Originally posted by: Boilerman
I'll just address your first paragraph. Be specific about what and when Trump should have done these things.
There are tons of things Trump should have done and should not have done.
1. He shouldn't have fired the pandemic response team in 2018.
2. He should have listened to Dan Coats when he reported in 2019, "[T]he United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, drain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support."
3. He should have prepared the US for COVID-19 especially considering he had a two month lead time. Instead, he said the warm weather was going to take care of it and he wasn't worried about it."
4. When the virus hit the US his first concern was the market and his "numbers" rather than the virus.
5. There is still no plan to deal with how to pay for testing, extended hospital stays of 4-6 weeks for roughly 15% of people that require long-term hospitalization and how to compensate people for missing work for extended periods of time.
He shouldn't have done all of these things:
a. He locked down the CDC and all public health announcements had to go through Mike Pence to make sure such announcements didn't make Trump look bad.
b. He loaded infected people onto a plane with healthy people that were being evacuated from the cruise ship in Japan over the objections of the CDC.
c. He had the untrained people that greeted the infected evacuees dressed in street clothes instead of protective gear.
d. He fired the person that reported this breach of quarantine.
e. People weren't and aren't being tested unless they traveled internationally or their case was/is so bad that they require immediate hospitalization which allowed the disease to spread across the entire country.
f. He overruled the CDC when it was trying to issue a warning that people over 60 shouldn't take commercial flights.
g. Multiple times he has ranted and raved like a lunatic claiming that the virus was a hoax.
h. He claimed several times that the virus had been contained and implied it was becuase of his quick and brilliant actions.
i. He claimed the flu has a higher mortality rate more than once.
j. Just today he issued a tweet suggesting that the flu is a more serious problem than COVID-19 and that everything is "fine."
k. He bemoaned at the CDC that he didn't want to bring home the cruise ship passengers stuck off the coast of California because it would be bad for his "numbers."
l. He ordered the CDC to scrub data from their site that showed how many people were being tested and how many people have died because it made him look bad.
m. He told contagious people to go back to work and work through the virus.
n. His Surgeon General on Sunday couldn't give even an approximate number of how many people have been tested in the US.
Gosh, I am just getting warmed up.
