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Bruce Bialosky

The Imaginary COVID-19 Response

A friend recently told me a story: He had a very close relationship with someone who was his friend and his attorney. They spoke religiously every day, early in the morning, before their workday started. One day his friend called him and told him he could no longer maintain a relationship as long as my friend supported the President. My friend responded by saying there were plenty of other attorneys and he had plenty of other friends. You probably have had a similar experience if you support President Trump. The thing is this incident occurred in 2004. It took ten years for his friend to call and apologize.

Just like a certain element of our society thinks that all problems emanate from Mr. Trump and their distaste for him is different because it is Trump, they think their “imaginary” leader would be handling the COVID-19 response so much better.

Trump often repeats the fact that he shut down flights from China which is true. And during the March daily press briefings, he focused on his current plan of action. Since the MSM has sworn an oath to destroy Trump and his presidency, they badgered him about what he did during February. This is despite his having already established the virus task force in January.

Recently I was having lunch with a friend at my office. Yes, I know it is a criminal act and I plan on turning myself into the COVID police next week if one of you does not snitch first. He is not a politico, but he has a distaste for Trump. We discussed the current scene for only a short time, and he attacked the President’s response to the virus. He threw out “What was he doing in February?” He has obviously been watching CNN or MSNBC.

On my short ride home I turned my radio to The Sage of South Central, Larry Elder. He played a tape of Dr. Fauci from February 29th telling us that the response as of that time was what was warranted. Anything more than that would have been an unjustified overreaction. Needless to say, I called my friend. Maybe Trump should have been knitting masks in his free moments?

To give you a perspective, let’s look at what you get if you order a meal for takeout or delivery. Take the sushi place next to my office. They need containers for the wasabi and ginger. They need a separate container for the side of rice, the salad and the soup; then there is the container for the sushi. Additionally, there are the side packets of soy sauce. They have a limited supply of all these containers due to their normally small take-out business. They call their supplier and increase their order by a factor of ten. The problem is every other restaurant in town is doing the same. The supplier calls the manufacturer and says they need to increase their standard order by ten-fold. The manufacturer says they don’t have enough raw materials and they have to call their suppliers. They all have to hire more people who have no experience in manufacturing their products. And you just wanted some sushi.

That is why those whining about the lack of medical gear (PPE) and ventilators is nothing but whining. Maybe we should have 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 ventilators sitting in a warehouse on ticklers ready to use for the next pandemic that soothsayers tell us is coming. On the other hand, we should be grateful that American companies like Ford and GM turned on a dime and started to manufacture ventilators – complex machines – with which they had no prior manufacturing experience. Six weeks after the onslaught began, we have excess ventilators and hospitals have a shortage of patients. Somehow some believe another imaginary administration would have done better.

Democrats hate it when former President Obama is compared to President Trump. But here we go. Does someone really believe that a President that ran military decisions by lawyers could have prepared a better response to this pandemic? Mr. Obama would be sitting in committee meetings and ruminating rather than taking swift action.

If you want proof that the imaginary government could ever exist, let us just look at the current darling of the Democrats and the man who many want to replace Biden as their presidential candidate, Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The press likes to tout his excellent handling of the pandemic. Simultaneously, they deride the Governor of Florida as a bozo endangering his residents. I have talked to transplanted New Yorkers who now reside in Florida who want their old governor back. Florida has two million more residents than New York. Currently New York has about 25,000 fatalities from the virus. Florida 1,400. That is a death rate of .125% for New York as compared to .006% for Florida.

Let’s deal with the real failure of Cuomo. The first multiple COVID-19 deaths occurred in a Seattle nursing home. That should have given him, Cuomo, a hint. Every study has said that this effects elderly far more than any age group. Based on that Cuomo issued an Executive Order on March 25th telling nursing homes they were on their own. He told nursing homes they could not transfer out their residents who tested positive for COVID-19 and worse they had to take in patients who had tested positive for the virus. He refused to allow them to be transferred to the converted Javits Center which sat virtually empty with hundreds of beds. In his now famous (maybe infamous) daily news conferences, one day he told the nursing homes the deaths were their fault and then in another told them he would not help them get PPE. That is why New York’s health department has stated 20% of all NY deaths are coming from nursing homes.

On the other hand, the Governor of Florida set up strike teams to test not just nursing homes but all senior facilities, and then enlisted the national guard to expand the strike teams. The state is helping nursing homes get PPE. Despite having the second oldest population of any state, Florida has far fewer deaths than New York has just from nursing homes.

The point of this is that the charges about mishandling the response to COVID-19 would be lodged against any President that the press doesn’t like – that means Republicans. If there were any other person who was not a Democrat in office, the response would be judged the same — incompetent. Democrats and the MSM look back at the good old days of a nice Republican and disparage the current one.

Go back to the beginning of this article and read the first paragraph again. They haven’t changed, they make the same false charges and have the same lack of tolerance. Why would we believe people who never had a real job that produced anything other than a hamburger would have done a better job with the pandemic?