Coronavirus' Biggest Issue? Trump's Ego
By Annika Hauser, June, 2020
“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
The pandemic sweeping the nation has finally shed a light on the continuous mistakes that the Trump administration has made. Was it the ignorance? The ego? The blame? Whatever it was, Trump has the American people asking: what went wrong?
On a chronological scale, it isn’t hard to see that all signs pointed to the novel coronavirus being a huge threat to not only the American people but the entire world. But when the most important figure gained access to information, the public was never informed due to one thing: ignorance. Ideology aside, a virus is not something to sweep under the rug; but that is exactly what President Trump did. According to The Atlantic, Trump was warned several times from his security council that there was a deadly virus that was spreading in China during the months of January and February. Prior to this, he was warned that the United States simply wasn’t prepared for a pandemic regardless of if it would spread to the U.S. yet Trump took steps backward, notably by cutting the National Security Council responsible for handling pandemics. On top of this, Trump was selfish and concluded that his colleagues were only briefing him on this to try and hurt his political approval, stating: “They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”
Further along in the pandemic timeline, Trump finally agrees to shut down travel and increase production for coronavirus test kits. But by then, it was already too late. Hundreds of people had already entered from Wuhan and were asymptomatic. There are many delays on the front of getting PPE due to the fact that Trump still believed (and still believes today,) that COVID-19 was blown out of proportion by the Democrats and that they were only making a big deal out of it in order to take him down. When you have that much power and are in a position where the American public looks to you for answers, all they want, political affiliation aside, is to find some hope.
As the number of cases tops 100,000, it is a lack of information that continues to drive the Trump administration. Whether that is about important equipment to help save lives: “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”, or about how we can better combat the virus: "Suppose that we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light," Trump said, adding: "Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way." (Business Insider) While Trump admits he isn’t a doctor, he continues to give people ideas and essentially killing people in the process. He suggested UV light which isn’t even as strong as x-ray. If an x-ray of my body can’t kill me instantly, what can ultraviolet do to kill a mutating virus? He then suggested bleach and other cleaners, requiring companies like Clorox and Lysol to take time away from production to issue statements telling people to not drink their products (did we learn nothing from the Tide Pods challenge?)
Finally, he suggested and keeps suggesting hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug that has proven ineffective in the treatment of coronavirus. According to CNBC, “About 12% of the people who were given the malaria drug developed Covid-19, compared with 14% who did not receive the drug, according to the study’s findings, which included health-care workers and people close to those with Covid-19.” People continue to take this drug and a couple in Phoenix who drank fish tank cleaner (it contained chloroquine phosphate) were hospitalized where later the husband died. This just proves how impactful the words of the president can be. People listen to him, even when they shouldn’t. If the old adage, “trust no one,” works for Trump, it should work for you too.
When it comes to the economic situation we are currently in, it is safe to say we are headed towards a depression, (if we aren’t already in one.) But when given the choice between keeping the economy healthy and keeping the American people healthy, Trump would rather risk the lives of the people he has sworn to protect than not continue to make money himself.
“Will some people be affected badly? Yes,” Trump said on Tuesday. “But we have to get our country open, and we have to get it open soon.” (The Guardian) If the country opens, the people who patronize those businesses won’t be around to patronize them, and families will lose loved ones close to them. Trump needs to start thinking of others and the coronavirus’ impact on them, rather than preaching about the money being lost.
With lockdowns being lifted and a second wave on the rise, there looks to be no change in how the Commander in Chief is handling the global pandemic. Coronavirus has exposed just who the true Donald Trump is. Whether it is his political agenda, his ulterior motives, his ignorance during the Black Lives Matter movement, or his lack of attention to issues that simply don’t interest him, America has finally unmasked the bigoted and selfish coward that is Donald J. Trump.