Please Stop Blaming Every Covid-19 Death on Orange Man
December 30 2020: Seriously, please: it is getting embarrassing.
Photo by Kyle Cleveland on Unsplash
When 2020 hindsight kicks in and society starts to award prizes for peak stupidity across this most remarkable of years, there will be plenty of contenders. One assumes that a sizeable proportion of nominations will in some way revolve around Donald Trump. I would agree, although probably not in the same way that most others would see it. Looking past all the undoubtably questionable statements that have come out of the mouth of the Leader of the Free World this year, the winner for me is obvious: anyone who has ever, with sincerity and a straight face, attempted to blame every single US Covid-19 death on the Orange Man.
Stupid is a harsh word. I don’t really want to use it, but in this context I find it hard to come up with a more appropriate adjective. Just how stupid is this claim? Let me count the ways…
A few things to clarify first. For the sake of this argument, we are going to assume that every ‘Covid-19 death’ actually represents a person dying as a result of becoming infected by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. There are several reasons to suggest this is not a logical conclusion to make — most notably, and recently, the World Health Organisation disclosing that the PCR test is prone to high levels of false positive results — but I’d rather not rehash them again.
So, forgetting all that, let’s deal with the claim at hand: that all 300,000 plus and counting Covid-19 deaths can in any reasonable and rational way be attributed to the actions of the 45th President of the United States.
Travel Bans
Presumably, people who make this claim do so having come to the conclusion that said President of the United States has the magical power to halt a highly contagious virus capable of spreading asymptomatically (let us, for the purposes of this discussion, ignore research that now suggests asymptomatic spread of Covid-19 may not be that much of a thing).
There are a few problems with this claim. Firstly, last time I checked, the virus has also made its way to a few other countries around the world since it first migrated out of Wuhan (again, for convenience sake, let’s ignore the people now saying it may not have actually come from Wuhan). Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t seen the populations of other nations chuck their dear leaders under the bus in such a brutal way: even those poor Brits who are dealing with their own bumbling Buffoon in BoJo. Clearly, America is unique in its tendency to confer God-like powers on its President, whether by supporters or detractors.
But let’s just focus on America for now. What could The Don have done differently to keep out the China Virus? That is, except for the travel ban from China at the start of February, which even old mate Sleepy Joe dog whistled as being racist (bonus: read this humorously desperate fact check that tries to dig Biden out of this hole). The travel ban may have been largely irrelevant anyway, given subsequent testing suggesting Covid-19 was already in the US by the end of 2019.
I know January seems like a hell of a long time ago — a time when raging bushfires in Australia were assumed to be at least in the top 3 of shit 2020 things — but it is worth looking back at just how seriously other people were taking the virus. Turns out: not very seriously. Let me quote just a few mainstream news articles from the end of January that committed what would be in only a few months time one of the most unforgivable sins of this pandemic: to compare Covid to the ‘flu.
The new coronavirus isn’t a threat to people in the United States — but flu is. (LA Times)
There’s Another Virus Stalking America: It’s Called the Flu (Bloomberg).
Risk from influenza is far greater than coronavirus, health experts warn (Washington Times).
Why the Flu Is Still a Bigger Threat to Americans Than Coronavirus (US News).
Not to be outdone, those good eggs from CNN, Gupta and Cooper, were still downplaying the threat of the new virus in March.
Hydroxychloroquine and Other Treatments
What else are we likely to find on the 2020 Peak Stupidity nomination board? Ask your average Trump hater, and I would guess Disinfectant-gate would be right up there. While not one of his most intellectually sound moments, it is worth digging a bit deeper into what Trump actually said.
Firstly, let’s set the record straight: Trump did not tell anyone to go and inject themselves with and/or drink bleach, and did not actually directly mention bleach. Anyone who still claims this is either misinformed or lying. I’m not even going to provide links, as a simple Duck Duck Go search shows it plain and simple. What he did say was in response to the previous statements of the spokesperson for the White Houses’s Coronavirus Task Force Bill Bryan, in relation to the potential of both disinfectants and UV light to kill coronaviruses. You can find the full transcript here, with Bryson speaking on these issues from the 25 minute mark, although I’m sure you have better things to do.
Anyway, regardless of the specifics of the event, at least Trump was trying: trying to escape the relentless vaccine tunnel vision of basically every other expert by raising awareness of potential alternative treatments. The best example of this is of course hydroxychloroquine: a subject I have dissected to within an inch of its life already.
Long story short: HCQ works. The science shows it, the real time evidence from countries such as Switzerland shows it, even the first hand anecdotal evidence from people who have started making it at home and suddenly find themselves feeling a million bucks shows it. That people still accuse Trump of causing unnecessary Covid deaths, while completely ignoring the psychopaths who are knowingly lying about the efficacy of hydroxycholoquine and other drugs such as Ivermectin, is beyond exasperating.
I’m at the stage now where if I was on a date with an attractive, rich, down to earth and virtuous women, it would still be an automatic deal breaker if she tried to argue that HCQ wasn’t a safe and effective treatment for Covid. Even a desperate man has to have standards, after all.
Nursing Homes
Preventable nursing home deaths will almost certainly be one of the most sordid and regrettable stories to emerge from this pandemic. And guess what: they have nothing to do with the President, and everything to do with the people in power in the individual States where these atrocities occurred.
There has been solid coverage of the nursing home issue in mainstream media. In May for example, Forbes noted that just under half of Covid-19 deaths had come from the under 1% of the population who reside in nursing homes. It was an astonishing statistic, and reflects a dire situation that has continued to worsen. In fact, when the CDC updated their data for projected infection fatality rates (IFR) in September, it showed an even starker statistic: while the IFR for those aged less than 50 was actually less than IFR for Influenza, it sky rocketed to over a thousand times higher for those above the age of 70.
When the dust finally settles, the role of nursing home deaths is likely to be central in this remarkable age discrepancy. Yet, at the moment, there has been a clear disconnect in the level of anger directed at those who were initially responsible for this situation. In New York for example, in March, Governor Cuomo gave a directive for nursing homes to receive Covid-19 patients, apparently to free up hospital beds. Cuomo, classy as ever, decided to blame nursing home staff rather than accept responsibility when criticised, before lying about the initial directive — yet somehow still maintained positive approval ratings.
As bad as the Nursing Home situation is in New York and elsewhere, it is but one example of how the response to the pandemic and the number of lives lost is directly determined by the actions of individuals States, and not that of the President.
Free Will
This is a brief one to finish on, but an important one.
There is one peculiar assumption made by those who furiously seek to cast all blame on Trump: that the things Trump says and does will automatically be followed by his base. Essentially, they view these people as part of a cult, completely bereft of free will, blind being lead by the blindest to not stay at home, practice social distancing, wear masks or follow basic hygiene practices.
Really? Believing that a significant proportion of Covid-19 deaths would have been prevented if the US population had followed these practices with a China-like level of compliance to authority is one thing. Believing that freedom-over-death-loving America would have chucked the face diaper on and kept their small business closed if Donald had only told them to from the start is self-evidently ridiculous. At least it should be; I am continuously amazed at how many Americans seem to misunderstand the fundamental nature of the country that they live in.
Am I saying the Orange Man has covered himself in glory throughout this whole pandemic debacle? Certainly not.
Am I saying he hasn’t flipped flopped, back tracked, mislead and devolved responsibility for his actions? Also no, although my main complaint is that he hasn’t stayed firm on many of the more unpopular Covid opinions that he dangled out into the public discourse before retreating on.
But nothing Donald Trump has said or done in relation to Covid-19, however stupid it may be argued to be, comes close to the absolute, acute anti-intellectualism of his detractors in gaslighting anyone who will listen that every single Covid-19 death in the United States is a speck of blood on his hands.