Trump Wants to be a Wartime President. He Needs to Start Acting like One.
- Mar 20, 2020
- 6 min read
So, look. I try not to be overly alarmist with stuff. I know in today's age especially with the media on both sides literally selling fear to the masses, it can be a tough time to wade through the bullshit and figure out where the truth lies. But I've been scouring through, looking for real scientific documents and evidence to find what I can over this virus and where we will be in the next few weeks. And it really doesn't look good.
China had the largest data set of cases, and most have been using that as a model. Of their cases, about 3% infected died. Now, that number needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Many cases were most likely mild and thus unreported in the count because they didn't go to the doctor. So, WHO and the CDC have conservatively put the number at 1% death rate overall, with a much higher proportion of that number being people older and with health conditions. Sounds like not a lot, but realize that 1% is about ten times the death rate of the yearly flu, who many uninformed have been apt to compare this virus to.
And latest estimates that if we do nothing, if we just let the virus take it's course, we could be looking at 80% of the country being infected within a few months, due to how much it spreads. That's conservatively 2 to 2.5 million people in this country who will die. That's just if the death rate remains at 1% for this virus. Right now, Italy, a country that is by all estimates, about two weeks ahead of us on this curve, has their death rate sitting at over 8% and cases are still growing by the day.
Yes, their population is older and full of smokers, but that number isn't that high simply because of that. It's high because their hospitals are overwhelmed. They are running out of medical supplies and have desperately low stock on ventilators. And that is the exact same problem here. We may not have as many old people but we sure have a lot of fat and unhealthy people here, many with serious underlying cardiovascular conditions. And hospitals all over the country are already running out of medical supplies like masks, gloves, gowns, etc. The Mayor of New York said they had about two weeks before the entire city runs out of medical supplies. For one of the largest cities on the planet, who just hit over 3000 confirmed cases, even with a severe shortage on testing.
If we end up near Italy's numbers of cases and death rate, that could be 20 million dead. Thats' about twice the dead of the Holocaust, 32 times the death rate from the Civil War. This is worst case scenario, if we don't do any distancing and 80% of the population is infected nearly at once. Italy tried to do more drastic quarantining measures, but it looks like they reacted too slow. We have many states taking precautions and shutting down everything non essential. In my state of Maryland they have shut down all restaurants and bars and entertainment centers. It may seem drastic but unless the entire country does at least that much right now, we are looking at a catastrophe unlike anything this country has seen since World War 2.
Unfortunately, the entire country isn't even doing that. Florida, the state with the largest percentage of people over 60 in its state, still has its beaches open as of today:
They're starting to implement some social distancing policies and cities like Miami have done stricter restrictions, but this vagueness of shut downs is going across each state individually and its resulting in chaos and confusion. And that's because of our complete lack of leadership and direction at the national level.
As many other countries enact strict closures of nonessential businesses and bans, our President is saying a national ban of that sort is unnecessary. Basically, States are left to fend for themselves and to figure out their own policies. And he said yesterday as many states pleaded for more supplies of PPE equipment that, "Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work, The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items, and then shipping. We're not a shipping clerk.".
Basically, as always, his plan is to pass the buck off to someone else. This global pandemic is a State issue. It isn't the federal government's responsibility. It certainly isn't Trumps'. This lack of leadership and support from the federal level may be completely disastrous to our country for both the immediate impact of the virus and long term impacts of the economy. Trump has referred to our response to this virus as a war and himself as a "wartime President". Well, he needs to start acting like one if he wants that title. Drastic measures need to be taken to keep this country from seeing mass casualties and from seeing the entire economy collapse.
This national quarantine isn't going to be done in a week or two or even a month. For this to work, we may need to have this level of shutdown and social distancing in effect for multiple months or possibly over a year. If we only do it for a month then models suggest when we go back to business as usual the virus will spread again and within another month or two we're back at that 80% infected number. It hasn't even been a week in my state and already the edges are fraying. People are out of work, out of money, businesses can't pay their bills. The loans and payouts that could be coming from Congress are a drop in the bucket to what this country will need in the coming months. Reports are suggesting that national level of unemployment could be as high as 20% right now, with more to come in the following months.
How can we possibly weather this crisis with the only cure of quarantine and social distancing being seemingly worse than the disease? We need direction and leadership from the national level immediately. We need to activate the full power of the one thing we still love to pump billions and billions into every year; the United States Military.
We need a national ban on crowds, restaurants, bars, and other essential businesses immediately and for the foreseeable future. We need every active and inactive military personnel available to be called and put in circulation in the states. We have bases around the world and while they may be crucial to our national defense abroad, we need to prioritize the crisis brewing in our home borders. We need boots on the ground, right now. There needs to be massive mobilization to coordinate triage centers for hospitals, enforcement of quarantines, the Strategic Emergency stockpile needs to be emptied and disseminated now in its entirety, or at least ready to move to where the need is most. We need to be making PPE and ventilators or equivalent however we can. We cannot wait for China to decide they have enough and can sell more to the rest of the world. Currently, more PPE is not coming for at least a month, and it won't meet our needs even then. And if Trump keeps antagonizing China and referring to the virus as the "Chinese virus", we may end up last on the list of countries across the world to receive any. We can't just throw money at the problem and PPE will appear. The entire globe is facing a shortage and production demands can't be met that easily. We need to implement massive infrastructural changes to make production happen in our own borders.
Now, this all seems insanely daunting. The military alone can't do all this. There just isn't enough soldiers and most aren't trained for this. Well, that leads me to our other problem; massive amount of people out of work due to the shutdown of many businesses and the economy slowing down, and is threatened to collapse if people have no money. Are we seeing the solution here yet? There needs to be a public works program started unlike anything we've seen since the Great Depression. Put those people to work helping the military in hospitals with triage, making sure crucial logistics of food and medicine and supplies stay open, and manufacturing supplies of more PPE for our hospitals and nurses, however they can, even if its mass production of cloth masks. People will be working for things this country needs, and they'll be making enough to keep the economy afloat and keep roofs over their heads.
This all needs to happen right now. We are already behind the curve and really with the lack of testing and strict quarantining, we could actually be looking at being worse than Italy in the coming weeks. I don't know if it will happen at this point, as our President seems to be going about in a daze and doing the bare minimum, and sometimes not even that. We've enjoyed a long time of relative peace and prosperity in this country. It seems like history and change is knocking on our doorstep. And I fear it has come at precisely the worst time, with the leadership we currently have.
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