It's Not 'Politicizing the Crisis' to Monitor How Trump Is Handling a Crisis
From Esquire
OK first of all, it's not "politicizing the crisis" to monitor (or even criticize!) what your elected leaders are doing in a democracy. It's citizenship. It is self-government. It is your duty. It does not go on pause during a pandemic. You elected someone to represent your interests in government, and your job is to keep an eye on them and make sure they are doing so. If they are doing a bad job, or misrepresenting the situation, call it out. Your health and safety are on the line. That the situation is scary is not a reason to suddenly trust everything politicians say, especially if they have an extensive record of lying and incompetent administration.
Whew. With that out of the way, let's talk about the president's speech Thursday night. Just to reiterate, up to this point, the president's response has primarily been to suggest the virus will just go away miraculously, that people were going to work when they had the virus and it's no big deal, and that we are on the cusp of having an available vaccine. None of these ideas reflect reality. Also, he went to the CDC and made an ass of himself. He did institute a ban on travel from China which may have delayed the spread here, but we have not used the time to level-up our response capacity. We don't have enough ICU beds. We don't have enough tests. We are not prepared.
The president began well enough last night, sticking to the facts of what's actually happening, but eventually he went into his stump speech about how great the economy is and all that. Don't need it, dude. The most glaring issue, however, was that the president did not mention testing at all. The biggest problem we have is that there are not enough tests, so we don't have an accurate picture of how many people have it and where. The key to South Korea's successful response has been widespread testing. No mention of tests.
There was a ban on European travel, however, which Trump's own former homeland security adviser is on record as saying will not be effective: "There’s little value to European travel restrictions," Tom Bossert wrote on Twitter. "Poor use of time & energy. Earlier, yes. Now, travel restrictions/screening are less useful. We have nearly as much disease here in the US as the countries in Europe. We MUST focus on layered community mitigation measures-Now!"
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/not-politicizing-crisis-monitor-president-140800580.html