This was sent to me today...
Dear Philip,
We've never pulled any political punches around here and we're not going to start now.
Of all countries in the world, it is obvious to us that the United States will be hit the worst of them all by this coronavirus pandemic. And the reason we know this is because we are doing almost none of the things that have actually stopped its progress elsewhere in the world, which are massive scale universal testing and actual enforced social contact lockdowns.
In the last couple days a number of states here have ordered people to stay in their homes, so called lockdowns. But a fool's complacency and lax enforcement persist.
Take Italy, for a tragic warning example. They quickly mandated a "lockdown." But when the head of the Chinese Red Cross went there just the other day to try to help, he was shocked to observe people still widely gathering in groups. And that is why the number of infections and deaths in Italy continue to skyrocket even today.
Here in America, it is even worse. Crowds of beachgoers partying on spring break, and the governor of FL does nothing, leaving it to local officials to close particular beaches piecemeal.
Let us contrast this to what the Chinese did themselves.
Of course, China can fairly be characterized as a police state. And let's be very clear about this. We are not advocating for a police state. But in lieu of that, it is all the more incumbent on the American people to take this deadly seriously and to act accordingly. And they are not.
At first the Chinese tried to ignore the problem for totalitarian political propaganda reasons. They did not want to publicly admit they had a problem, or even to act on it privately. Just like America under Trump. They even went so far as to force the doctor who first blew the whistle on this new deadly disease to abjectly recant his dire warning. A doctor, a relatively young doctor, who himself was one of the first to die from this virus.
But then they got police state serious. When they locked down Wuhan it was a real lockdown. They were welding shut the doors of apartment houses to lock people inside. They were going door to door, people being dragged away by men in hazmat suits if they had an elevated temperature. There were videos of police being trained to tackle people on the streets with man sized butterfly nets.
The Chinese right now are body scanning everyone out and about for the slightest bodily temperature increase. Nobody can get into China at all without being placed in mandatory 14 day military quarantine. There is more threat to them from new infections coming back in than the other way around. So much for closing our borders.
It makes anything being done in America look like the silly, tokenism window dressing that it is. What are we doing instead? They ask you to answer the 3 magic questions (have you been to Wuhan? etc.), as if that might stop a virus.
Did you hear about bills being passed in China to send people thousand dollar (or the yuan equivalent) checks so they would not suffer even the slightest bit of financial pain? No, you did not. The Chinese people were just ordered to suffer.
Worst of all, The Center for Disease Control has a video online at this moment telling people they don't need a face mask unless they are sick. This is pathologically reckless lunacy.
They only reason they are saying this is that because of Trump's negligence there aren't enough masks to go around even for our doctors and nurses confronting this pandemic in its face. While those who might have them are hoarding and profiteering like the true red blooded, right wingers they are.
Everyone in America needs a face mask and they need it now. People are spreading this disease to others before they even know they are infected.
Everyone in America needs to be tested immediately, and must at least self quarantine until they are. And the failure to mobilize these things aggressively enough, while Trump continues to shine it on and lie about it, verbally attacking journalists who even give him a big, fat chance to reassure the American people, and earns a 55% approval rating for doing so, will be the death of us all.
It appears to us that America approves of its demise. The survey says, America, the dead.
One infected person in New Rochelle led quickly to a cluster of 100, which has now exploded almost overnight into upwards of 10,000 cases around New York City. It hit first in states with the most active international travel traffic. But there isn't a state in the union that doesn't have more cases now than New York started with. In 2 weeks, it will be the same in all of them.
As of this writing, Trump apparently hasn't even actually triggered specific industrial mobilizations under the Defense Procurement Act. When pressed on this by a reporter yesterday about which companies exactly had been put under this act, Trump arrogantly brushed off the question with the dismissively vague answer, "a lot."
In 2 weeks, we might ourselves in fact be living in a full blown police state. Because of course Trump would like nothing better than to order that. And we are quite certain his supporters will heartily approve of that as well.
But by then it will be too late for most of the world topping multitude who will die right here in the good ole USA because of Trump's inaction over an extended period of months, with red lights flashing and people with their hair on fire trying to get him on the case, and him telling us now nobody could have anticipated this.
We got the cremations we voted for. There won't be enough coffins either.