Failure
Americans shut down the country for the last 7 weeks to slow the spread of COVID-19 and give the federal government time to get ahead of this–put mass testing in place, ramp up protective gear manufacturing, etc. The Republican administration wasted the time–we don’t have the protective gear or enough testing capacity. They haven’t even tried–Trump gave up, his administration spent the time bullshitting and planning who to blame the disaster on. Now the Republicans are pushing to reopen businesses and attacking states with Democratic governors trying to keep the pandemic under control. They have organized their brown shirts to come out and threaten violence against measures to save lives, measures with broad public support.
This month 1,500 Americans are dying every day of COVID-19. The projections are that this will continue all summer, and may get worse as states reopen businesses without enough testing or protective gear to halt the spread. Work and risk dying or lose your job, no unemployment for you, that’s the Republican plan. The Republican plan is for 100,000 more Americans to be killed this summer, and they are fine with it. Trump gives himself an “A+”, calls his response perfect. He has no plan to change course, to work hard to save these lives. Republicans is Congress and across the country don’t have a word of criticism to offer. They fully support the plan where 100,000 Americans die of COVID-19 this summer. This is an epic failure. With an active, engaged, and competent government, most of these people can be saved.
And this is the second round of failure. When Trump was briefed on the developing COVID-19 pandemic, he sat on his ass for six+ weeks. He didn’t want there to be a disaster while he was President, so he ignored it and hoped it would go away. Most of the 70,000 Americans that have been killed by COVID-19 would have been saved by a proactive response, by a President that listened to scientific advice, took the intelligence reports seriously, and acted–put the government in motion and got the country mobilized.