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| Dr. Ashish Jha of the Harvard Global Health Institute - a frequent Trump critic |
This is not to say that things might have been done differently by a different President. They probably would have been. It is easy to say that another President would have been more capable of better dealing with a disease no one knew anything about when it first hit. There is no real way of knowing that. I therefore seriously doubt that the spread of the virus and the number of people getting sick or dying from it would have been significantly changed.
The people responsible for the spread are mostly apolitical young people that rarely pay any attention to the news media. They simply do not believe things are all that bad. Just because there are instances showing how devastating this disease can be and how huge the numbers are, the fact that well over 90% of the population has escaped it means the chances are pretty good that they won’t see of know anybody that had it. At least not in any serious way.
They therefore do what ever they want - or can get away with. That is what causes spread. Not the politicians on either some of the aisle. All one need do is look at the beaches every legal holiday this summer and see the multitude of carefree beach-goers none of whom are wearing masks or socially distancing.
Even some of those who had been doing it, are just tired of it and don't really believe it either. Hardly anyone wears a mask in public anymore. It doesn't matter at all which demographic they belong to: old, young; black, white; Jew non Jew; religious, non religious... No one seems to be taking the pandemic seriously anymore. Health experts are worried that this will cause an unprecedented spike in COVID. And with good reason.
That has not stopped the mainstream media from constantly blaming the President for this pandemic. There is hardly a news report where some news anchor or reporter will at some point say how bad the President’s response was to the pandemic.
The one thing they rarely mention is the one very positive thing the President has done in this regard. Which is fast tracking a vaccine. When they do mention it, they politicize it in a variety of negative ways. Most notably by accusing him of pressuring health officials to release the vaccine prematurely before its safety and efficacy has been proven by the phase 3 clinical trials.
It doesn’t matter how many times we are assured by trusted medical professionals – including Dr. Anthony Fauci - that safety will not be compromised by the record speed in which the vaccine will become available. The media has nonetheless done it’s level best to place doubts in the minds of Americans. Which is why over 65% of those surveyed are skeptical about its safety and will be reluctant to take it. At least until it has been more widely distributed with no ill affects.
Just this morning, I heard Dr. Ashish Jha of the Harvard Global Health Institute - a frequent critic of the President’s response to the pandemic - praise him for producing this vaccine in record time! Assuring us that safety would never be compromised by the people doing the phase 3 clinical trials.
At the end of the day, this vaccine will be the President’s greatest achievement in office. Despite ridicule to the contrary, his promise that the pandemic will soon end might just be true, if the vaccine comes out when most health experts expect it to – by the end of this year or the beginning of the next.
Nevertheless, the mainstream media has been successful casting doubts into the minds of the public.
This is pure evil.
One might say that I’m being a bit too hard on the media by saying that. But I don’t think so, considering what is at stake. Filling the minds of the public with doubt will surely cause a delay in the public immunity that the vaccine and eventual herd immunity will provide. Which means a lot more people will be getting sick in the meantime. Some of whom may die.
It's not that I think the mainstream media is intentionally evil. Far from it. They are just true believers. Ideologues who believe that they are serving the public good by trying to eliminate a President they see as the worst in American history. A man that is so bad that he will end up destroying the country if he is re-elected. And it’s not even that they are deliberately lying. They just believe their own spin.
Those who might think that evil can only be done by people with evil motives, that is far from the truth. A lot of roads to hell have been paved with good intentions. Just look at the constant flow of evil on the part of extremist Charedim in Meah Shearim and Bet Shemesh. They don’t see themselves as evil. They do what they do because they see themselves as soldiers for God!
The mainstream media sees itself in a similar way. They see themselves as soldiers of truth as they understand it.
The upshot of all this is that the media will very likely succeed in ending the current President’s tenure in the White House. What a Biden Presidency or a continuation of the Trump Presidency will mean for the future of America is beyond the scope of this post.
But whatever we feel about the current occupant, we need to be honest about the good things he has done. Fast tracking the COVID vaccine may be the best thing of all.
I know it is extremely difficult for some of us to say anything positive about the man. So much so that even this will be cast in a negative light. But one needs to honest and fair. And thanking someone for accelerating the return to normal in record time that this vaccine might do - is surely the right thing for all of us to do.