If anyone tries to politicize the worldwide outbreak of an infectious disease, we should rise as one to condemn them. Now, what’s meant exactly by “politicize the worldwide outbreak of an infectious disease?” Here’s a perfect example:
Radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested on Monday that President Barack Obama is refusing to divert flights from Ebola-infected countries and close down America’s borders because he believes that the nation “deserves” to be infected with the virus given its history of perpetuating slavery.
Here’s another outrageous example of politicizing a a health crisis:
“I am starting to think that there is something seriously wrong with President Obama’s mental health,” Trump tweeted in 2014. “Why won’t he stop the flights. Psycho!”
On today’s broadcast of “The 700 Club,” televangelist Pat Robertson claimed that President Obama is unconcerned about the outbreak of Ebola in western Africa, calling Obama a failed leader who “lives in a bubble of happiness.”
“The world is blowing apart because there is no leadership from the leading nation on Earth, we’re not leading and we have to lead. And in this Obama thing — excuse me, this Ebola thing — we can take care of that, it’s not that big a deal, it’s manageable, but if we don’t manage it quickly it’s going to spread and then it will be a worldwide disaster,” he said.
Conservative eminence grise Phyllis Schlafly believes Obama is allowing it into the country deliberately. “Obama doesn’t want America to believe that we’re exceptional,” she said. “He wants us to be just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it, too.”
I checked to see if the New York Times and Washington Post ran numerous stories from Obama administration officials deploring this politicization. But when I googled “obama administration condemns ebola right wing scare tactics,” I couldn’t find any stories from either source and couldn’t find a single bit of pushback from any Obama official on the politicization of the Ebola outbreak. Perhaps Obama and his colleagues were too busy actually trying to contain the outbreak to bother overly with what Limbaugh, Trump, and his cronies thought.
By the way, at the current rate, in about four months, worldwide deaths from COVID-19 infection might surpass the deaths from Ebola from 2014-2016. Go here and here.
Certainly, there are many differences between Ebola and COVID-19 but it is reasonable to assume that among the many factors that prevented a horror of nightmarish proportions in the US included not just luck but the competent response of the US government and health system. From a CDC overview of the Ebola response:
In the United States, widespread public alarm erupted after Ebola cases were diagnosed in Dallas, Texas, and New York City, New York. CDC, in collaboration with its U.S. and international counterparts, applied proven public health strategies as well as innovative new approaches to help control the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and strengthen public health readiness in the United States. Lessons learned include the recognition that West African and other countries need effective systems to detect and stop infectious disease threats, the need for stronger international surge capacity for times when countries are overwhelmed by an outbreak, and the importance of improving infection prevention and control in health care settings.
Ah yes, “countries need effective systems to detect and stop infectious disease threats. ” But what did Trump actually do prior to the spread of COVID-19? He fired the US pandemic response team.
So let’s be clear.
Criticizing Trump for his utterly incompetent response to COVID-19 is not political. Alarm at the Trump response to COVID-19 is entirely justified. And openly calling for the removal from office of a president that is this dangerously inept, this clueless, this utterly incapable of making rational informed health decisions and implementing rational health crisis policies is not just an act of patriotism but imperative for world health hygiene.