There’s a lot of idle sniping at President Trump relative to how his administration has handled the virus.  Much of this comes down to cheap shots by political opponents who don’t pay much attention to the niceties of how things were at any given point in time.

What is very clear in retrospect is that Trump closed our border to the Chinese very early on, way back at the end of January, when it was just a few bare weeks from the date when it was first discovered that something malevolent was happening in China — despite the efforts of their communist government to conceal this fact.   Sadly, we have suffered almost 100k death so far, but could that have been 300k by now had Trump not acted as swiftly as he in fact did act relative to closing down entry to Chinese?

As to what subsequently happened, I remember very vividly my flight back to Boston from Atlanta on March 16th.  On that particular airline, there were exactly 2 people, on the entire jet airplane, wearing masks.  And there weren’t many masks being worn at the Atlanta airport or in Boston at Logan either.  Masks then were so rare that it was still a bit of a shock to see someone wearing one as of mid-March.  I can attest to that.

And when I finally did get back to my PC and Internet access in my apartment, all the chatter among the scientists and smart set, in mid-March, was whether this was really even a pandemic or not — given the relatively modest number of those infected outside of China.  The other much debated subject at the time, again as of mid-March, was whether one should be wearing a mask or not.  The experts were divided on that one as well.

All of that indecision and confusion by the cognoscenti — the people who should have known better but clearly didn’t — came to an abrupt end at the end of March with the explosion of a hot spot in northern Italy.   That the virus had taken on a virulent character beyond the borders of China meant that the Genii was out of the bottle, and everyone was now at risk.  Trump’s reaction was to close entry to Europeans and ultimately to England, just as he had closed entry to the Chinese.

Again, while the scientists/academics dithered, Trump acted.  Had he not closed the border to Europe as a response to what was happening in Italy, would our death toll now be 400k — or more?   I think so.

Jumping Into A Puddle