CORONAVIRUS

BY

Bill Gates hosted a T.E.D. Talk about the next imminent global pandemic. Its title: “The next outbreak? We’re not ready.” Its date: April 3, 2015. It is one of the many warnings that preceded COVID-19. It is also one that, like almost all others, was ignored.

Writing this article from the apartment which I have barely left since being dismissed from campus weeks ago, it is hard not to feel embittered by the fact that there were numerous warnings and effectively no proactive response, leading us to the state of death and panic that we are currently experiencing.

The entire story of the Coronavirus was, and continues to be, one of a lack of preparation, on a national and global scale.

The first case of COVID-19 was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office in China on the 31st of December in 2019, a pneumonia of unknown cause detected in the city of Wuhan. Five days later the WHO reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in the same area. The virus was then identified as a novel coronavirus, in the same family as SARS and MURS. January 13, just over one week later, a case of the novel coronavirus was unexpectedly discovered in Thailand. The WHO then called for active monitoring and preparedness in other countries.

But that never happened.

The novel coronavirus continued to spread like sinister ink on an unfolding world map, finding its way into every creased country with irreparable damage. The numbers in China grew exponentially, and the country resorted to a lockdown of the Hubei province.

Not surprisingly, only a short time after the initial spread, the first infections in the U.S.were beginning to emerge, first in Washington state, near Seattle, and in California. Health experts say the virus had been quietly contaminating communities in both states for weeks. And the Trump Administration made a deadly mistake by bolstering, against all evidence, that the virus was not going to be as bad here.

The Trump Administration never took the virus seriously. On numerous occasions during Trump’s daily press briefings throughout January and Febru-ary, he claimed that “we have [the coronavirus] totally under control” (January 22), and that “the coronavirus is very much under control in the USA” (February 24), and even that “it’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear” (February 28). Even into the month of March, Trump proclaimed that tests were available to anyone who wanted one, and that holding rallies did not bother him. It is notable––although unfortunately not surprising––that every one of these statements was eventually contradicted by governors or even members of Trump’s own cabinet.

The reasons for Trump’s complete and perpetual denial seem to be twofold. First, his reelection strategy still seems to rely entirely on the economy’s well-being, but the economy seems to be debilitated, laid up in an ICU, like so many other victims of the Coronavirus. Additionally, his original malfeasance essentially allowed the disease to rampantly permeate the country directly causing a devastating amount of deaths, so he had to continue to feign ignorance so as to not accept any kind of responsibility.

Then, on March 31, Trump had to momentarily face the truth when he had to pronounce that a bestcase scenario for COVID-19 deaths were between 100,000-240,000, a catastrophic jump from the claim he made on February 26: “when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” Even more distressing, experts criticized the figure for being too low.

Nonetheless, his stance has not progressed. He has done virtually nothing except attempt to buy the companies developing vaccines, promote non-approved drugs for treatment, withhold funding from the WHO, and proclaim that states could begin reopening. So, to be blunt, he has done nothing of use.

Trump’s hastiness and miscalculations have cost people their lives. I cannot help but think that if this conflict was of a human rather than a viral nature, the administration would be treating it as a real war. But it is, and we’re losing. We have no one but our Commander-in-Chief to blame for this defeat.

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Features Features Editor: Nicolette Van Kesteren