My Less Than Humble Opinion

Donald Trump Wants to Kill You

To be fair, he does not want to kill any individual, he just doesn’t care how many of us have to die to feed his insatiable need for power. His current plan for beating the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States calls for a minimum of 2.15 million deaths.

The 2.15 million comes from Rachel using the generously low death rate of 1% of the cases. The current rate is 2.97. If that rate remains unchanged, 6.4 million of us would have to die in order to attain herd immunity. The Trump Administration and some Congressional Republicans find that to be an acceptable loss. What’s the loss of a few million old people … or people with underlying conditions … or black, brown, and indigenous people … or poor people in general if their deaths save the “economy” (aka the stock market).

In a March 16th Coronavirus Task Force press briefing, Dr. Brix said:

So, we had new information coming out from a model, and what had the biggest impact in the model is social distancing, small groups, not going in public in large groups. But the most important thing was if one person in the household became infected, the whole household self-quarantined for 14 days. Because that stops 100 percent of the transmission outside of the household.

In an April op-ed in The New York Times, epidemiologists Britta L. Jewell and Nicholas P. Jewell wrote that 60 to 90 percent of U.S. deaths might have been prevented if “social distancing” had been recommended and universally practiced a week or two earlier. At 12:16 PM on September 25, 2020, the CDC COVID Data Tracker reported 202,329 deaths in the United States. Could 121,397 to ‭182,096 of those deaths been prevented? Those of us who believe in science over Presidential wishful thinking and lack of leadership, think so.

Olivia Troye is a former Homeland Security official who was an advisor to Vice President Pence on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. After resigning in August, she joined Republican Voters Against Trump and made this advertisement:

What did the President know? When did he know it?

President Trump gave journalist and author Bob Woodward 9 hours of recorded interviews spread across 18 phone calls. Mr. Woodward used this information as a guide to research for his book “Rage“. On February 7th, the President told Woodward that the virus is airborne and is “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” Woodward thought he was referring to the infection’s spread in China.^[1] The following month, Trump told the country that COVID-19 was no worse than the seasonal flu.

As soon as it became obvious that COVID-19 was our problem too, Bob Woodward set his sights on learning, “What did the president know?” and “When did he know it?” By May, he learned about a meeting that had occurred on January 28th. In that meeting, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told President Trump that the coronavirus would be the “biggest national security threat you face in your presidency”. What did the President tell us?

He later told Woodward, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” Was he concerned about a panic among the people of the United States or a “panic in the stock market”? Take a guess.

What is the payroll tax? Do we really want to eliminate it?

What is the payroll tax? What is its purpose? Sometimes listed as FICA on one’s paycheck, this tax supports Social Security and Medicare. Because his proposal was not included in any Congressional stimulus package, President Trump signed an executive order that defers the tax from September 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020. Employees will have to pay it back between January 1, 2021 and April 30, 2021.

If he is re-elected, the President plans to eliminate the tax completely at the end of the year.^[2] He believes that the economy will grow dramatically thereafter. “We’ll be paying into Social Security through the general fund,” he claims. This seems as likely as was getting your money’s worth from “Trump University“. Social Security Administration Chief Actuary, Stephen Goss, believes that Social Security would be permanently depleted by 2023 if the tax were to be permanently eliminated. Perhaps Trump’s real intent is to begin eliminating those of us who depend on our Social Security and Medicare benefits.

And, finally, the children …

Nobody is safe. He wants our children to get sick too.

Those who follow the President without question are told that their children are virtually impervious to infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Even if they contract the disease, they won’t get very sick. They may not even notice. Sure, they may carry COVID-19 to older relatives. but those people are disposable. Think of them as martyrs to the almighty economy.

Of course, anyone who is paying attention knows this is not true. Hundreds of children have suffered multisystem inflammatory syndrome related to contracting COVID-19. Some have died. Additionally, there is mounting evidence that many who have recovered from COVID-19, including the young, are suffering after-effects that may be with them for the rest of their lives. The most obvious after-effects are:

• Blood clotting, stroke, and embolisms
• Heart damage
• Lung damage
• Neurological symptoms

Surviving COVID-19 is likely to be considered a pre-existing condition for decades to come. Of course, President Trump took care of that recently with another of his fabled executive orders, right?

Wrong! Notwithstanding the impermanence of executive orders,^[3] this executive order is a dozen pages of legal language that is little more than a wish list. Joe Antos of the American Enterprise Institute has said that the order “has no technical content.” “All it really is, is a statement that he wants one or more of his departments to come up with a plan. And he doesn’t give any guidance or the vaguest outline of what that plan should be.” Commenting on the core text of the document:

“It has been and will continue to be the policy of the United States to give Americans seeking healthcare more choice, lower costs, and better care and to ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions can obtain the insurance of their choice at affordable rates.”

University of Pennsylvania law professor Allison K. Hoffman said, “The language itself guarantees nothing near the protections in the Affordable Care Act, and such sweeping protections are only possible by congressional action, not regulation.”

The Case Against the Affordable Care Act

While President Trump talks about his great healthcare plans and enjoys the theater of an executive order signing, his Administration is supporting a case, filed by 18 Republican-led states, that hopes to abolish The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The case is scheduled to go before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, November 10th. In late 2019, the Urban Institute estimated that cancelling this healthcare law would add 20 million Americans … an increase of 65% … to the number of uninsured individuals in the United States.

Twenty million is about 6.3% population of the United States. About 2.5 million Americans are currently infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. If only 6.3% of those infected lose their insurance, almost 154,000 of those sufferers will suddenly lose their insurance. Almost from the moment that President Obama signed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Republican leaders have been talking about “repealing and replacing Obamacare”.^[4] For 2 years, they had a Republican-controlled House, a Republican-controlled Senate, and a pseudo-Republican President. Their efforts to change the law failed. Now, in the midst of a pandemic that, as of September 27th, has already killed over 209,000 of us, they are trying to get the Court to do their dirty work.

Apparently, the President is not alone in his disdain for Americans lives.

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End Notes

1. At the time, only one travel-related case of COVID-19 had been reported to the CDC. The first cases unrelated to travel were not reported until the end of February.
   
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2. He cannot eliminate payroll tax permanently. Congress passed the law. Only Congress can change it. The only way President Trump can permanently change any of our country’s laws by himself is to overthrow the law and become a dictator like the world leaders he so admires.
   
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3. Ask the Dreamers what one president’s executive orders mean to his successor.
   
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4. They were in near complete agreement on the “repeal” part, but never came close to agreeing on the “replace” part. It doesn’t take much thought to figure out their true intent.
   
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