I thought the idea of having a president was that the person would lead the country and take the responsibility for what happened under his or her leadership. Ah, I’ve recently been disabused of that idea by Trump who said he does not take any responsibility. In March of this year after being in office for three years when asked about the horrid response to the Covid-19 virus attacking our country he said: “I don’t take responsibility at all.” He pointed to an unspecified “set of circumstances” and “rules, regulations and specifications from a different time.”
Do you notice how many times Trump takes credit for the economy which when he inherited it was doing quite well? How can he do that and then walk away from the responsibility for saving people’s lives?
Amazingly, the Trumpets have no trouble with that. They willingly blame governors, mayors, state health officials, Democrat congress members, and even now are trying to blame Doctor Fauci as if they are the ones who set the national policy. It’s the old Trump trick where he defends himself by pointing to other crooks. (I used it in the seventh grade when I came home with a report card with a lot of red grades on it and said to my father (immediately before he blew his top) “you think that is bad you should have seen Skippy’s card.”) It’s the “what about” crowd always pointing the finger at others. Strangely they still blame Obama for things and you wonder when do they expect Trump to put on his big boy pants?
Recently a person commented defending Trump’s handling of the Trumpanemic saying no rational person could blame him for the plague that is marching across our land. He said: “New York and four states contiguous with New York (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts). These five states have 50% of the deaths from Covid in the USA.”
I don’t know exactly what point he is trying to make. Wasn’t Trump president when this happened? Actually the death rate is about 44%. But as we know those figures have no bearing on the present. Those five states were hit hard in the beginning but they, like the European states, have struggle mightily to make a comeback. What I do find interesting in the Trumpets responses are that none want to deal with handing the question why have the European state been able to lessen the rate of positive cases while the United States sees its rate fly off into the wide blue yonder.
I suggest it is best to compare what has been happening since July 1. I’m writing this at a time I only have the figures to July 12. Those five states that have 44% of the deaths at this time over the period from 7/1/2020 to 7/12/2020 have had 1,107 deaths. The rest of the country has had 5,806 deaths or 84% of the deaths. It befuddles me when people defending Trump want to include what happened two months ago in order to not look at the present day’s happenings.
The real bottom line is we should be like other nations in the world having very few deaths rather than the many we have. What is Trump doing about it? He is aggravating the situation. He’s holding campaign rallies. He held one June 20 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At that time Oklahoma had 10,037 cases. On July 12 twenty-three days after the half-filled rally Oklahoma had 20,235 case. Its gain of 10,200 cases gave it more than it had for the three and a half months prior to that date. Is that what America should expect?
Anyway, the Trumpets tell us not to worry. We are told the experts say the increase in cases in California and Texas are to be blamed not on Trump but the Mexicans immigrants. (Trump will be using that in his Build the Wall rants.) Finally we are supposed to be comforted because “increase cases do not mean increase deaths” ignoring that many who get infected suffer severe damage to their organs.
The Trumpets world is where the few good things that happen Trump gets the credit; an the many bad things the blame is on others.
Matt, I rechecked my numbers. New York and its five contiguous states account for 48.5% of US coronavirus deaths, and account for only 16% of the US population. New York was the US epicenter.
Yesterday’s Data from World Meters: Covid deaths per state: NY 32,495 NJ 15,705 MA 8,368 PA 7,023 CT 4380, added up equals 67,971 deaths divided by total deaths of 140,155 total deaths equals 0.48497, or 48.5% of deaths. The USA population of 330 million means New York and its four contiguous states which have a population of about 52 million (NY @19.5 PA 12.8, NJ 8.9 million, MA 6.9 CT 3.6 =51.7)
51.7/330 =@ 16%
@16% OF THE US POPULATION (NEW YORK AND ITS FOUR CONTIGUOUS STATES) account for about @ 49% of US deaths from Covid.
Unless my math is wrong, as it sometimes is.
Correction, New York and its four (4) contiguous states
There you go again. Always blame Trump. Hasn’t this post been made a hundred times? The sky is not falling. We shall overcome. A Russian priest has said that BLM is anti Christian and anti civilization. Do you agree?
Russian priest. Isn’t that an oxymoron? I think BLM (sorry again for the caps) is just anti. If they stand in front of my car I’m going to be sporting a new and exciting look in grills.
wa-llahi! Abe, aren’t you concerned about being pulled from your vehicle, and, hung from a light post? If you start running demonstrators down and/ or shooting them, how will the crowd react? Perhaps, they’ll not run away, but, rather, charge you. There’s only so many bullets in a gun, and, by the way, black folks have guns, too.
All praise to BLM. All power to the dialectic.
Matt, your blog is laced with too many falsehoods to waste breath refuting. Once again, you misinform. Once again you simply do not understand the science.
One point, I read yesterday, it was reported they studied those who attended Trump’s rally in Oklahoma, and concluded there was no correlation with the rally and an increase in cases. But why consider studies, when to you, a non-scientist, every association in time or place means causation. Did you know Biden’s last rally was in Philadelphia on March 10, and that was exactly when the cases and deaths took off in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York? Wow. That proves it.
Let me begin and end with your horrifically ill logic. Was Ike responsible for polio? Was Wilson responsible for Swine Flu? Was Obama responsible for the uptick in drug overdoses over his eight years? Oh, it is only Trump who is responsible for the spread of viral infections and diseases in America?
You write that there are severe organ damages in those who survive Covid. True. In a fraction of a percent, as there is in every influenza.
LISTEN TO THE SCIENTIST:
According to Dr. Zachary Kon, surgical director of lung transplantation at NYU Langone’s Transplant Institute, who discussed post-Covid fibrosis, a sever scaring of the lungs in a few extreme cases. “There is anecdotal evidence that some groups have a higher risk of a severe version of COVID-19 than others,” said Kon. “Overall, almost everyone who develops COVID-19 will have mild symptoms. In fact, many will be completely asymptotic. Only a few will develop a severe infection.”
Only a few.
Matt, we know Covid-19 can kill and leave lasting organ damage in a very few survivors. But compared to what? Every flu can do so. Isolation and lockdowns and joblessness can kill too, by way of increased rates of drug addictions, overdoses, alcoholism, domestic violence, suicides, crime, missed doctors appointments, missed preventive medicine . . .children miss school nurses, school lunches, school recess, lack of education, especially in the critical grammar school and high school years can have lasting lifelong ill effects. Public health scientists, environmental scientists always employ multi-factorial analyses? You do not. You say simplistically, it is President Trump’s fault as it was President Roosevelt’s fault for measles, and whoever was in charge when Yellow Fever broke out during the building of the Panama Canal. http://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/history-and-philosophy-of-medicine/panama-canal/yellow-fever-in-panama.html. Oh, that was Teddy Roosevelt, too.
New York and New Jersey today, after five months of Covid, have the highest rates of deaths in the world . . .(one little political entity in Europe has about the same or a little less: over 1,000 deaths per million. I have repeatedly posted all the data on this blog and referenced it.) The mortality rate (deaths per million) in Florida, Texas and California, are one tenth or less than New York and New Jersey.
Have you applauded Trump for keeping the death rate down in the other 45 states (excluding NY, NJ, MA, CT, PA)? The other 45 states have the same rates as Canada and Mexico. Is Trump and only Trump responsible for the death rates in Canada and Mexico, too?
Your logic is bad; your rhetoric is bad.
You say, let’s focus on the first few weeks in July. O.K., I will not even recheck the data. Last I read the seven day average of deaths in America is the lowest it has been since late March or early April. The death rate has been plummeting in America.
Will deaths rise as we fully open the economy? Yes. A very small percentage of newly exposed will die, and from what I have read, it likely will be less than the small percentage that die of the flu. In the future. Are hospitals in Florida, Texas, Southern California experiencing an uptick in cases. Yes. It re-shutting down the economy the answer? No. Is getting more tests, quicker results, rapid intervention, quicker treatments early on the answer. Yes. Is increasing the flow of PPE to Hot Spots the answer, Yes. Will Covid-19 abate this Fall and re-ignite in late 2020 and early 2021? Very Likely. Will he handle it better that in February when all authorities, scientific and political, including Doctor Fauci, said “No risk”? Yes.
You say cases are falling in the northeast, yes, and they are falling in Western Europe, two places which already have suffered the most. I have told you why. You say cases are rising in the South, and of course cases will rise as we open up, as more folks come into contact with each other. The death rate continues to decline overall.
You never address the death rate due to the lockdown, or the adverse effects on physical and mental health due to the lockdown.
2. Is Trump only responsible for failures or not successes?
The economy, the stock market, the employment rates were mediocre when Trump took office, and all have improved dramatically since he took office.
3. When the death rates in the rest of America outside of the Northeast begin to approach the death rates (deaths per million) of the Northeast, then begin to worry. Since 10 percent of the population has about 50% of the deaths (averaging let us say simply, 1,000 deaths per million) if the rest of the country with let us say 330 million people experience the same death rates, we will end up with 330,000 deaths by let us say November 2020. Current projections by Scientists, Epidemiologists, (and some have been wrong in the past as has Doctor Fauci and others . . .they are good, but not perfect; they are giving their best estimates) current projections are less than 200,000 by the end of 2020, as I understand it. (The best early projections were about 80,000 deaths by July, and without interventions (lockdowns, social distancing, frequent hand-washing) the first projections were about 2,000,000 (two million deaths.)
4. Let us wait and see and stop throwing stones at President Trump, Vice President Pence, Doctor Fauci, Doctor Birx and others on the Trump Task Force and others at the National Institutes of Health and the CDC et cetera who are doing the best they can . . .and sure, as I’ve reapetedly noted, some mistakes were made, some glaring ones by governors and mayors and folks in Congress and even the FDA made a mistake when it approved a testing protocal that contained a defective chemical reagent. Who is perfect?
God bless America. God bless President Trump and Vice President Pence and their teams and their Administration.
P.S. I have posted all the data previously and you refuse to look at it, or you refuse to absorb it, or you refuse to consider it.
You can bring a horse to water………
Numbers don’t lie. We are approaching 150,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S.
The Governor of Rhode Island is a Harvard,Oxford and Yale law school grad she seems to doing well handling what granted is a small state. You have two men on your blog who seem to make very long comments, often multiple times. Ever thought about limiting how many times one person can comment per article? I like to read multiple viewpoints, NOT paragraph after paragraph from one man.Glad to see your putting out more blogs again.Regards,
You’ve gotta have faith.
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Mark Twain
“Faith is under the left nipple.” Martin Luther
Norwood, some people like to read lengthy essays. Don’t like my writings, don’t read them. Why ask Matt to censor or ban them? They hurt your eyes? Please note that today’s Leftists’ modus operandi is to suppress expression, to silence, to punish differing views, to alter variations on a theme, to demand conformity to Leftists’ “politically correct” psychobabble. Do not play off key, do not offend Leftists’ sensibilities. Please research the expression “the heckler’s veto.”
And remember the Nobleman who criticized Mozart “too many notes” or the critics of the page-long sentences of Faulkner and Joyce, and the early critics of jazz and rock & roll, and the people who think Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 13 minute version of Free Bird is too long, or the Massachusetts judges who said the St. Patrick’s Day parade had no unifying theme, or Mayor Walsh, my friend, who thought that parade was too long, or Mayor Walsh who said he’d do anthing to save a human life, but would not lift his finger or his voice to save an unborn life.
And remember, our expressions, our music, our art, our writings do not have to make sense, nor have to flow, nor have to be pleasing, they can be as atonal, jarring, and disconcerting as Mark Rothko’s paintings or Kafka’s stories or the Door’s L.A. woman, or Alice Cooper’s beautiful flyaway, or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
The long and short of it is this: In America, people should feel free to express themselves as they choose, as you have and as I have.
Editors can edit, and Matt too can run a censorious blog if he chooses, but then it will not be a blog open to free expression, played to the tune of Free Byrd simultaneously while reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse and listening to Steppenwolf’s Monster: “America, where are you know, we can’t fight alone against the Monster” The Monster of the 1960s-1970s may have been the proponents of the Vietnam War and the suppressors of Free Speech and the opponents of Civil Rights, but today’s Monster is the Leftists; the Leftists in the Media, Academia, the power abusing Feds, the International Interventionists and the Atheistic Antagonist who seek to disparage religion and drive religion from the public commons: M.A.F.I.I.A.A., the New World’s MAFIA, for short.
wa-llahi! Bill, you still don’t understand the division between church and state. The public space must be atheistic in order to guarantee everyone’s right to their particular religious practice in the private space.
Norwood:
Thanks – stay safe where you are – yes, I try to limit them but they don’t seem to understand that if they keep pressing long irrelevant comments I will just cut them out.
I think I’ll just sit back and watch.