In February 1955, Present Dwight Eisenhower sent the first military advisers to Vietnam to help build up Diem's army and stop the spread of communism. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford oversaw the conflict which ratcheted up in intensity as the years passed by. The war would eventually claim the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and some 3 million Vietnamese.
There is a tendency to view incumbent presidents with reverence. However, this is highly likely to change when there is not a steady hand at the wheel, they are constantly broadcasting inaccurate information or if they are considered one of the most unreliable and untrustworthy individual's on the planet. I did say one of, because there are others.
When a president is counseled tax cuts as a cure, blaming others, promising cures in weeks or telling you to go back to work, you are in a really bad place. There are indications (and I really, really hope to be proven wrong on this - only your positive actions from today onwards will change this, not good words or intentions) that the current president will be at the helm when over 58,000 Americans die, some of who could have been saved. U.S. deaths could be above 98,000 (USA Population is 327.2 million) without some direct intervention, more testing and better healthcare support. This would mean that President Trump would be known forever as the 'Bloody President' who mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic and killed more people in one year, than all the American deaths during the 20 years of the Vietnam War. This data is based on a direct parallel with U.K. Data (A senior UK health official has warned that the country would have done well if it managed to keep the coronavirus death toll below 20,000 which is 0.3% of the population; UK Population is 66.44 million with the NHS to help out).
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates a 3.4% Mortality Rate based on those that contract COVID-19, however not everyone within the population is going to contact it.
The date is 19-May-20, and the U.S. death toll stands at 93,366, and with very little national coordinated interventions, a President who is desperate to get people back to work so he stands a better chance of getting re-elected at the end of the year, and Obama criticising the virus response and asking why so many officials aren't even pretending to be in charge, this are going to get a lot worse for all Americans for many more months.
The blame game is already starting for those that haven't handled the crisis very well and allowed too many to die, and you will hear noises about who is to blame from them. You will hear about the WHO, China, previous administrations, the scientists when politicians where just following the science, CNN Fake News, CDC, presidential advisors, Robert Redfield and others, but let us not forget who is at the helm, who took the office of U.S. President, who is actually accountable (person is the individual who is ultimately answerable for the activity or decision) not the multitude of responsible persons who were the individual(s) who actually complete the assigned or delegated tasked. It is our leaders, they are the ones who were caught sleeping, hesitated when mitigations actions were needed, didn't rise to the challenge, gave contradictory or in some cases dangerous advice. They are the ones who we should hold to account. Don't confuse accountability with responsibility, and don't accept the people they attempt to throw under the bus to save themselves.
There are leaders around the world from many nations that have shown true leadership and handled the crisis exceptionally well. So it can be done and has been shown to work when sensible and pragmatic solutions have been implemented.
We should expect better from our leaders. We should expected that they value human lives and seek to prevent unnecessary losses. We should expect they should be competent and act in the best way for the people. If they can't do this, they should not be in power, because they should leave it to other who can do these three things.
The reality is that our leaders have three masters to serve in order of priority they are: (1) get re-elected and stay in power; (2) look after the economy and the money people (the people that hold the most wealth); (3) ensure there are enough commodities (i.e disposal people) and raw materials to keep the second condition going without a backlash from the general population. People well-being, ethics, the environment, high morale standards and establishing a sustainable platform for the future generations don't feature.
The New York Times puts it very clearly in their article 'How Many Will Die for the Dow?' where they said "But Trump can’t get beyond boosterism, insisting that everything is great on his watch. And he’s clearly still obsessed with the stock market as the measure of his presidency, So Trump and his party want to go full speed ahead with reopening no matter how many people it kills. As I said, their de facto position is that Americans must die for the Dow."
I have updated this article today (22-May-20) as the deaths in the U.S. have reached 97,528 and total World deaths are recorded as 338,716. We approach two terrible targets for both numbers to put them into perspective. The first is related to the estimate that 111,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants, are estimated to have been killed in the conflict (2001-present). The second is related to the fact that of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died during the war.
The date is now 22-Sep-20, and the U.S. death toll stands at an unfathomable 200,000 which is the highest number in any other country. How did the Unites States that was considered No. 1 most prepared, with labs, experts and stockpiles better than every other country end up here? It happened due to poor leadership at the top, downplaying the threat, blaming others, bad behaviours, turning issues into political items, the lack of a coordinated national response and how anti-science the USA has now become. It is morally broken, fed lies upon lies and is just laying down and accepting defeat, because it believed in a President that doesn't care about people, it clearly out of his depth and focused only on his own approval rating chasing a second term.
We have heard from this President how clever he is and how he has the best memory, but the real clever people don't need to broadcast this statement, because their actions speak louder than their words. COVID-19 has shown that “all the world’s leaders took the same test, and some have succeeded and some have failed,” said Dr. Cedric Dark, an emergency physician at Baylor College of Medicine in hard-hit Houston. “In the case of our country (USA), we failed miserably.” The USA has collectively failed the memory test and the lessons learnt from previous pandemics. So Mr President, your family may have paid for you to get a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, but you are ill equipped, unskilled and uneducated when your faced COVID-19. You have no where to hide, nobody to blame because you have sacked so many around you, and failed the USA when they needed a competent, reliable and sensible leader. I therefore award you the grand title of "the most irresponsible, reckless and worst by far President of the United States of America, who is so shallow, he can only wonder at the number of screens he has on Air Force One." A quote from the President, “It’s got more televisions than any plane in history!” he said admiringly about Air Force One.
On this day (22-Sep-20), the number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 67 days. It is roughly equal to the population of Salt Lake City or Huntsville, Alabama. The White House has defended President Donald Trump’s false claims the novel coronavirus “affects virtually nobody” young, as his press secretary told reporters the administration was “expecting two million” deaths in an attempt to seemingly downplay the nation’s death toll of 200,000 Americans. Worryingly, a widely cited model from the University of Washington predicts the U.S. toll will double to 400,000 by the end of the year as schools and colleges reopen and cold weather sets in. A vaccine is unlikely to become widely available until 2021.
It is very timely that an article appeared in 'The Atlantic' entitled 'Trump has nothing else up his sleeve', which based on his tax returns and only paying the IRS $750 between 2016 and 2017, that "the president’s real-estate empire is a boondoggle that’s losing millions of dollars a year, or it’s a massive tax-avoidance scheme. (Or perhaps it’s some of both.)." The article goes on to state that "Trump is not the first president to encounter difficulty in his personal finances, though none has premised his political appeal so narrowly on business acumen. But the Times revelations are important not only because they raise the question of whether the president is fleecing the federal government on taxes, but because they illustrate his failures as a leader. Trump has only a few tricks: postponing all reckonings, bluffing his way through his current mess without concern for the next one, and falling back on his family. The president has returned to these same maneuvers over and over, and there’s no reason to expect they will work out any better for the American people than they have for the Trump Organization. In fact, the proof of Trump’s failure has already arrived. The tax returns reveal Trump to be an awful businessman, rescued only by his father’s largess and his own skill in playing the part of a mogul on The Apprentice. Flush with cash from the TV show. Nevertheless, Trump ran for president promising to bring his experience from the private sector to the White House, and while his record of honesty is poor, he has kept this promise. He has installed his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner as top advisers. He has made a series of short-term bets, taking on enormous long-term risks with no plan to deal with them. On matters of policy, Trump has used the same impulsive approach he did in business: Act now to reap the short-term benefit, deal with the ramifications later (or even better, let someone else deal with it). The negative effects of some of these policies are abstract or still pending, but in COVID-19, Trump has met a problem he can’t so easily postpone. The president has tried to prioritize winning reelection over handling the pandemic. “His sole purpose is to get reelected,” the infectious-diseases expert Anthony Fauci said, according to Bob Woodward. Instead Trump finds himself as an underdog going into November’s election—in part because the coronavirus has persisted, killing more than 200,000 Americans, and appears to be surging once again. Trump thought he could jawbone a reopening of the economy without first getting the coronavirus under control, and as a result has reaped both a weak economy and an unyielding pandemic. Among his economic stimulus suggestions: a payroll tax cut that, you guessed it, workers will have to repay next year. By then, Trump will either be reelected or out of office."
Welcome to the world of the one trip pony who lives for today, and damns everyone else for the future.
"If Trump has approached his business and political careers in precisely the same way, and with precisely the same success—fooling just enough people to keep getting by—the stakes are very different. Trump’s business struggles largely pose a risk to himself, his family, and his lenders, none of whom are especially sympathetic figures. In office, however, the harm is much broader. Trump could permanently weaken the effectiveness, integrity, and solvency of the U.S. government. All Americans stand to lose, and more than 200,000 have already lost their lives."
The writing is on the wall. It really depends if you want to read the wall and accept the message.
References
https://www.ft.com/content/814321f0-00d8-49fb-92eb-b7161ff747f7
https://truthout.org/articles/we-need-a-president-who-cares-if-we-live-or-die-instead-we-have-trump/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/#who-03-03-20
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries