Courtesy of the Bastrop Advertiser
March 5, 2020
By Joni Ashbrook
My daughter, Jenny, put herself through nursing school at the same time she put her heart and soul into building Austin Boxer Rescue. She didn’t sleep much during that time, but now she’s a registered nurse and the mother of two wonderful boys.
I’m extremely proud of her, but now I’m also worried. Last week, the World Health Organization raised its coronavirus assessment threat assessment to its highest level.
Jenny, along with all of our health care workers, will be on the front lines when this virus hits, and we need to be cognizant of that.
As I’m reading the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on how to prepare and stay well, I can’t get Jenny off my mind.
I’m truly rooting for President Donald Trump to lead us through this crisis successfully. But his administration is making that difficult to imagine.
No one seems to have a cure for Trump spreading misinformation. He recently told a huge crowd that this highly transmissible, deadly virus is the Democrat’s “new hoax.”
Trump’s behavior is symptomatic of someone who’s more concerned about his reelection than the public’s health.
The coronavirus has spread to almost every continent, and the director of the CDC recently warned that, “Disruption to everyday life may be severe.”
People are concerned about the Trump’s ability to handle a pandemic because the qualities we desperately need have been on life support in this administration for years: truth, competence, transparency and decisions based in science.
Trump was on the stage with our country’s top health experts. The CDC official clearly stated the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. was “inevitable.”
Moments later, on the exact same stage, standing feet away from that CDC expert, Trump contradicted her saying he “doesn’t think it’s inevitable.”
Unfortunately, that isn’t the only time Trump and his officials have disregarded the advice of scientists.
When Trump claimed there were only 15 cases here, the CDC counted 60. But there could be more cases since we don’t have a functional test for the virus in the U.S.
A top administration official told Congress that the coronavirus test kits were not faulty, while simultaneously a CDC official stated there were problems with them.
As of last week, the U.S. had only tested about 400 people while South Korea had tested almost 67,000.
And thankfully a whistleblower alerted us that federal health workers in California didn’t have proper training or protective gear when they interacted with Americans returning from Wuhan, China. They weren’t trained until five days into their assignment.
Then these workers scattered into the general population. So, it wasn’t surprising when that Friday that same California community released a warning to prepare for a possible “widespread community transmission” of the virus.
Also Saturday, Washington state declared a state of emergency after they had the first death in the U.S from the virus.
Trump’s now muzzling the top expert on infectious diseases apparently because his findings don’t fit the president’s messaging around this virus.
I’d like to believe Trump was right when he said this virus will “disappear like a miracle,” or “go away” when the weather gets warmer.
But I think we’d be better off listening to a top official from the WHO warning, “This is a reality check for every government on the planet: Wake up. Get ready.”
