Looking at Trump, Biden and the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic

 

Among the stacks of criticisms of Donald Trump’s presidency is his response to the COVID-19 virus. Trump didn’t do anything, or didn’t act quickly enough, or didn’t do enough, or was just plain wrong, came the complaints.

 

Lost in the rush of condemnation were some relevant facts:

* The China virus caught the world by surprise.

* Even the much-vaunted health/disease experts made mistakes in recommendations and in reporting relevant data.

 

Now that Joe Biden has become the Democrat candidate to oppose Trump in the November election, his comments, past and present, are relevant.

 

Trump formed the Coronavirus Task Force on January 29, less than a month after the first cases were reported by China to the World Health Organization (WHO). Two days later, he announced travel restrictions on China.

 

From his basement, Biden reacted to the restrictions as “hysterical xenophobia.”

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an administration agency, began to ship test kits to U.S. and international laboratories on February 6. On February 29, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, advised us that “There is no need to change anything you’re doing on a day-by-day basis. Right now, the risk is still low.”

 

And all the while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, was in Chinatown, not social distancing, and inviting her constituents to join her there. Soon thereafter, the administration requested $2.5 billion to combat the virus.

 

Obviously, Trump was no farther behind the curve than Pelosi and Fauci.

 

In early March, Trump signed a bill to fight the outbreak, totaling $8.3 billion, and he and Vice President Mike Pence met with health insurance officials to secure a commitment to waive co-pays for virus testing. And the following day Trump announced travel restrictions on foreigners who had visited Europe.

 

On March 13, 16 and 19 Trump did three things:

* declared a national emergency to access more than $42 billion in existing funding.

* announced the “15 Days to Slow the Spread” COVID-19 guidance. 

* signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to prohibit hoarding of vital medical supplies.

 

Meanwhile, during the March 15 presidential debate, Biden accused the Trump administration of refusing “to get coronavirus testing kits from the World Health Organization (WHO).” However, the WHO had not offered COVID-19 test kits to the United States.

 

Trump signed the CARES Act into law, and the USNS Mercy arrived in Los Angeles on March 27. And on the 31^st, Trump officially announced “30 Days to Slow the Spread.” 

 

Trumps actions dealing with the virus continued. But, so did Biden’s misstatements of fact.

 

In a comment, Trump noted that the Democrat’s politicization of the virus crisis was a hoax, like the Russia controversy and the impeachment were hoaxes. Not content with an accurate quote, Biden mis-quoted Trump as having said, “Coronavirus, this is their new hoax.” Trump did not call the virus a hoax.

 

Did Biden deliberately take Trump’s words out of context? Or, did he not understand the difference? Whichever the case, The Washington Post awarded Biden four Pinocchios for his error.

 

Biden said on ABC’s “This Week” in early March that “They’ve cut the — the Centers for Disease Control. They’ve cut the funding for — they’ve tried to cut the funding for NIH, the National Institute (sic) of Health.” In reality, the CDC’s budget is 7 percent higher than under the Obama administration, and the Obama administration had tried to cut the budget in five of its eight years.

 

“The Obama-Biden Administration set up the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense to prepare for future pandemics like COVID-19. Donald Trump eliminated it,” Biden tweeted on March 19. But this, too, was wrong. The Directorate was made part of a new unit, the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which strengthened the response to biodefense threats.

 

On CNN in late March, Biden suggested Trump should send our experts to China to help out. “There was no effort to do that,” he charged. But CDC representatives visited Wuhan on January 8^th.

 

According to Biden, Trump told governors to get their own medical equipment. But he had blundered again. “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” Trump had said. But Biden neglected the rest of the comment. “[The federal government] will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”

 

Clearly, Biden’s mangled performance on the virus is not a reason to vote for him.

 

Now that Trump’s initial actions and Biden’s falsities have been discussed, here is some information on COVID deaths from the CDC that helps clarify the high number of deaths attributed to the disease.

 

“Deaths are coded [for the virus] when coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 are reported as a cause that contributed to death on the death certificate. These can include laboratory confirmed cases, as well as cases without laboratory confirmation. … COVID-19 is listed as the underlying cause on the death certificate in 94% of deaths.” (emphasis added)

 

Far fewer people died of just the virus. Death is much more likely when other health problems are present.

 

Selective coronavirus reporting creates confusion

As time passes we become aware of more and more “oddities” related to the coronavirus pandemic. Cutting appropriate slack for the doctors and other healthcare authorities who advised President Donald Trump and the nation on how to respond to the crisis, it was a new virus and little was known about it. We can hardly get huffy about the mistakes made early on, and to some extent, even those that persist.

Even so, dramatic mistakes were made, and playing Monday morning quarterback shows that the reactions were — and are — over-the-top, and quite harmful, in many instances.

The shutdowns closed thousands of businesses, many permanently, put tens of millions of people out of work, and contributed to deaths and other health problems not directly related to COVID-19, as elective surgeries were cancelled, and needed appointments were cancelled by people afraid to go to see a doctor, or who were afraid to go to the hospital when they were ill.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 48 percent of Americans said they or a family member canceled or delayed medical care because of the pandemic, and 11 percent said the person’s condition worsened as a result of the delayed care. Some died.

We have problems with the reporting of COVID-19 data. Media reports focus on “cases” and “deaths,” to the near exclusion of negative tests and recoveries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rules allow people who die “with” the virus to be counted along with those who die “because of” the virus, expanding the number of deaths attributed to the virus by some unknown amount.

Furthermore, according to the CDC, a positive test allows for the chance that antibodies from a virus in the same family of viruses as COVID-19, like the common cold, were found. And, if a person tests positive for the virus, and is tested periodically to determine when he/she is no longer positive, each of those positive tests goes into the positive test count until the person tests negative. How many of the positive tests result from this repeat testing practice?

A virus test that is positive is called a “case.” That implies to many people that each “case” is an illness, that people who test positive are sick. But many who test positive experience only mild symptoms, or no symptoms whatsoever.

And then, there is this: The Florida Department of Health released its daily coronavirus testing report on July 14 showing a statewide positivity rate of 11 percent. But WOFL-TV (FOX 35) in Orlando reported, “Countless labs have reported a 100 percent positivity rate, meaning every single person tested was positive.

“Other labs had very high positivity rates. FOX 35 News found that testing sites like one local Centra Care reported that 83 people were tested and all tested positive. Then, NCF Diagnostics in Alachua reported 88 percent of tests were positive. How could that be?”

An investigation into these hard-to-believe results showed that Orlando Health’s 98 percent positivity rate was wrong. When the station contacted the hospital, it corrected the positivity rate to only 9.4 percent.

Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center reported a positivity rate of 76 percent. But, again, a spokesperson for the Medical Center told FOX 35 News that the positivity rate for the Center is actually 6 percent.

How often do such “errors” occur?

Florida, of course, has seen dramatic increases in actual positive tests, but on the positive side, the state’s nation-leading increase in positive tests is not matched by a nation-leading increase in deaths, so far.

One Florida death was a man in his 20s who died in a motorcycle accident, but was classified as a COVID death. FOX 35 News received a statement from the Florida Department of Health attempting to clarify how a "COVID death" is determined. If, "COVID19 is listed as the immediate or underlying cause of death, or listed as one of the significant conditions contributing to death. Or, if there is a confirmed COVID-19 infection from a lab test – and the cause of death doesn’t meet exclusion criteria – like trauma, suicide, homicide, overdose, motor-vehicle accident, etc."

Despite the latter point, this death was classified as a COVID death.

Here are some relevant data from covidtracking.com as of July 19, 2020. The overwhelming majority of data comes from local or state/territorial public health authorities:

Total tests = 44,968,536

Positive tests = 3,962,061

Negative tests = 41,273,443

Test results pending = 3,032

Total hospitalized = 276,439

Total deaths = 132,395

These data show that only 8.3 percent of total tests are positive; that only 7.5 percent of those testing positive become hospitalized; that 3.6 percent of those testing positive succumb to the virus.

Also, fewer than half of those hospitalized — 7.5 percent of those testing positive — succumb to the disease, and 96.4 percent of those testing positive survive.

The selective choosing of which data to report can — and does — create a particular response: fear.

It would be far better — and far more responsible — to report the whole range of data so that the public will have a broad set of data on which to base its reaction.

How to hold elections during the age of the coronavirus pandemic?

Every true American understands the importance of her/his right to vote and the importance of secure national, state and local election systems that allow us to express our preferences for elected officials.

Elections must be conducted in a secure, fair and sensible manner. Only eligible voters — which, in most every case, involves only citizens — must cast ballots in our elections. And measures are required to assure, to the greatest possible extent, that only eligible voters vote.

Conveniences have been made a part of the election system to make voting easier. But elections are far too important to allow measures to weaken the systems for no better reason than for a little voter convenience. Having to endure a little inconvenience in order to secure this vital process is a small price to pay.

In certain circumstances, absentee ballots may be allowed. Military personnel and others who must be away from their voting district on Election Day, as well as seniors and others who are unable to get to the polls, are legitimate candidates for mail-in ballots. But we must recognize that voting by mail is an insecure process — one with great opportunity for fraud.

And can you guess which voting convenience has the most support among those who wish to transform the country?

Absentee voter fraud — voting by mail — was so great a problem in Florida, Missouri, New York and North Carolina that some elections in those states were overturned.

The case in North Carolina involved the 9^th Congressional District race, which the state election board overturned due to illegal vote harvesting, including forging and altering absentee ballots.

Under present circumstances, tens of millions of eligible American voters are under restrictions, including no gatherings of more than 10 at a time, social distancing, masks, gloves, stay-at-home orders or recommendations, etc. The primary elections are upon us and Election Day, 2020 is a bit more than six months away.

Some opportunists want existing election system weaknesses to remain in place into the future, and for the upcoming elections to be carried out by mail. All in the name of safety, they say. As genuine as these concerns may be for some of them, this suggestion is a prescription for voter fraud at a previously unimagined level.

And with the help of absentee voting the evil orange man, if he has his way, will easily win reelection.

Or, perhaps the other side will do the better job of “getting out the vote,” particularly since it is the liberals/Democrats that are campaigning for voting by mail.

Currently, millions of those whose names are on voter rolls are deceased, have moved, or are ineligible for various reasons. Automatically mailing ballots to these people does not merely allow for the ballots to be stolen, marked, and returned, it invites that result.

If you are still not convinced that voting by mail is fertile ground for fraud, consider this: a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the city of Los Angeles and the state of California alleging failure to maintain accurate voter registration rolls has been settled.

California and Los Angeles agreed to remove 1.5 million individuals who were not removed when they became ineligible to vote. It is fair to wonder what might happen to 1.5 million ballots mailed to people who are ineligible to vote, many of whom no longer reside at the address on their registration.

Naysayers contend that there is no real voter fraud threat. And those in the “nothing to see here; just move along” faction prefer a system that can be manipulated for political gain.

But even if the contention is true that no real threat exists, what harm is there in continually examining election systems, and strengthening them to prevent fraud?

However, voter fraud is a true threat. More than 1,200 instances of proven fraud can be found in The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database. These cases include absentee ballot fraud.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID law, saying, “flagrant examples of such fraud … have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists [including] Indiana’s own experience with fraudulent voting in the 2003 Democratic primary for East Chicago Mayor … [and] demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real, but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.”

The most secure voting procedure is when poll workers are presented required evidence by potential voters proving they are who they say they are, and that the person is properly documented as being an eligible voter. That evidence is a valid photo ID.

Accurate voter rolls, and eligible voters with a photo ID appearing at the appropriate polling place, staffed by people dedicated to allowing only eligible voters to vote are essential elements in a secure system.

Even if the COVID-19 virus has not completely run its course before Election Day, or if it reappears during flu season, as has been suggested, polling places can be operated safely. Voters and poll workers must conduct themselves appropriately.

Under such circumstances voting in person at polling places is safe, and is also the most secure method of holding elections.

Coronavirus developments: radical restrictions, and a new wrinkle

There is a lot of concern about the on-going restrictions on activities to prevent spreading the coronavirus.

National, state and local leaders must walk a fine line between restrictions for safety and not infringing unnecessarily on their citizens’ freedoms. People are beginning to object to some of the restrictions. And a look at the things some state and local governments are doing reveals just how far over the line some have gone.

One episode in Baltimore reportedly appeared to be a drug raid, as police surrounded the building. It was Sunday, and the building was a church, in which fewer than 10 people had gathered, appropriately spaced, as per instructions. In fact, there were more police present than worshipers.

At a drive-in service in Mississippi, attendees were fined $500, even though they did not leave their cars. And in Kentucky on Easter weekend, police were dispatched to churches to record the license numbers of cars in the parking lots. Three Massachusetts men were arrested, and faced the possibility of 90 days in jail, for crossing state lines and … playing golf.

In some states, citizens are urged to snitch on their neighbors who do not obey the strict stay-at-home edicts. Hardened criminals are being released from prison so they won’t catch the virus, while stores that sell guns to people for their protection are closed. However, pot and booze stores remain open.

In Brighton, Colorado, a family was in an empty park, with the father and daughter playing softball, when police showed up. Officers alleged that the father and daughter had violated the social distancing guidelines. But none of the officers obeyed the social distancing rules they were enforcing.

The father, believing he had done nothing wrong, refused to show the police his ID, and was summarily handcuffed right in front of his wife and daughter and put in the back seat of a police car. Later, the father said, “During the contact, none of the officers had masks on, none of them had gloves on, and they’re in my face handcuffing me, they’re touching me.”

He was released from custody after several minutes, and later was issued an apology from the City. Better late than never.

Not all restrictions are so wildly radical, but citizens in at least six states have started protests over what they see as unreasonable restrictions.

Michigan bans “all public and private gatherings,” but still allows in-person lottery sales. Residents and citizens who own homes in the state in addition to their primary residence may not access their second homes.

A Facebook post declared, “Dope stores? Open. Abortion clinics? Open. Churches? Shut down. Local businesses? Going broke!” At a large protest rally in the Michigan state capitol, protesters carried signs that read, “tyranny worse than the virus” and “honk if you love liberty.”

People in stores that sell both food and other materials were able to buy food, but were prohibited from buying other products, such as hardware supplies and gardening seeds, which were deemed “non-essential.”

Michigan House speaker, Lee Chatfield, posted on Twitter: “Non-essential in Michigan: Lawn care, construction, fishing if boating with a motor, realtors, buying seeds, home improvement equipment and gardening supplies. Essential in Michigan: Marijuana, lottery and alcohol. Let’s be safe and reasonable. Right now, we’re not!”

In too many cases, efforts at imposing safe behaviors have turned into authoritarian malfeasance.

As the struggles against COVID-19 continue, a professor at Tel Aviv University has discovered a new feature of the virus. Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel has determined from analyzing data from nine countries where the virus infected thousands — U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain —that regardless of how the country reacted to the virus, all countries experienced common infection patterns.

“His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week,” the Townhall.com story reported.

“There is a decline in the number of infections even [in countries] without closures, and it is similar to the countries with closures,” Ben Israel stated in his report.

Addressing Israel’s extremely strict quarantine and closure restrictions, he told the Israeli news agency Mako, “I think it's mass hysteria. I have no other way to describe it. 4,500 people die each year from the flu in Israel because of complications, so close the country because of that? No. I don't see a reason to do it because of a lower-risk epidemic.” 

The US response is less drastic than Israel’s response. But if the professor’s conclusion is correct, the US also has over-reacted, and is still doing so. The frighteningly high predictions of deaths and infections in the models followed by the administration’s virus task force have been greatly lowered. But the restrictions based on those incorrect models remain in place.

Each day those restrictions are in place, our economy incurs further damage, more businesses are on the edge of permanent closure, and people suffer even more of the dangers of isolation, including death.

We need to begin restoring normalcy to the country, and in doing so we must use common sense and practice responsible socializing.

Fear, questions and rumors complicate the coronavirus situation

The thought of being infected by the COVID-19 virus is truly scary. The numbers are big. On Monday, the number of Americans infected was 337,933, and the number of Americans who have succumbed to the disease was 9,653. The number of deaths after the virus has run its course is predicted to be 200,000 or more, according to some models.

A new model predicts coronavirus deaths will peak in the United States on April 16, though the research is a preprint, which means it has not yet been peer reviewed. The peer review process is a vital part of assessing new medical research and identifies weaknesses in its assumptions, methods and conclusions. This prediction could very well change.

Accompanying the actual news about the virus are rumors about the pandemic. One says it did not come from a wet market in Wuhan, China as is commonly believed, but from a biological laboratory located there. Another said that the lab developed the virus and purposely released it as a biological weapon against China’s enemies.

In another storyline, a guy claiming to have been employed in a management position in a high-tech firm, and therefore possessing special “inside” information, said that the pandemic isn’t a virus at all, but the effects of radiation poisoning from 5G technology. And it’s all part of a plot by a select few individuals who are determined to wipe out much of human life and take control of Earth.

If the latter theory were true, we might as well go back to work and forget about social distancing and hand-washing; we are all at great risk from 5G, no matter what we do.

As the coronavirus rages, we don’t need bright, happy fairy tales. We also don’t need dark, misery-laced horror stories. We need factual information, the good and the bad, absent emotional baggage. On this point, both President Donald Trump and the news media need to sharpen up.

Trump often puts things in a good light, sometimes in words that are much too positive. Embellishing is a common practice among people trying to persuade. The media, on the other hand, often reports things with a negative tone, frequently more negative than reality requires.

When Trump speaks in traditional Trump-speak, the media accuses him of lying. When the media accuses Trump of lying, he accuses the media of “fake news.”

The news business involves telling people the facts of a story. Report what Trump said, his actual words. Don’t tell us what some reporter or editor thinks he meant. If his meaning is unclear, ask for clarification.

An example, cited in a previous column: Trump said, “And this is their new hoax,” referring to the way Democrats were treating the administration’s response to the virus. This statement was misreported in reports from several respected media sources as Trump calling the virus a hoax. Is that incompetence, or politics?

Our lives have been substantially affected by COVID-19.  The tragedy and pain of suffering and death from it are enormous. And fear is at epidemic levels. Our lives have been turned upside-down, with businesses and schools closed, jobs lost and people told to stay home.

However, some more positive aspects of the pandemic can give some relief to the sometimes-overwhelming negative aspects. While America has recorded 9,653 deaths as of Monday, 17,582 infected people had recovered. And that does not count those who didn’t know they were infected and suffered no symptoms.

And the roughly 338,000 Americans who had been confirmed as infected as of yesterday is only about one percent of the nation’s 330,000,000 total residents.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) produced a model of the virus, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This model has been widely cited as what to expect.

Writing for Townhall.com, Derek Hunter looked at the model’s projections compared to reality. He wrote, “While the reporting data from some states are lagging, others have provided information that calls into question the validity of the whole model, and with it, all the actions taken by government.”

Citing the IHME model he noted that on April 4th, from 120,963 to 203,436 Americans would require hospitalization, but only 18,998 actually were hospitalized.

Given that not all states had reported complete statistics when the count was taken, Hunter notes that those whose report was incomplete were smaller states with less serious effects. Therefore, even if the reported number was doubled, it was still far below the projection.

Models are informed guesses based upon a data set. The problem is which one is selected, and how much damage will be done if it turns out to be the wrong.

As of April 6, worldometer.info reported the following worldwide statistics: Of the 1,287,284 confirmed cases, 70,540, or 5.5 percent of the total, have died; and 271,950, or 21.1 percent, recovered or were discharged.

In the U.S. there are as of yesterday 337,933 identified positive cases, according to dailyrecord.com, and 9,653, or 2.9 percent have died, and 17,582, or 5.2 percent have recovered.

This isn’t good news, but it demonstrates that reality isn’t as bad as we may think.

The coronavirus COVID-19 is not the only threat China represents

Many years ago, there was a very popular movie, “The China Syndrome.” It was a thriller about a potential cataclysmic event that could possibly destroy China, due to a problem in an American nuclear power plant. We now face another sort of China Syndrome.

This one originated in China, and has already killed thousands, and will likely kill thousands more around the globe. It was in China where the novel coronavirus COVID-19 first appeared and eventually was made public.

It angers many people when this disease is identified by its country of origin as the “Chinese virus,” or the “China virus.” But doing so is not racist. And it is not xenophobic.

It is no more so than “Chinese food,” “Chinese Communists,” or “Chinese checkers.” Many other diseases have likewise been named after their countries of origin: German measles, Spanish flu, Japanese encephalitis, Ebola virus, West Nile virus, and MERS (the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome). These names merely accurately identify the diseases’ origin; they reflect reality. Nothing more.

Carelessly slinging around epithets, like calling the use of the term “Chinese virus” racist, and mis-labeling people as racist, xenophobes, etc., devalues those terms. Where Donald Trump is concerned, this happens often. Such usage gives credibility to the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” It may be as real as the China virus.

That China is no friend of the United States is a story with a long, long history. In recent history, its tariffs on American products have worked against us for many, many years, reaching a record $375 billion in 20l7. Its penchant for intellectual property theft, stealing American technology through the work of spies acting as workers or associates, and often requiring companies to voluntarily share new technology with the Chinese Communist Party in return for being allowed to market products to China, also severely damage the U.S.

The onset of the coronavirus has thrown spotlights on the dangerous degree to which pharmaceuticals are now made in, and controlled by, China. Irresistible incentives offered to American drug companies resulted in the transfer of production of drugs from America to China.

“Multinational drug companies, many of them headquartered in the United States, began buying ingredients for critical drugs in China after the U.S.-China Fair Trade Agreement passed nearly two decades ago,” notes an article in U.S. News. “State-owned Chinese companies, buoyed by heavy government subsidies, set their prices so low that they were able to undercut established manufacturers in the U.S. and elsewhere, prompting them to shut down their plants and move their operations to China,” the article continued. 

China’s “Thousand Talents program tries to recruit experts from Western universities to work in China and ramp up its progress in science and technology,” reported NBC News in January. An FBI complaint charges that the program has “rewarded individuals for stealing proprietary information and violating export controls.”

NBC also reported on the arrest of Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Lieber is alleged to have failed to disclose his involvement in the Thousand Talents program to the Department of Defense.

Lieber was allegedly paid $50,000 monthly by China's Wuhan University of Technology, and also received $158,000 in living expenses, and a $1.74 million award to set up a research lab at the Wuhan University.

Knox News, the online presence of the Knoxville News Sentinel, reported in February that “Anming Hu, an associate professor in [the University of Tennessee’s] Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, faces three counts of wire fraud and three counts of making false statements, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Hu allegedly neglected to make UT aware of an affiliation with a university run by the Chinese government, which then resulted in UT falsely certifying to NASA that it complied with the appropriate laws.

President Donald Trump has begun fighting back against China’s outrageous tariffs, by putting tariffs on Chinese products. As with everything Trump does, this, too, has drawn much criticism. But Trump notes that after years of sitting mildly by while China hurts American business interests and strengthens itself, it is time to fight back.

The country has been gradually coming on board with Trump’s plan. The latest ABC News/IPSOS poll shows that 55 percent of Americans now favor his actions, while 43 percent still oppose his handling of this crisis.

Addressing the threat posed by China today, historian and former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich notes, “Now we face the fifth great challenge to our survival as a free country (following the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, and the rise of the Soviet Union).”

In his new book, “Trump vs. China: Facing America’s Greatest Threat,” in which he tracks China’s centuries-long development up to today, he describes the situation. “The Chinese Communist Party’s totalitarian system is big, and getting bigger, getting richer, and becoming more sophisticated. It is the greatest competitor that America has faced in our history.”

The COVID-19 threat that originated in China will most likely be defeated in time. The greater threat posed by China, however, will still exist, and must be addressed.

A truly serious health situation becomes a political football

Candidates working for a primary or a general election victory in the presidential race naturally chop each other down, and they also highlight what they see as the incumbent’s weaknesses and mistakes. This has reached new heights with President Donald Trump as the “enemy.” Everything he does, from relevant topics to the inane, is targeted by Democrats and their media friends. 

The only thing Trump could do that these folks would approve of would be to resign, or perhaps to drop out of the November election. And then he would be criticized for not doing that the “right way,” either.

Cutting taxes, getting rid of needless and harmful regulations, taking out terrorists who murder American military personnel, and strengthening the position of the United States on the international stage are among the things he’s been recently criticized for. And soon we will likely hear that he wears the wrong color socks and eats too much beef.

The emergence of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has gotten the attention of nearly everybody in the United States and, of course, that includes those running for the Democrat nomination for president.

And not surprisingly, they criticize Trump’s official reaction to the threat of the coronavirus in the U.S. When Democrats claimed that his administration was doing a poor job in addressing the threat, Trump declared those criticisms a “hoax.” Not the virus itself, mind you, but the criticism of his handling of it.

The media then took his comment out of contest and ran off the rails. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote: “Remember this moment: Trump, in South Carolina, just called the coronavirus a ‘hoax.’”

Another media mis-statement, by Politico: “President Donald Trump on Friday night tried to cast the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a liberal conspiracy intended to undermine his first term, lumping it alongside impeachment and the Mueller investigation.”

Both NBC and CBS ran similar misrepresentations of Trump’s comment.

Most Americans do not factcheck what they read and hear from news outlets. They trust them to be accurate and objective. As these examples illustrate, the media often fall short of that expected and needed purpose. Whether by shoddy work or deliberate intent, the result is the same: mis-information gets passed on as accurate news, which many automatically believe. Is that “fake news?”

As previously illustrated, this happens too frequently. Therefore, is the President’s charge that some in the media are “the enemy of the people” really so far-fetched?

And it’s not only the news media that gets things wrong. Candidates for the Democrat nomination also got it wrong. Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg said, “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing.”

“We increased the budget of the CDC,” former Vice President Joe Biden said. “We increased the NIH (National Institutes of Health) budget. … He’s wiped all that out. … He cut the funding for the entire effort.”

But dang the luck, both are wrong. Trump is trying to reduce government spending to deal with the budget deficits and the huge national debt, which is badly needed. However, none of the cuts he has called for have been enacted; Congress did not pass them.

The Associated Press factchecked these criticisms, and defended Trump: “He’s proposed cuts but Congress ignored him and increased financing instead. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.”

And just because budget cuts were proposed does not by itself indicate that they would have affected fighting the coronavirus. Further, there is an existing fund that was created specifically for health emergencies.

Trump also has asked for additional funding for fighting the coronavirus, but Congress did not grant the request, saying that more money is needed. If so, would it not make sense to grant the initial request and then pass additional funding, rather than turning down what the loyal opposition claims is critical funding?

As for who is on the job, overseeing the work, which Democrat hopefuls also criticized, the major players are Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s principal deputy director, and a respected veteran of previous outbreaks, Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH’s infectious disease chief who has advised six presidents. 

These doctors provide the medical knowledge needed to protect Americans from this serious threat. And Trump has formed an administrative coronavirus task force to manage the government’s actions.

Trump has assigned Vice President Mike Pence to head the task force, which includes Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, national security adviser Robert O'Brien, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun, Department of Homeland Security acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, and Domestic Policy Council Director Joseph Grogan. 

Weaponizing the coronavirus threat into a political issue is both a cheap shot and dangerous. It unnecessarily raises fears among the public where good sense is needed, and it shifts the focus of the Democrat campaign away from the radical political positions the Democrats propose.