OPINION:
America is watching a massive cover-up of the results of a major government operation. Only this cover-up is being carried out by the left-wing media in an attempt to hide from the American people the remarkable achievements of President Trump and his task force in dealing with the COVID-19 crisis.
In March, the Trump administration was focused on two things: One was the death toll projections from the various models predicting a worst case of 2.2 million Americans dying from COVID-19, and the other was the collapse of the health care system in Italy.
Watching what was happening in Italy and the astonishing number of deaths among older Italians, the administration quickly realized that we had to make sure that we did not allow our health care system to be overwhelmed. As everyone should recall, the Italian health care system was so quickly overwhelmed that Italian doctors were forced to triage patients, sending tremendous numbers of critically ill older patients home to die. Mr. Trump and his task force were determined to not let that happen in America.
The actions taken by Mr. Trump and the task force achieved great, but underappreciated, results. First, by flattening the curve so quickly our health care system was not overwhelmed. Second, not only did their actions flatten the curve, they reduced the number of deaths to a fraction of what the early models predicted by a combination of imposing travel restrictions, implementing social distancing and stay-at-home protocols, and by giving doctors the flexibility to use therapeutic drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and other off-label drugs.
In that regard, enormous credit should be given to the doctors, nurses and other frontline health care workers who worked countless hours, many to the point of exhaustion, to save lives.
The American people need to know and appreciate what Mr. Trump has done to get our nation through this crisis — a crisis not of our own making. In the first weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and their allies in the left-wing media criticized Mr. Trump for overreacting and accused him of xenophobia and racism for stopping travel into and out of China.
As America began to feel the impact of the crisis, they accused him of not acting quickly enough. Now they are claiming that he mishandled the crisis and is responsible for thousands more deaths. Yet, two months ago the nation was expecting hundreds of thousands, even millions of deaths, and the eminent collapse of the American health care system.
Mr. Trump and his task force made sure that didn’t happen.
While we mourn the loss of more than 80,000 people to this horrible virus, we also need to step back and take stock of what has been accomplished and give the credit that is due to Mr. Trump and his task force, and get behind them as we move to the next phase. It is imperative that we focus on expanding testing, especially serological testing to identify the people who have the antibodies, so that we can get our economy going again while protecting people.
We should continue to work toward an effective vaccine as well as identify therapeutic drugs to treat people so they can recover at home rather than in a hospital. Getting these things in place will allow our economy to recover much quicker and help Americans regain a sense of safety and security.
Mr. Trump took action to save American lives and save our health care system. I have no doubt that he will engage with the same energy and determination to restore our economy and complete the job of making America great again.
• Gary Palmer represents Alabama’s 6th Congressional District in the House of Representatives.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.