October 23, 2024 - INFLECTION POINT

In my last letter to you five months ago, I said that I expected to continue writing about matters of historical and contemporary significance. I realize that I haven’t lived up to my own expectations - at least, not yet. Therefore, I ask for your indulgence as I’d like to share a few reflections today.

There seems to be a collective amnesia in America related to the first year of the Covid pandemic. After China informed the world of a disease outbreak on December 31, 2019, Donald Trump’s response consistently was marked by downplaying the threat, inaction or partial measures, confusion, and wildly inaccurate public statements. During those first critical weeks of 2020 leading to confirmation of the first US case, President Trump squandered every opportunity to slow the spread through containment and suppression based on testing, contact tracing, and isolation. 

From that point forward, his bungled leadership left the US with the worst outbreak in the entire world. By the day he left office on January 20, 2021, the US had accounted for a quarter of the world’s cases (25 million) and a fifth of its deaths (400,000), despite having only 4% of its population. Those percentages remained steady throughout 2020, even as the virus spread across Europe, into South America, from Southeast Asia to India, and throughout Africa.

Now, we know that President Trump secretly sent coveted Covid-19 testing equipment and masks to Vladimir Putin for personal use when they were in short supply in the US, a fact that has been publicly confirmed by the Kremlin. Do you remember when Trump accused New York City hospitals and medical professionals of stealing and selling N95 masks and ventilators in order to divert attention from the absence of a national plan? (https://www.newsweek.com/trump-cuomo-masks-hospital-doctors-stealing-new-york-1494949).

By his words and example, Trump became not a leader but a saboteur of any national effort to combat the pandemic. He publicly undermined his own White House Task Force (“Liberate Michigan”, he said). He subverted our health agencies by installing political operatives to meddle with science (remember Michael Caputo at CDC). He staged unmasked rallies mocking his experts (“people are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots”); slowed down testing for political purposes (“So I said to my people, slow the testing down”); and held superspreader events in the Rose Garden and White House. Those actions made clear his intention to infect as many Americans as soon as possible. “Herd mentality”, he called it. 

In November 2020, Americans knew Trump’s actions were a colossal failure. Prior to the 2020 election, the Pew Research Center surveyed people from 14 advanced nations and found that 95% of Danish respondents said their country had handled the crisis well. In Australia, the figure was 94%. The U.S. was one of only two countries in the world where a majority believed otherwise. 

When President Trump contracted COVID himself in October of that year, he received immediate treatment at the finest medical facilities on Earth. COVID did not kill him, but it surely defeated him at the ballot box. Finally, after his defeat, he fomented a superspreader riot in the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the election.

Of all the myriad ways in which Donald Trump failed the American people during the pandemic, perhaps his most lasting legacy was the way he left us deeply divided - by gender, race, education, age and geography. During the last century, this country’s greatest successes have occurred when we were united -  defeating fascism, rebuilding Europe after World War II, conquering polio, landing a man on the moon, ending the Cold War, rebounding from 9/11. 

Somehow, we must find a way to heal the wounds that separate us today. That begins by listening to one another and remembering the truth.