council, and for the 2021 budget proposed a budget cut of 15% (or $1.2 billion) for the CDC and a $35 million decrease to the Infectious Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund.\u00a0 Again, he doesn’t admit to mistakes and loses more credibility.<\/p>\n The stock market did rise significantly (by almost 2,000 points for the DJIA).\u00a0 However, about half of that gain occurred during the last hour of trading when there was a lot of news that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin were very close to reaching a large relief package in Congress.<\/p>\n 11. On 3\/16, President Trump in another nationwide address mentioned that the Federal Reserve the day before has reduced interest rate to almost 0%.\u00a0 He emphasized that people should avoid any gatherings of more than 10 people and to practice group distancing, and acknowledged that the coronavirus may not reach a peak until July or August.\u00a0<\/p>\n In spite of reducing the interest rate to almost 0% and the prospect of Congress passing a significant relief package, the stock market crashed.\u00a0 For example, the DJIA dropped by almost 3,000 points on 3\/16, and has dropped by 29% since 1\/1\/2020.\u00a0 Again, this is not surprising, because testing is still not yet widely available, implying that the situation will get even more worse, and the whole country is almost closing down, thus basically shutting down all business, and it is going to cause the government to spend a large amount of money to keep people above water, thus increasing significantly the federal deficit and the national debt<\/p>\n Nevertheless, in a response to a question, President Trump rated himself 10 on a rating of 1 to 10.<\/p>\n This ends Part I of this article.\u00a0 Part II is in the “Other” page of this same release (March 2020).<\/p>\n ——————————————————————————————————————<\/p>\n [1] “China Grapples With Mystery Pneumonia-Like Illness<\/a>” by S.-L. Wee and V. Wang, the New York Times<\/em>, 1\/6\/2020 and revised on 1\/21\/2020.<\/p>\n [2] “How testing failures allowed coronavirus to sweep the U.S.<\/a>” by J. Kenen, Politico<\/em>, March 6, 2020.<\/p>\n [3] S. Korea’s test was based on a WHO template which is available to the world.\u00a0 The CDC in the U.S. decided to create their own test from scratch, only to see that effort plagued by delay and dysfunction that continues to this day.\u00a0 More information on this can be found in the following two articles:\u00a0 (1) “How this South Korean company created coronavirus test kits in three weeks<\/a>” by I. Watson, S. Jeong, J. Hollingsworth and T. Booth, CNN<\/em>, March 12, 2020.\u00a0 (2) “How South Korea Scaled Coronavirus Testing While the U.S. Fell Dangerously Behind<\/a>” by S. Engelberg, L. Song and L. Dephillis, ProPublic<\/em>a, March 15, 2020.<\/p>\n [4] “South Korea is doing 10,000 coronavirus tests a day. The U.S. is struggling for even a small fraction of that<\/a>” by M. J. Kim and S. Denyer, The Washington Post<\/em>, March 13, 2020.<\/p>\n\n