Covid Response

 This is bit old and a tad dated. I thought I had posted it several days ago.

For my regular readers, another response to a Facebook post. He is a friend that stretches back several decades. At one time, we were inseparable, but time and distance will always take toll.

My friend, below are some points to consider while you bash the President for his handling of covid. I would also like to point out that while former VP Biden has talked a big game about how he would have done things differently, not a single policy or effort he touts would have been different. Except the mask mandates, which Trump avoided due to constitutional concerns. I did point out some differences below.

I also want you to consider how the CDC has been counting COVID deaths vs how deaths from flu in previous years has been counted. In years past if an individual who suffered from a morbidly such as heart disease or pneumonia caught the flu and died, their deaths were listed as primary the morbidly, not the flu. For some reason the CDC officially changed how to classify deaths this year. Bottom line, no matter what condition your health was, if you had covid and died, it was categorized as a covid death.

Here is an interesting statistic to mull over. The number of deaths each year varies little from year to year. The same is true for 2020. If this virus has killed nearly 300,000 this year in the USA shouldn't that been reflected in the numbers? 300,000 extra deaths is statistically significant when we average about 2.8M deaths each year. The trend line for 2020 is actually slightly below 2019. Shouldn't the trend be higher this year to reflect these additional 300,000 deaths? Shouldn't are trend line be approaching 3.1 million? The information is on the CDC website if you wish to dig around a bit. In 2019, with no covid-19, 2,864,838 deaths occurred in the USA.  With two weeks left in the year (the last available numbers) we have had 2,835,533 people die in the USA. I'll let you do the figuring.

Here are some, of the many, steps the Trump administration took as covid started moving through our nation.

On Jan 28, the covid task force was formed, 5 cases, 0 deaths. Read that again. A task force was formed to take on this virus and the possible impacts with 5 cases and no deaths. That's just a few days after this virus was brought to our shores. If that's not leaning way forward, I'm not sure what else qualifies.

31 Jan, public health emergency declared. Most travel to and from China, covid ground zero, banned. 7 cases, 0 deaths. The WHO has stated this travel ban has saved lives. Former VP Biden and House Speaker Pelosi didn't support the travel ban, calling it xenophobic and racist. People gripe that there were not enough tests, forgetting that each and every year a new strain of virus moves through the population, and the medical profession scrambles each and every year to catch up if the virus doesn't behave as predicted. And this was a completely new strain. Plus, the Chinese GOVERNMENT was in no way forthcoming on this strain.

FDA gives emergency use authorization to CDC test kits. 11 cases, 0 deaths.

24 Feb, Trump asks Congress for $2.5B in emergency funding to combat the spread of covid. 15 cases, 0 deaths. He's criticized for not asking for more. See below.

26 Feb, VP Pence is appointed the lead on the covid task force. 15 cases, 0 deaths. No deaths and the full task force is already moving forward.

Late Feb-early Mar. Trump works daily with state governors via phone. Several governors (like Cuomo and Newsome) who are on the complete opposite end of the political spectrum, praised him for the efforts he made to get the necessary PPE and equipment to locations that were most in need.

6 Mar, Trump signs $8.3B emergency covid funding bill. 215 cases, 14 deaths.

11 Mar, travel to and from 26 European nations is restricted. 1,105 cases, 33 deaths. At the time covid cases in Europe FAR exceeded those in the USA

12 Mar, FDA authorizes privately developed covid tests. 1,530 cases, 43 deaths. This had an exponential impact, as more companies requested and were approved to develop testing kits

13 Mar, Trump declares a National emergency, and calls on states to request major disaster designation. By law, states must follow this procedure. 2,115 cases, 43 deaths. In comparison, Obama waited until nearly 1,000 people had died of the swine flu in 2009 to declare the national emergency.

18 Mar, the Defense Production Act (DPA) is invoked. This was necessary to not only meet the surge in needed PPE supplies and medical equipment, but to replenish supplies exhausted, but never replaced, by the Obama administration during the swine flu outbreak. The hospital ships Comfort and Mercy are deployed to New York and Los Angeles to relieve possible stresses on hospitals dealing with covid cases. These ships were redeployed a couple months later when it turns out the overflow crisis didn't happen. National Guard Field hospitals (Think MASH units) were also deployed at the same time to some cities, recalled late spring due do non usage.

It was right about here the CDC started classify all covid related deaths as caused by covid. It was also about this time when deaths from other causes started showing declines. Note the significant increase in covid deaths towards the end of March.

19 Mar, State Department issues a Level 4, avoid all international travel. 8,386 cases, 191 deaths.

25 Mar, Trump signs $2T CARES Act. This is the largest-ever single relief act in USA history. At the same time he uses the power of the DPA to order General Motors to produce ventilators. While ventilator supplies were low, there was never a time that patients that needed one didn't get one. The DPA was also utilized to get N95 masks made, banned export of medical supplies and included penalties for hoarding certain medical supplies. 102,101 cases, 2,253 deaths.

29 Mar, Project Airbridge gets underway. This was a joint endeavor between the government and private industry to secure medical supplies from sources outside the USA. Shipments began arriving within a few days. 141,205 cases, 3,472 deaths.

I'll stop the time line here. Not because further action wasn't taken, the list is too long to continue. It is readily available on web.

While I can't find the exact date when Dr. Fauci made the statement, he made it clear to the press that President Trump was indeed taking the advice of the "experts" on the task force.

To go along with the insignificant change in numbers of deaths from year to year, despite nearly 300,000 covid deaths, the rates of deaths from heart disease, "ordinary" flu, pneumonia, etc, have plummeted this year, coinciding with the upswing in tabulated covid deaths. Why has this happened? This information was also on the CDC website, but I can't find it now. I've tried my various other web resources to see if it has been archived, but no luck so far.

I'll close my ramblings by asking just how it could have been handled differently? I see lots of folks, especially those on the left, making exhaustive efforts to blame Trump, but nobody really has provided any alternative solutions. As I pointed out above, both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx are on record that Trump followed their ever-changing recommendations. The state's that went into full lockdowns, mandating mask wearing, closing schools, devastating small businesses, dictating the size of gatherings (except the protests and riots) have really not done better than the states that didn't fully institute these draconian measures. In fact, California, New York, and New Jersey, where some of most stringent covid rules were implemented, have experienced some of the highest case and death rates. While it is easy to point to the number of deaths and speak of the tragedy (which it clearly is), its not so easy to say what could have been done differently.