EDITORIAL: Health and Economic Crisis is Facing the USA

By Armando García

Editor and Founder of Nuestra América Magazine

The severity of the coronavirus pandemic is spreading across the country. Schools and businesses have closed, sporting events and concerts have been canceled, and people are urged to avoid meeting in bars and restaurants, distancing themselves from everyone, not greeting each other, not kissing, not touching each other.

Trump faces his own health experts every moment. So, who is the public going to believe: Scientists, healthcare professionals, or President Trump? That is the question the country faces after the president said he was considering taking steps to restart the economy.

Most of us are probably going to have some degree of social isolation, whether we get sick or not. As Trump exploits the coronavirus crisis, as humanity demands that death and misery be minimized, the President seems more determined to protect his political position and reward his cronies in Congress.

The President and his administration are responsible for serious and costly errors, especially in his decision not to test massively the people worry about the pandemic.  Also, in delating expanding tests to laboratories outside the Centers for Control and Disease Prevention and distribution of medical supplies. Until now, FEMA is just taking control in providing to provide the needed supplies to States to be distributed in hospitals and health centers.

These mistakes have left us far behind other countries, and, for a few crucial weeks, Trump among us created a false sense of security. What we now know is that the coronavirus is spreading silently, without us noticing it. It’s a n invisible enemy and we are to slow o doing nothing to stop it.

However, in some respects, the avalanche of false information from the president has been the most alarming of all. It has been one rockslide after another, like we've never seen before. He blatantly denied reality, to mitigate the economic and political damage he faced. But Trump is in the process of discovering that he can't turn or tweet to get out of a pandemic. Trump has a habit of lying and getting away with it, without anyone telling him.

Trump said the United States will be open to business again very soon. Long before three or four months someone suggested. He said that he could not allow the cure to be worse than the problem since it is a medical problem.

At the rate we are going, perhaps the USA, soon will be lagging in being the world's leading power. There is a danger that it will become a lasting financial problem. Because if the spread of the virus is not under control, it could be well reached a Phase 3 of the contagion, prolonging the quarantine indefinitely and the economy stagnating causing a long-term recession.