Corona Crisis: Trump leads US into chaos

Iagain and again Mary Turner is close to tears, her voice breaks. “I apologize for being so emotional,” said the president of the Nurses United Nurses Union in Minnesota. Turner has been working overnight in an intensive care unit for Covid patients since February. On Wednesday he will take part in a virtual round table. Your host: Joe Biden, the American president-elect. “They thrilled me,” Biden says, fiddling with a handkerchief and rubbing his eyes.

It’s a bitter testimony to the American healthcare system that Turner releases during the video slot. He reports how his colleagues have shown that they have protective clothing. “There is something seriously wrong when nurses take to the streets begging for protective clothing amid a pandemic,” Turner says. “We must act now, we must act quickly,” he appeals to Biden. The number of cases increased, the hospitals were overcrowded and many of their colleagues were afraid. “Our employers and the government don’t support us,” Turner said, reporting how his colleagues held the hand of dying patients as they cried because they couldn’t see their families.

He also complains about the lack of protective equipment. Sometimes a single N95 protective mask is worn eight to ten times. “We can’t be safe if we stick to these standards,” says Turner. There is no “second line of defense,” she warns, because there are only “us” – the nurses.

According to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the United States had more than 250,000 deaths from Covid on Wednesday (November 18). Over 11.5 million Americans have contracted the virus. The White House also sees a dramatic situation.

The United States is in a “dangerous spot,” said Admiral Brett Giroir, a leading member of President Corona’s working group. Of the “strongest increase in the number of cases”, Giroir speaks: “Our hospital admissions increase by 25% week after week, our deaths increase by 25% week after week”. All this “is not moving in the right direction,” said Giroir MSNBC Transmitter.

Triumphs “Bunkermentalität”

New York schools will be closed again this Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced. Covid testing is also a godsend in the US again. In the capital Washington, for example, people lined up for several hours earlier in the week.

The sparsely populated state of Montana (one million inhabitants in an area larger than Germany) has imposed a masking requirement. Republican Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, has enacted restrictions on restaurants, religious institutes, and fitness centers starting Friday. Hogan was one of the few Republicans who has always resisted Donald Trump’s policies that devalued the use of masks and belittled the virus.

The incumbent president is exacerbating the already precarious situation for the troubled US healthcare system. Trump (“I won the election”) refuses to initiate a proper transfer of power to his elected successor, Biden. Trump is thus creating a dangerous power vacuum: Biden and his transition team cannot access the administration’s information, personnel, and capabilities, as has been the case with every change of president in the United States.

While the future president is dealing intensely with the pandemic and has long established his working group, Trump is largely letting the government slip. The incumbent president barely makes any appointments – he showed up briefly last week on Veterans Day and for a press release on corona vaccination.

He played golf for two days over the weekend and has since only been seen on Twitter and in emails to his followers asking for donations. In the White House, a “bunker mentality” prevails, according to the president’s environment.

Vice President Mike Pence, who recently planned a sunny Florida vacation but then canceled at the last minute, is also largely missing.

Double vaccinations required

Pence heads – at least officially – the anti-crown working group in the White House. In the memory of his work there are above all optimism of purpose, praise from the president and the companies for their alleged activities against the epidemic, as well as slogans of perseverance. There will be “no second wave crown,” Pence had dyed in June, and he even wrote an article with a corresponding title. Now your country is facing the third and most violent wave of the epidemic.

Hopes that large swaths of the population would be vaccinated soon, even immediately, had also been greatly exaggerated. Trump announced a “very soon” vaccine months ago. Its chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said in September that 100 million doses of the vaccine will be available in October. In other words: before the presidential elections on November 3.

Of course, Trump’s electoral defeat was also based on his government’s miserable handling of the crisis, ignoring and relativizing the deadly dangers. He compared the virus to the “flu” and announced that it would miraculously disappear if temperatures rose. Now the temperatures are dropping and the number of cases is increasing.

If the supply of the vaccine to 330 million Americans goes like the Covid tests in the first months of the epidemic, the chaotic conditions are back for the US. Since Pfizer’s vaccinations are to be doubled, the company expects to supply only 12.5 million Americans this year. Moderna plans to provide 20 million doses of the vaccine this year, Johnson & Johnson is talking about 100 million doses by March 2021.

“Shameful and unacceptable”

President-elect Biden made fighting Covid a top priority months ago. His team must have access to plans that show how Americans should be vaccinated, Biden said Monday: “This is a huge, huge undertaking.” If you don’t coordinate, “more people could die,” he warned. . If his team had to wait until the inauguration on January 20 to prepare, he would delay all this by a month or a month and a half.

Democratic House Leader Steny Hoyer said Wednesday evening: “President Trump spends his days playing golf and angrily tweeting about the election results instead of doing his job and monitoring the American response to Covid-19.” Government health officials should coordinate with Biden’s team. The interim president would be “shameful and unacceptable”.

There is now growing pressure in the ranks of the Democrats to rapidly adopt more billions in aid for the unemployed and small business owners. For reasons of electoral tactics, the Democrats recently hadn’t wanted to get busy. That there is an agreement between the LameCongress e LameThe president arrives and is open.

Incidentally, Trump had always complained before the election that the fake news media always wanted to talk about Covid to hurt him. During his rallies and on Twitter, Trump has repeatedly dared to make extremely bold predictions, even by his own standards. So he called: “Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid. By the way, you won’t hear about it again on November 4th “.

with dpa