Chapter 1:
POLITICAL CLOUDS
BEFORE PANDEMIC
About 130 miles from Beijing, through the countryside, Jhuang was traveling in a speed train, experiencing the beautiful grassland and terraced farmland of autumn after picking up vegetables and home decoration pieces from the town of Zhangjiakou. With a deep gaze at the scenery outside he was planning a trip to his aunt in the city of Shanxi along with his family during the new Chinese year, but less did he realize that a monster was brewing underneath the shadows of Wuhan in Hubei, which would take the world by storm and change the lives of many of his countrymen and people around the world in many different ways. Business at the meat market in Hunuan, Wuhan, was in full swing in late November of 2019, with a monthly revenue of around 20 million dollars, a testament to "everything is normal." The customers and the vendors of the market had no idea about the bad press they were about to receive all around the world. Multiple cases of pneumonia-like illness (PLI) were reported around the same time. At one point in time, approximately 66% of PLI cases had exposure history from the meat market in Huanan. The Chinese authorities did not inform the World Health Organization of an outbreak of PLI until late December, and little to no preventative measures were taken when millions of Chinese started to travel in preparation for the Chinese New Year celebration.
Mid-December 2019 I was ready to enjoy the holidays and dive into the new year better and stronger to achieve personal and professional goals in 2020. My Teammates were making jokes about the year 2020 in late 2019. The number 2020 itself has some kind of mystery attached to it, which had became kind of a meme for us. On a dull weekday in mid-December, I came across an email distribution from the Public Health conversation channels of INDO-PACOM Area of Responsibility that there were some PLI observed in China, but the cause is unknown. The email was circulated to apprise all concerned in the Public Health career field of the Air Force so that we can plan ahead for any mission requirements. I was keeping track of COVID-19 cases around the world with the ArcGIS COVID database created by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University, which was definitely the best available database to track cases from all around the world. In the Air Force, we are trained to use our own database for surveillance of disease. Still, due to the lag time of 3 days from when the disease occurred to when it appeared on the database, we were already losing time to acquire critical data and put any proactive preventative measures in place to prevent the spread of the disease, not to mention the objective data being masked by subjective ambiguity around the disease itself which had already affected millions around the world by late January of the year 2020.
The world was not alone in the fog of ambiguity during the early phase of the pandemic as the United States, with the best preventative medicine agency the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under its government ambit, was also suffering from a dearth of information and guidance. All forms of media became an alternate source of news for COVID-19 and the American public was left in the dark with no clear leadership and communication that could provide the facts. Political atmosphere in the United States at the beginning of 2020 was very charged, with Democrats determined to take back Congress and Republicans trying to re-elect President Trump. If Mr. Trump's ratings had stayed as high as 49 between January and February of 2020, and the economy had remained stable, it was almost certain that the GOP would get a second term. If Mr. Trump could have replicated his 2016 campaign, with mass attendance at rallies and conventions, he might have been able to create the perception that he is again on the roll and would win the elections convincingly.
However, the COVID-19 lockdown had other plans. Had Mr. Trump announced that the virus is dangerous and has the potential to turn the epidemic into a pandemic it would have significantly impacted his plan to get re-elected. The Republican leadership's fear that a virus could stop their planned rallies, and many of Mr. Trump's comments from January to late April prove that the GOP administration wanted to shrug off the fear of the pandemic at the expense of getting re-elected. The comments made by Mr. Trump either show his ignorance or lack of information, which led to a bigger disaster.
On January 20th, 2020 he said, "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China. It's going to be just fine."
January 24th 2020, he said, "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!"
February 10th 2020, "Looks like by April, you know in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away."
On the contrary, the following are the comments from his team members:
January 28th, 2020, "This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.This is going to be the roughest thing you face," Trump's National Security Advisor to Trump."
January 30th, 2020, "The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on the US soil. This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans." Memo from Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro."
Feb 26th, Mr. Trump said: "This is a flu. This is like a flu."
Feb 27th, Mr. Trump said: "It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle. It will disappear."
March 4th, Mr. Trump said: "If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work - some of them go to work, but they get better."
March 5th, Mr. Trump said: "I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work."
March 6th, Mr. Trump said: "I think we're doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down. a tremendous job at keeping it down."
March 8th:, Mr. Trump said: "We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on Coronavirus."
March 17th, Mr. Trump said: "The only thing we haven't done well is get good press."
March 19th, Mr. Trump said, "I intended to always play it down." [Trump in a private taped interview with Bob Woodward, made public on September 9].
March 24th, Mr. Trump said: "I'm also hopeful to have Americans working again by that Easter - that beautiful Easter day."
March 29th, Mr. Trump said: "Unfortunately, the enemy is death. It's death. A lot of people are dying. So it's very unpleasant."
April 7th, Mr. Trump said: "You are not going to die from this pill...I really think it's a great thing to try." [Trump promoting Hydroxychloroquine, not FDA approved to treat coronavirus]
April 22nd, Mr. Trump said: "If [coronavirus] comes back though, it won't be coming back in the form that it was, it will be coming back in smaller doses that we can contain..it's also possible it doesn't come back at all."
April 23rd, Mr. Trump said: "I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that."
April 29th, "It's gonna go away. This is going to go away."
May 6th, "Sporadic for you, but not sporadic for a lot of other people." [Trump's response to a nurse telling him that equipment supply has been "sporadic"]
May 11th, "We have met the moment and we have prevailed,"
May 19th, "When we have a lot of cases, I don't look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing...Because it means our testing is much better. I view it as a badge of honor. Really, it's a badge of honor."
May 29th, "We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization."
June 23rd, "Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever-expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!"
And the rest is history, the cases started to increase with some phases when there was some decline but the virus had reached for all purposes deep into society and there was no way to eliminate it out and the only hope became a good vaccine and the hope that the virus will not continue to turn into a virulent entity.
During the same time, below are some of the comments made by the leadership of the Democratic Party which prove how keen and ready they are to use the incompetency of the GOP to get back into power:
On Oct 6th at Gettysburg, Mr. Joe Biden said: ""Let's end the politics and follow the...
