What I find disturbing is that Trump allowed this to happen right under his nose.
Trump should have fired Fauci, ended the lockdowns (except for those with comorbidities) and take control of the narrative that our hospitals were not overwhelmed.
The number of positive tests was shifting the goalposts and Trump allowed that to happen. He should have stuck to flattening the curve to prevent an overload of our medical systems.
That could have happened by Memorial Day last year.
It’s easy in hindsight to blame Trump, but let’s have a moment of honesty.
While I agree with this declaration and said in Spring of 2020 that we needed to isolate and protect the elderly and let everyone else get back to business it is easier said than done. You would have had to isolate eldercare facility staff (not going to happen). Many young people would continue to transmit it to the elderly. It was a sound plan and it would have been generally effective, but it would not have been perfect AND we only know all of this now in hindsight.
Our biggest problem was the media who created a narrative of panic and elevated Fauci. Had Trump kicked Fauci to the curb he would have owned everything that happened because he would have been ignoring the experts. The leftist media cabal and leftist politicians would have gone nuts and Trump would have been blamed for every death. Yes, I know the leftist wingnuts did this anyways but most do not accept this.
Like it or not, there was only one person who had the power at that moment to make such a proclamation and it was Fauci. He was the only one the media and democrats would listen to and they used him as a wedge (remember Biden’s “I am going to listen to the science” during the campaign?). Trump looked to the experts in the federal government and Fauci was at the top of the list.
Trump was not in control of this. Yes, he “should have been”, but you can only control something with the consent of the governed. If I could change one thing about the “pandemic” it would have been to have Trump push therapeutics harder with a WH panel to offer an alternative to Fauci who flatly shut down any talk of therapeutics along with big pharma and health departments.
Therapeutics were available. We were told they did not work, but that is a lie. Yes, they are not perfect, but had we pushed early and immediately therapeutic intervention we could have greatly lowered deaths and illness. At some point as others have said “the virus is going to virus”.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but the left and media put Fauci up on the pedestal - not Trump. Knocking him off at the height of the fear over the pandemic would have been bad politics. On top of that, the media had Trump in a box. Get rid of Fauci and you own it all.