Trump’s Legacy Includes A Summons For The Grim Reaper

Thursday was a bad day for everyone, including Donald Trump. Hospitals, local governments, the transportation industry and even major league sports are hanging on the precipice waiting for answers to whether they should jump or simply wait to fall. In this country, Trump is the go-to man without a clue, despite keeping Vice President Mike Pence close at hand as his whipping boy.

When the press went to Trump for explanations, he exclaimed that he is “not concerned” about contracting coronavirus after a Brazilian official who dined with him last weekend tested positive. It only proved that Trump is either a fool or a fraud, and probably both. If the germaphobe-in-chief ever uttered a more illuminating statement to highlight his diffident, cruel and indifferent nature, it would be hard to say when.

In World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill commented on the Allied invasion of Anzio, Italy in 1944 that was supposed to open the door to capturing Rome. Churchill was furious with mild-mannered American Gen. John Lucas Porter, who was then commanding the invasion force, for his cautious execution of the attack. “I had hoped that we were hurling a wildcat onto the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale,” Churchill thundered. He demanded that the commander be sacked. With little delay, the gentle scholar from Louisiana was sent home, replaced by Gen. Lucian Truscott Jr., a fire-breathing protégé of “Old Blood and Guts” himself, Gen. George S. Patton.

The proverbial whale lamented by Churchill has been stranded again, this time in Washington, D.C., in the virulent quagmire where Trump and his swamp-dwellers reign. America could have used a Patton protégé to lead the fight against the proven killer, instead it got a bombastic leader without a plan beyond washing his own tiny hands.

Our country and the entire world is at war with arguably the longest living organism on Earth — an indestructible virus that mutated from an animal infection in Southwest Asian bats — that is now gearing to wipe out the world’s weak and elderly. American scientists have known about the emergence of the novel coronavirus and its mutations since the late last century. I say “arguably” because scientists cannot even agree if a virus is a living organism or some kind of constantly mutating spore of uncertain origin.

As early as 2011, researchers studying viruses in the bat colonies of Thailand found the ancestors of today’s killer strain. Epidemiologists, the scientists who study the causes and effects of epidemics and their big brother, pandemics, say emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) brought to bear by viruses are considered a major threat to global health. The authors shared their observations in a scientific journal called PubMed, a journal of the National Institute of Health. The NIH is the warehouse where such vital information is stored until it is retrieved for further examination.

Researchers say that most EIDs with similar characteristics to the novel coronavirus appear because of increased contact between wildlife and humans, especially when humans encroach into formerly pristine habitats, such as where bats sometimes live. Bats are known to host viruses closely related to important EIDs, according to information published in PubMed.

The research paper, titled Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV), was one of several studies that have shown the existence of the SARS-CoV infection in apparently healthy bats, suggesting that bats may be a crucial host in the genesis of this disease.

Does that mean Trump should declare war on bats? While he probably would unleash a flock of Air Force Reapers armed with Hellfire missiles on downtown Tehran if he thought it would move his presidency forward, it won’t kill the corona outbreak. Without a vaccine tailored to eliminating it, coronavirus has to die of its own volition when it runs out of hosts. According to recent news reports, a vaccine is at least 18 months in the future.

Scientists have began securing bat-borne virus samples collected in Thailand, and two new coronaviruses have been detected in two bat species. Interestingly, these viruses from Southeast Asia are related to those previously detected in Africa and Europe. It was not good news, portending that another potential pandemic could already be percolating in the dark recesses of genetic evolution.

Compounding this already dire situation, Trump in 2018 “fired the U.S. government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House’s management infrastructure, according to Laurie Garrett, writing in Foreign Policy.

Trump’s growing legion of critics claim he was simply being petty by erasing the accomplishments of his predecessor, President Barack Obama, during fits of pique and envy over his predecessor’s unquenchable popularity at home and abroad.

When the Ebola virus broke out in West Africa in 2014, Obama ordered multiple U.S. government departments and agencies to work together to help victims overseas while at the same time protecting unaffected Americans at home.

Garrett described the U.S. pandemic infrastructure as “an enormous orchestra full of talented, egotistical players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and demanding higher salaries — all without a conductor.” Obama used persuasion and (no doubt) threats to rein in blazing egos in order to devise a coherent, integrated response to the crisis.

“The orchestra may have still had its off-key instruments,” Garrett wrote in late January, “but it played the same tune.”

Trumpers simply deny that it happened, which is understandable since such an unimaginably stupid, base and petty decision is completely indefensible.

In the spring of 2018, the White House cut spending on national health services by $15 billion, gutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. Finally and inexplicably, Trump ordered the State Department to eliminate $30 million from the Complex Crises Fund (CCF), money that was kept available to dispatch epidemic and pandemic experts and other medical personnel to other countries experiencing a sudden outbreak.

Such is America’s president.