- THE PATRIOT POST - MARK ALEXANDER - MAR 15, 2023 -
Trump’s irrevocable and fatal political error in his COVID-19 response and recovery strategy was appointing Anthony Fauci as his de facto “public health” strategist.
“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” —Benjamin Franklin (1759)
The Patriot Post has, since January 2020, maintained a ChiCom Virus pandemic timeline, the most comprehensive database on news and policy related to our nation’s COVID-19 response and recovery. What started as reasonable government guidelines issued by Donald Trump predictably metastasized into draconian government mandates under Joe Biden. We maintain this ongoing timeline record as a warning that this should never, ever happen again.
Our central government’s bureaucratic response to the ChiCom Virus pandemic devolved from a response based on “the science” to a plethora of mandates based on the easiest path to accumulate and exercise political power and control — a “pandemic response” that will far outlive the actual pandemic.
On 16 March 2020, Trump and the bureaucratic troll he put in charge of our nation’s COVID-19 response and recovery effort, Anthony Fauci, issued what we believed then and have argued frequently since should have been the model for our national response. What follows are some key entries showing how those guidelines, and the little man in charge of them, morphed into the most significant political and bureaucratic assault on American Liberty and free enterprise by the central government in our nation’s history.
On that March date three years ago, our timeline entry reads: “As more data emerged about the domestic spread of CV19 cases, particularly in Seattle and New York, the Trump administration implemented its ‘15/30 Days to Slow the Spread’ guidelines to retard the infection rate and help flatten the anticipated spike for demand on medical facilities. At the same time, the CDC updated its comorbidity risk factors to protect those who were most at risk for CV19 disease. According to the President: 'Our guidance urges Americans to take action for 15 days to help stem the outbreak … and we’re asking everyone to work at home, if possible, postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people. By making shared sacrifices and temporary changes, we can protect the health of our people and we can protect our economy, because I think our economy will come back very rapidly.”
It likely would have done that, though at a cost of more deaths of those who were at highest risk, if Trump had kept Fauci on a leash. But he did not keep Fauci on a leash, and in fact allowed him to aggregate power.
Our entry 15 days later on 31 March: “I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead. … This could be a hell of a bad two weeks.” President Donald Trump in reference to the coming surge in testing and corresponding deaths associated with COVID-19 disease. Dr. Anthony Fauci reiterated, “Models are as good as the assumptions you put into them. As we get more data as the weeks go by, that could be modified.” Dr. Deborah Birx added, “It’s communities that will [slow the spread]. There’s no magic bullet. There’s no magic vaccines or therapies. It’s just behaviors.”
In fact, “15 days to slow the spread” turned into months and then years of agony and economic destruction.
Why?
In retrospect, as we have referenced previously, Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, laid out the Left’s “crisis management” game plan: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” And his VP understudy, Joe Biden, learned from a master.
Just a few months into the pandemic, billionaire socialist George Soros echoed that game plan as it regarded domestic political opportunity, declaring: “I would describe it as a revolutionary moment when the range of possibilities is much greater than in normal times. What is inconceivable in normal times becomes not only possible but actually happens. People are disoriented and scared.”
On the first anniversary of the issuance of Trump’s original 15-day guidelines, Biden was in office thanks largely to the fact that Democrats successfully used COVID to implement their bulk-mail ballot fraud strategy, completely undermining the integrity of our election system. In effect, in many states, Demos bypassed any effort to identify who was actually voting via bulk-mailed ballots.
Of course, the massive media cover-up of Biden’s corrupt ChiCom connections certainly helped.
Our entry a year after the implementation of the original “15/30 Days to Slow the Spread” reads: “Reviewing the early measures taken by the Trump administration, and recommendations to state and local officials nationwide, those measures and actions are a far cry from the Democrat political narrative parroted by the mainstream media that the administration did not act fast enough. It is clear that the Trump administration took every reasonable precaution and action to mitigate the spread of CV19 in the United States.”
“The CDC and the Trump administration’s CV19 Task Force issued and reissued reasonable guidelines to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. But federal agencies, and state and local governments officials took additional actions which were motivated more by political objectives than health outcomes. I believe we are going to find, as I have previously noted, that those original CDC guidelines would have generally been adequate for most states and localities, to balance the health risks with the economic impact risks — although those guidelines alone would have resulted in more deaths because of the ’idiot factor,‘ those who won’t abide by even the most basic CDC guidelines. As the nation prepares to reopen, the number of CV19 illnesses and deaths is going to increase, primarily because of that idiot factor.”
“But hindsight being (mostly) 20/20, we may look back in six months and either see hundreds of thousands of additional deaths, or hopefully fatality numbers revised dramatically lower as a result of the draconian measures now implemented by mandate. I doubt that crippling our economy has saved millions of lives, and the consequences of the current economic chokehold, and the distribution of billions of inflationary dollars in an effort to resolve individual economic hardships, will likely come at a much higher price that what was, ostensibly, salvaged.”
Notably, given the recent emergence of truth regarding the origins of the ChiCom Virus, it is no small irony that I also noted on this anniversary: “Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield now says: 'I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human. Normally, when a pathogen goes from a zoonot to human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission. That’s my … opinion. I’m allowed to have opinions now. I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely aetiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, escaped.’”
On 10 August 21, the entry outlines how leftists are routinely shifting the goalposts, changing their rules when it suits their political purposes in order to extend and refine their power and control: “News that lockdowns and mask mandates are coming back as the COVID-19 Delta variant hits the United States had a lot of people up in arms. After all, wasn’t the point of the vaccine to ensure a return to normal life? The fact is, many people feel that they are being jerked around again by politicians and public health officials who keep moving the goalposts. That feeling is quite reasonable at this point, given that we are 500 days past ‘15 days to slow the spread.’”
On the second anniversary of the COVID “response and recovery,” we noted: “Two years after locking the nation down, we’re left to wonder whether it was worth it. Two years ago this week, your life changed radically — and not for the better.”
“After having first been alerted about the ‘novel coronavirus,’ we as a nation went into full-blown panic mode on Monday, March 16, 2020, when then-President Donald Trump announced ‘15 Days to Slow the Spread.’ At the time, Americans across the political spectrum were generally accepting of the announcement, but it was the launchpad for future mandates locking down office buildings and schools and forcing all but those determined by the Department of Homeland Security to be in ‘critical infrastructure industry’ to work from home. Soon, Americans were also directed to avoid social gatherings, and in a devastating blow to the service industry, to avoid gathering at bars and restaurants. In addition, we were told to avoid discretionary travel, to avoid shopping trips and social visits, and to avoid nursing homes and long-term care facilities except to provide critical care.”
“In short, we social animals were forced to live much more solitary lives. And this was, aside from the direct death toll, the most underreported calamity of the COVID crisis, because it didn’t take long for us to figure out that the lockdowns led to spikes in domestic abuse, drug abuse, depression, and suicide.”
As it turned out, the lockdowns were ineffective and killed us … literally. The research into the lockdown health effects paints a damning picture of Big Government overreaction and ineptitude. “Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread” was the beginning of the ignominious moment when our nation lost its collective mind and locked down everything from office buildings to restaurants to stadiums to schools while forcing nearly everyone to work from home. That was catastrophic because those in power didn’t care.
Analysis from the Texas Public Policy Foundation concluded: “The unintended social and economic consequences were clear. Rising unemployment, learning loss among students, spiking rates of domestic violence, and a pandemic-level rise in drug abuse and overdoses. All of that social and economic devastation yielded a minimal impact on health-related suffering due to COVID-19.”