To the Editor:

In the April 16 issue of The Enterprise, George Pratt asserted that the “Hate Trump Virus” is more destructive than the COVID-19 pandemic currently paralyzing much of the world and especially the United States. I respect and admire Mr. Pratt, but I take exception to his argument.

If President Donald Trump is a giant target for critics, he has himself to blame. He has a special talent for sowing dissension, division, and mistrust, not a winning formula for leading a nation.

Perhaps the most important quality we expect from any president is the ability to safeguard the health and wellbeing, indeed the very survival, of the country’s citizens. For the past 12 years, U.S. intelligence analysts have been warning of the potential for a zoonotic (animal-to-human) virus to generate a global health crisis and economic collapse if preventative measures are not taken.

Indeed, during the previous administration, President Barack Obama had set up a White House pandemic response team to deal with such threats, a team that Trump disbanded after taking office. Even so, over the past year, White House economic advisers have issued warnings of a possible pandemic event and the need to plan for catastrophic medical and financial consequences.

President Trump had access to all of the foregoing information and advice, which he ignored. During the months of January and February 2020, when the coronavirus was ravaging China, and then Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and other countries, Trump acted as if these events were happening on another planet.

When deaths starting piling up in the U.S. in March and April, he could no longer deny the reality of COVID-19 or pass it off as a Democratic hoax. After months of presidential inaction, it is not surprising that the pandemic is currently spreading through our population and killing more people than in any other country: 56,933 deaths in the U.S. compared to 26,977 in Italy and 4,633 in China as of April 28. 

Now, Trump has the audacity to appear on self-promoting nightly television briefings, flanked by Dr. Anthony Faucci and Dr. Deborah Birx, claiming that the virus “came out of the blue” and that, if we had known about it earlier, we could have “stopped it.” Yes, if Trump had listened to those very same medical scientists and his intelligence staff months, indeed, years ago, how many American lives might have been saved? The problem is that we have a president who does not like to read or listen to experts.

One of my grandmothers died from the H1N1 virus during the “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918. Prior to its onset, she was a healthy young farm wife and mother of four, living in an isolated rural area of northern Minnesota. The impact of the pandemic was comparatively mild when it appeared in the spring of that year, but it came back with a vengeance during the fall of 1918.

The same double-wave pattern could be repeated with COVID-19 this year if appropriate measures are not taken. How many more lives will be sacrificed on the altar of one man’s inflated ego?

Robert Jarvenpa

East Berne