Trofim Lysenko was an agronomist who in the 1930s caught Stalin’s ear with a bogus theory: that grain seed could be conditioned to grow quicker and more abundantly in all sorts of climates, like growing bananas in New York and apples in the Arctic. Stalin loved it and made Lysenko’s theory law. He became the Soviet Union’s leading geneticist. He was flacked in honors, including three Stralin prizes and six Orders of Lenin prizes. The moment scientists began questioning his method and evidence, Stalin had them fired, exiled or shot. (It was the reverse in the United States: an Oregon State University professor was fired in February 1949 for supporting his theory, though no one was shot over it.)
Facts spoke for themselves. Lysenko’s theory, applied to Soviet and Chinese agriculture–Mao was a fan–sharply cut yields, provoked famines and the death of millions in the two countries.
Lysenko was a charlatan, an impostor, and everything a scientist should not be. His fake science would have gone nowhere without Stalin. With Stalin, it became the only science in Soviet agriculture. His success was a triumph of lies under cover of power, a power he lost only when Kruschev replaced Stalin after 1953, though it took a while. But the damage was done on the scale of a crime against humanity. When Lysenko died in 1976, Harrison Salisbury, the celebrated journalist and Times correspondent in Moscow, described Russia’s biggest fake as “a zealot with the burning eyes of Savonarola and the narrow mind of a dogmatist.”
Lysenkoism is a lesson of the coronavirus pandemic on this one-year mark as we look back at what went wrong. A lot of the pandemic was not in our control. No amount of border control or travel restrictions or even quarantines would have kept the virus from coming in, whether it originated in Wuhan, China, Thule, Greenland, or Haskell County, Kansas, likely origin of the flu pandemic of 1918.
A lot of the pandemic was in our control. George W. Bush and Barack Obama had both prepared the nation. The theory of social distancing came to Bush’s attention in 2006 when he read about the flu pandemic. He ordered it to be a national strategy in case of a pandemic. Obama amplified the strategy through the Centers for DiseaseControl.
In 2019 Trump’s own Department of Health and Human Services held a series of exercises for eight months based on the following then-fictional scenario: a respiratory virus breaks out in China. It is soon detected in Chicao. The World Health Organization declares a pandemic 47 days later, but too late to keep 110 million Americans from becoming infected, 7.7 million from being hospitalized and 586,000 from dying. The scenario was called “Crimson Contagion.” The exercise revealed to what extent the country was ill prepared, its public health departments underfunded, its various agencies uncoordinated. Despite that, the CDC’s strategy was still a solid foundation.
Trump got the report. Trump did nothing. He did Nothing.
On March 19, 2020, days after the World Health Organization had declared the coronavirus pandemic, Trump said this: “Nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this before.” He was lying. It was one of the 30,000 lies of his presidency, and one of its most consequential. The Crimson Contagion report he had in hand had predicted 586,000 deaths from that fictional pandemic. The pandemic that exploded out of Trump’s wilful ignorance will reach that number in the next few weeks.
He was aware of the severity of the coming pandemic. He’d told Bob Woodward as much. He was aware of the CDC’s strategy dating back to Bush and Obama. Even badly funded, had the strategy been executed and better funded along the way, it would have enormously diminished the suffering and deaths. Trump had other plans. One other plan, really: getting reelected, whatever the cost. Here we were chanting black lives matter all summer. But to this guy it wasn’t just black lives that didn’t matter. White lives, brown lives, whatever lives didn’t matter, not with his political life at stake. To Trump, all that mattered was Trump.
And so Lysenkoism came back in full force in the Trump White House as the United States began battling the coronavirus pandemic on two fronts. One front was the virus itself. The other was Trump, whose subsequent reliance on the likes of Mike Pence and Scott Atlas was like raising Lysenkos from the dead and installing them as his covid response czars, though Trump by himself was Lysenko enough. His strategy was simple. Downplay. Deny. Deflect. Divide. Ridicule. And above all, invent. He had once invented extra floors for his Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, just so he could claim it was taller than neighboring buildings. He called it “truthful hyperbole,” the kind of Orwellian blackwhite that would later give us “alternative facts” and “truth isn’t truth.” Lying about a vulgar skyscraper’s length was good fodder for tabloids. Lying about national security in the face of a public health calamity was treason.
Certain egregious and possibly criminal mistakes like Andrew Cuomo’s seeding of nursing home deaths aside, this was the result of willfully bogus science on a national scale. Trump could have mitigated the catastrophe by letting the scientists and public health experts do their work. Instead, he turned quack and pushed one Lysenko lie after another, from inventing falling case loads to encouraging states–at times with insurrectionist language that would seed January’s actual insurrection–to reopen prematurely, to ridiculing claims of a second wave or the efficacy of masks. Atlas amplified the fake science when he was given his platform starting in August, accelerating the carnage. Trump was repeatedly urged to correct his course by saner heads, among them Deborah Brix and of course Dr. Anthony Fauci. He mostly ignored them.
As of today more than half a million Americans have died of covid. We have 5 percent of the world’s population but more than a fifth of the world’s covid deaths. Proportional to their population less than a dozen countries had more deaths than the United States. Italy didn’t know what hit it when it was the first European nation to take the brunt of the first wave. Britain initially and Hungary throughout followed Trump’s Lysenko-like lead. Asian countries, authoritarian or not, neutralized the pandemic and returned their societies to near-normal because their residents take public health seriously.
No need to even look so far. Seattle was ground zero of the outbreak a year ago, with most of the nation’s earliest deaths attributed to covid. Washington State’s leaders gathered, devised a unified strategy based on public health priorities, and stayed unified as they executed it. “One year later,” the Times reports, “the Seattle area has the lowest death rate of the 20 largest metropolitan regions in the country. If the rest of the United States had kept pace with Seattle, the nation could have avoided more than 300,000 coronavirus deaths. During a year in which the White House downplayed the virus and other political leaders clashed over how to contain it, Seattle’s success illustrates the value of unified and timely strategies: Although the region’s public health experts and politicians grappled behind the scenes about how to best manage the virus, they came together to present a united front to the public. And the public largely complied.”
Get even closer. We had something like that going in Flagler, as long as politicians allowed local public health, physician and emergency management leaders the room to set procedures. Between the local health department’s Bob Snyder and Dr. Stephen Bickel, emergency management’s Jonathan Lord and the school district’s David Bossardet, public health protocols prevailed more than not.
Palm Coast’s Milissa Holland led her fellow mayors and other elected and administrative officials to issue a joint statement of unity, emphasizing the importance of letting science and professionals do their job: “Subject matter experts,” the statement read, “must have the autonomy to determine, in concert with stakeholders, what a credible plan will be for the community and how it should look over time.” the implicit message being that politicians can only muck up the process (as a few locally did so miserably well). The result: Flagler maintained the lowest proportional number of infections among Florida’s 67 counties, and one of the lowest death rates. In Florida’s killing fields it’s a little like that proverb about the one-eyed man who boasts of his vision among the blind. But considering the Savonarola-Trump element in Flagler, whose shock troops agitated with the support of our more craven elected officials to undermine the message, it was quite an achievement.
But successes could not be the rule when a Lysenko was at the helm. Trump’s regime depended on conflict, turning Americans against each other and hoping he’d have the winning side come the election. The pandemic was just another battlefield. Trump mutated conflicts where there were none. He gave cover to millions of saps who thought flouting public health measures and infecting others was a patriotic statement.
The trade-off between safety and civil liberties isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s not a tradeoff. Public health when applied objectively is no more of a political or ideological issue than garbage pick-up, vaccination, clean air and water. Ensuring those neither infringes on civil liberties nor invokes one ideology or another, unless of course they’re politicized by opportunists who transform them into wedge issues. All it takes is a lie hooked to power. So it was with covid, which turned the lie as viral as the pandemic.
That’s why more than half a million Americans have died so far in the United States instead of a third that number. Comparing Trump to Stalin would of course in most regards be outrageous and irresponsible, not even rating as “truthful hyperbole.” That doesn’t mean the two are incomparable in all regards. Their embrace of Lysenkosim leads the way, with one difference. Stalin at first could claim ignorance about Lysenko’s lies, though the innumerable scientists Stalin silenced quickly did away with that excuse, turning Stalin’s embrace of Lysenco into reckless malice. Lives didn’t matter to him, either. Trump never had an excuse. He started off maliciously disregarding his two predecessor’s warnings, his own administration’s pandemic exercises, torrents of evidence starting more than a year ago, and billions, then trillions of dollars at his disposal to mitigate the calamity. His refutation of science for political ends was a premeditated crime. It was nowhere short of a crime against humanity. The Medal of Freedom he awarded Rush Limbaugh at the 2020 State of the Union Address might as well have been accompanied by a posthumous award to Trofim Lysenko. No one would have been surprised.
Lysenkoism wouldn’t be an issue if Trump was really gone. But he’s not. His quackery defines the Republican Party, whether it’s lying about science or electoral results. January’s insurrection was Lysenkoism by other means. Our own legislature is right now advancing a bill that would arbitrarily limit the duration of public health emergency orders. Ron DeSantis is the Sunshine State’s Lysenko as he positions himself for a presidential run on Trump fumes. Some of our own elected officials locally still peddle the bogus narrative on masks and vaccines.
Anti-science allied to ideological reaction is alive and immune to reason. A poll released Thursday shows 30 percent of Americans, and 41 percent of Republicans, not wanting the vaccine. Getting enough people vaccinated to reach community (or “herd”) immunity is becoming the new challenge as vaccines begin to flood the market. As is now routine with right-wing dissociation from reality, it’s clearly, largely, an ideological refusal. It will hurt the refuseniks as much as it will their neighbors, further slowing a recovery half a year where it could have been.
We’re finally emerging from the pandemic. But as long as Trumpism reigns, so does Lysenkoism. That’s a grim prognosis for the health of the Republican Party, if not for the Republic.
Pierre Tristam is FlaglerLive’s editor. Reach him by email here. A version of this piece aired on WNZF.
Mountain Man says
Who got the Vaccine you Dimwit ? Sure wasn’t Hiden Biden, he wants you to think he did.
Paul Mayock says
Thank you once again for your intelligent and well written take on our current situation. We’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel. oh so many different tunnels. Everybody should just put a mask on and social distance. It’s not so bad.
Fredrick says
One of your worst Pierre…. I could not even stomach it all. Had to stop at “He did nothing”. He stopped flights and was hailed a racist and bigot. The left was more concerned about saying where the virus came from. The left was more concerned when he stopped funding WHO. The people who were supposed prevent this from happening and figure out why it happened, but like the left bows to the Chinese just as this administration does. The left claims Como a hero when he sends the elderly, the most vulnerable to die in nursing homes. The man who says he needs vents and gets them and does not need them. Needs beds, gets beds and a ship full of beds and does not use them. The left is more concerned with pushing fear and hysteria. You should be embarrassed Pierre. This type of comparison it beneath you.
Steve says
It is so pitiful that the lost boys of the Election still cling to the past strategiy of continually trying to subvert the Reality we all witnessed day after day of the Trump Administration to downplay the seriousness of this C19, ignore it, and let it ravage our Populous. We witnessed this in realtime you cant undo it and 45 and you all lost because of it. Get over it so pathetic
Fredrick says
Steve….. The world is a scary place and full of risk. The majority of us will not live in fear, will take proper caution but are going to live our life. Life is a risk is reality. Driving down the street is a risk and is reality…. hiding from risk and being scared is just place stupid…..
onewack says
Wow—never would have guessed who wrote this by the headline!
Justsayin says
Lying about science? I have to laugh every time I hear this term from a liberal.(Kindergarten Cop) Just remember one thing Pierre, when that vaccine flows through your blood stream. What administration made it happen. The crypt keeper had nothing to do with it’s development.
Steve says
Exactly was the highly skilled Scietists of Pfizer JNJ Moderna AstraZeneca and many others Thank You very much
Justsayin says
Funny how CNN termed it in April of last year. Line two sure looks like what I said. Did we also notice who was closer in the timeline of development.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/31/us/coronavirus-vaccine-timetable-concerns-experts-invs/index.html
Just sayin
Steve says
If ya hadnt figured this out yet let me enlighten you. 45 would say anything multiple times and contradict himself in the same paragraph. It will disappear, rounding the corner, under control SOUND Familiar. I could go on but too redundant for me
Terry says
You’re sick comment about Donald Trump and the Russians or as bad and as low as you can get it just goes to show me why you should be shut down. You wouldn’t know the truth if it smacked you in the face
CJ says
Stalin did love to shut down his enemies. Just saying….
Frank says
To associate Donald Trump with the likes of Joseph Stalin and his agronomist Trofim Lysenko is nothing but outrageous and scandalous rubbish. The fact is that COVID-19 is still ravaging much of the European continent to this day, and how, pray tell, is that Donald Trump’s fault? When Donald Trump left office in January, no fewer than 8 European Union nations suffered from COVID-19 death rates that exceeded that of the US. How was that Donald Trump’s fault? It was former President Trump who fast-tracked the vaccinations that are now reality. Yes, he trusted so-called recognized “experts” such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose own personal and professional connection to the Wuhan, China lab where the COVID-19 virus originated is at best “murky”, to lead us down a confusing path plagued with contradictions and unexplained reversals. How did former President Trump ignore the American medical community? Which medical recommendations and guidelines did he ridicule?
You bash Governor DeSantis but only make a limp reference to Governor Cuomo’s disastrous, deliberate contamination of New York’ senior living facilities and make no reference at all to Governor Murphy’s identical, reckless policy next door in New Jersey, which still holds the world record of COVID-19 deaths at 2,700 per million population. How are those dreadful state statistics the fault of Florida’s Governor? Please explain. I once lived in the Pacific Northwest. If you love how they handled the COVID-19 virus in the State of Washington so much, why don’t you move there? Who is keeping you here?
I rarely come to Flagler Live for news or commentary and will be sure to avoid it in the future.
NoFool says
There would be no vaccines without Trumps Operation Warp Speed. Saint Fauci stated numerous times that halting travel to the US from China saved thousands of lives. The left’s hero Governor Coumo, is now expendable because Biden was elected, and after he killed thousands as a favor to the hospital lobby. Thousands of COVID infected migrants are now welcomed at our borders and transported. Teachers Unions still won’t let children go back to school because they don’t care about science, only greed. Congress has gone wild, creating a partisan blue state bailout, calling it a COVID relief bill that is 90% nothing of the sort. The lunatics and criminals are back in charge of the asylum!
Thank God we might be able to barbecue in our backyard by the 4th of July…and celebrate with President Harris, when Biden is no longer the useful idiot to the Marxists that have taken over the Democrat party.
Ray W. says
I am not convinced that NoFool understands that shutting down travel from China can save thousands of lives AND that not properly addressing the pandemic afterwards in many other ways can cost hundreds of thousands of lives. These two outcomes can occur in sequence, both prompted by the same person. A coordinated long-term effort addressing multiple facets of the pandemic could have made a major difference in our current state of affairs. NoFool focuses on travel from China. Frank focuses on comparisons with European nations and fast-tracking vaccine research. Frederick focuses on the WHO, China and Cuomo. Each of them is partially correct. But a person can be right and wrong at the same time. Trump had a good response to travel from China, as NoFool points out. However, the best response would have been a much more complete approach to addressing the pandemic. Since Trump was right in his limited response on China travel but wrong in his overall approach to the pandemic, he was right and wrong at the same time. None of the Trump supporters and/or Biden haters mention Trump’s repeated comments that the virus would just magically disappear without doing anything additional at all. Just how wrong did Trump have to be for his followers to now accept that he was wrong in his overall approach to a serious problem? We needed and still need a multi-faceted approach to a threat that has cost nearly 540,000 lives and we seem to be sidetracked by those who want to find comparisons with other countries and find out just who stopped whom from travelling from where in the early stages of the pandemic. The threat remains in full force and we need to ensure that it does not transform from a pandemic into an endemic. If coronavirus variants continue to develop in various locations around the world, we may find ourselves updating vaccines to address the variants in a never ending cycle. Such a never ending cycle of variant and new vaccine response fits the scientific definition of an endemic.
Steve says
“When bad science meets politicians looking for easy answers bad things will happen.” Pretty much sums it up. We watched as 45 ignored it or lied. He commented more on boat flotillas in his Honor. A total disgrace and now at least in my World hes gone. Good riddance to him,his Rhetoric, Dogma and Tweets.
marlee says
…and…trump wants credit for the Vaccine!
Pierre, thank you for this history and summary….I’m forwarding it.
Dennis says
You made a mistake on the headlines. Trump should be replaced with Biden. Biden rules by executive order, just like a dictator does. Biden is too stupid to rule.
JimB says
Well, I’m not even going to read such as asinine article but I have to wonder how long President Trump is going to linger in the mind of the author. One would think a more pressing matter to a journalist would be the mental capacity of the gentleman that is occupying the white house at the current time. Maybe a thought or two about just exactly who is making decisions that will impact us all (I know I’m impacted each time I go to the gas station). Perhaps the author should seek some type of counseling to get the “bad orange man” off his mind and realize there is a new man in office and that is what should concern him now.
CJ says
Gas was already going up under Trump. Nice try.
Frank says
The price of gas aside, what about the “mental capacity” issue raised by the commenter regarding the idiot napping in the Oval Office now? No response to that? I listened to his first speech after two months in office and understand perfectly well why his handlers don’t want him speaking to the public as it is a national security threat. China-North Korea and Iran-Russia are laughing their heads off but at our expense. God help us!
Steve says
Well they just continued to laugh I guess because 45 was THE laughingstock of the Free World of course except for Dictators like in Russia NOKO etc..LMAO
Larry says
the bad orange man is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, Until he’s held responsible and accountable for his crimes, that’s how long he’s going to linger in the minds of millions of Americans.
A Concerned Observer says
Seriously? Give it a break! Move on to something, ANYTHING relevant.
marlee says
……………….again……………………….!!!!
The vaccines were developed through a massive collaborative effort among scientists, governments and private companies, meaning no single person can claim credit for the achievement.
Frank says
Thank God for Donald Trump! Pay attention!
Steve says
Thank God He was Evicted. The King of Putting all your eggs in one basket such a premier failure
JOSEPH says
I wish you would go back to what ever country you came from
Obviously you are out of touch with facts and reality
oldtimer says
Just a reminder to the author of this article, Trump is gone! Let’s see how this puppet of the left runs things for the next four years. This clown hid in a basement and now asks permission from “Nance” if he can take questions from the media. Who is the power behind the curtain now?
Eric says
Total Rubbish!!!!! Absolutely shameful!!!
HammockBear says
No matter how you spin your topics, this article was sickening. I can only hope that you can rid your vile hatred of former President Trump. The article was hate fueled and insulting to anyone who read it. Flagler Live is in a dark time and hope the light of day will spread some basic positivity to you, Mr. Tristam.
paul says
Good one Pierre. though your comments seem to have rattled the cages of the Lib-hating anti- science crowd, who seem determined to try to peddle their alternative reality narrative.
Your Lysenkoism as a parallel to our recent ‘invent your own facts’ pro-authoritarian regime should he included in every school district’s curriculum.
Agreed, Flagler was a successful example of science led Covid attitudes. Sadly that seems to have eroded badly, thanks to a growing anti-mask, anti-vacc mentality spawned by our home grown followers of fake science.
Mista Breeze says
Well put Paul. He pissed off the trumpees with this one! But it was a well written piece. Trump and his followers made the wearing of masks and social distancing a bad thing instead of a response to a pandemic situation that has killed over half a million of us. Lighten up you guys. Lets get through this thing. And quit trashing on Biden. You gonna burn those stimmy checks? Not a single Republican helped you get those things.
Richard says
Poppycock. Lysenko and Stalin are more akin the liberals of today that want you to believe nonsense.
Trebor says
Pierre–This is one of your best pieces, and one of the best analysis I have read on the mismanagement of COVID under the previous administration. Your drawing the parallel between Trump and Lysenko is chilling. Of course, it is no coincidence that Trump has time and again demonstrated affinities to authoritarian rulers and to their fungible interaction with the truth (Putin, Shih, Kim Jong-un, Bolsonaro). Don’t mind some of the feedback: If it weren’t for the few paragraphs connecting with Flagler’s response, this piece would get national play. I hope it does anyway. It is excellent.
Eyes on the Crazy Bee Hive says
Wow you really poked the Crazy Bee Hive, didn’t you! I’d laugh if it was someone else’s county…but sadly…this fine demonstration of mental deficiency is coming from our ring wing populace here .in our own county. You just can’t fix stupid…and wow do we have a whole lot of delusional right-wing nut jobs here. The circus may have left town, but it left its head clown here in Florida. Anyway, Pierre, there are those of us who truly enjoy what you say, and actually understand, even the big words. :-)
Sheila Zinkerman says
Donald Trump and his administration’s Operation Warp Speed strategies were not the foremost reason that COVID-19’s accelerated vaccination development was successful. The development speed was the result of decades of research by dedicated scientists like Dr. Fauci and their worldwide scientific research on other viruses such as AIDS, SARS and MERS. These scientists laid the foundation for COVID-19 vaccination researchers to build on. This research was funded by public money and foundations created by philanthropists such as Bill and Malinda Gates. For example, as reported by John P. Moore and Ian A.Wilson in First Opinion: “When Chinese scientists published the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence on the internet on Jan. 10, 2020, multiple vaccine programs were started within days because existing vaccine design methods could be repurposed.” Give credit where credit is due for the speed of COVID-19 vaccine development. It was neither Donald Trump nor strategies of Operation Warp Speed. Foremost, it was the past work and discoveries of worldwide scientific research that allowed present repurposing of vaccine design methods, generous donations from foundations, and our American tax dollar investments in scientific research.
Source: https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/05/basic-research-paved-way-for-warp-speed-covid-19-vaccines/
Steve says
And as the Orange Koolaid continues to get passed around the table in a plastic gallon jar like the rot gut bathtub Gin it represents We can only thank the Powers that be The World is rid of the Blowhard Orangeman from whence the juices flowed. May you all get a new Life and remember He lost you dont have too.
Landon says
You truly sound like a lunatic who spends life watching ABC, CNN, Basically believing all the Left sided tripe.Democrats are responsible for any delay and Your idol Faucci is a political hack for Corrupt Democrats. After being confronted by BLM in Palm Coast twice, I applied and Received my concealed carry! My wife and I are to old to be harmed by your obvious idols. Trump is the the most successful President of modern times! Your article is a pathetic rant spawned by your brainwashed mind.When revolution breaks out law and order will be returned! Racism will die with the Removal of all Democrats or rats as I-see them from government!Ask around Our armed service veterans and active are on the side of conservatives! I have spoken to hundreds, all have one thing in common they love the Constitution!
Steve says
I am so glad you believe it God Bless. But, do you really think anyone else will. Vote Accordingly Just Keep Winning. PS The disappearance of the shattered GOP will be seen way before your Democrats are done away with. See 2020 Election, past Midterms, Ga. Runoff lol
James Manfre says
Thank you for this excellent article illustrating how history repeats itself. It is interesting that the comparison is to a Russian dictator who was in the trance of a charlatan while Trump was under the influence of Putin and his truth denial techniques for four years. Giving Trump any credit for the vaccine is like praising the arsonist for calling the fire department. The facts are that Obama and Bill Gates informed Trump from the inception of his presidency that a world wide pandemic was a distinct possibility. In fact the Trump administration did a table top exercise on a possible pandemic that predicted 500,000 deaths. What did Trump do? He slashed the budget of the agency overseeing pandemics and the watchdogs who were keeping an eye on China’s wet markets. When informed in January of 2020 of the corona virus and its potential impacts on the US, he played down the seriousness by his own admission. He constantly provided erroneous information to the public about how it was going to magically disappear and hobbled his experts so that they could not provide the proper health guidelines that would have drastically reduced the incidence and deaths from Covid. History will treat him as the ignorant, incompetent despot that he was as it has done with Stalin.
Will says
Blah,blah, blah……same story, different party. I can’t remember anytime in the last 50 years that either party or any politician ever did anything to help anything other than their swollen butts, bellies and bank accounts.
As far as the covid 19 goes. Where did it come from? How many death worldwide.
Fredrick says
Says the man who was the most incompetent Sheriff in Flagler History… Please run again so I can vote for the other person.
Vincent A. Liguori says
Suggest you all read the Govt Accounting Office 50 page report on development of the vaccines. Mark Levin gave a superb recap on his show . Try some true facts for a change.
FlaglerLive says
Here’s a background story: “GAO: COVID-19 vaccine production falls short of January 2021 goal.”
Here’s the full report.
Sherry says
Reading all the comments here is quite the exercise in the comparison of “Emotion” VS “Facts” or hate filled mud slinging VS fact based discussion.
Those who have pointed out the “facts” that forward thinking, highly educated, scientists and private citizens spent decades laying the ground work for combating future pandemics have explained the important context for understanding where the success of the vaccine(s) development originated. Contrary to “cult” belief, trump did NOT single-handedly whip up the vaccines himself.
The FACT is, the trump administration did NOT even have a plan to get the vaccines into the arms of our citizens!
The FACT is, the trump administration did NOT order enough of the two “approved”” vaccines to fully inoculate ALL Americans!
The FACT is, trump knew the virus was dangerously “airborne” on Feb. 7, 2020 when he admitted that FACT during an interview with Bob Woodward. trump continued to “LIE” to the American people, musing that it would magically go away when the weather got warmer!
The FACT is that the trump administration did NOT roll out one single Federal project to combat the virus directly.
I could continue with a very long list of FACTS about the failings of trump. What I will point out is that defending trump by spewing hate filled comments only serves to make those who do so look terribly foolish, at a minimum.
We would all be better off discussing what we can learn from the lethal mistakes of such an administration in historic comparison to other leaders. NONE of us should want a repeat of 2020 . . . or the last 4 years, for that matter. Take a step back and really “think” about
a path to health, to peace, to a happy, safe neighborhood, to a caring society where we are all uplifted by each other.
Gray says
Excellent article. Right to the point. Thanks for writing it.
Gina Weiss says
Why does ones comments and beliefs become a sling shooting shit contest with some people, some of the remarks that come out of mouths are more scary than the ideologies themselves! Why in the world should a blog be “SHUTDOWN”, person “AVOIDED” and this is the one that’s very frightening, “GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM” Opinions and beliefs are our 1st amendment! Why can’t we look at this a learning experience whether we agree or not there is some truth we can find or maybe allow our minds the freedom to rethink, open and expand our thoughts. There are some blogs that I agree and some not but that does not mean that I detest the person it comes from. In fact I find it a challenge and or a learning experience. Is this because we are not willing to come to the table of open and honest discussions yet, maybe we are not. Then again it’s hard reaching people who believe in their own lies!