COVID-19 catastrophe imminent in the United States?
<p>“Right now, things are looking really good,” said US President Donald Trump at Sunday’s White House coronavirus briefing.</p>
<p>“We’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”</p>
<p>Some may say he’s optimistic. Others, might call him delusional.</p>
<p>The United States is now the undisputed epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic. It has recorded 336,830 confirmed cases – more than Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom combined. Its death toll has now passed 10,000.</p>
<p>And experts say, the worst is yet to come.</p>
<p>“This is going to be the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives, quite frankly,” said Jerome Adams, Trump administration’s Surgeon General.</p>
<p>“Buckle down,” said the country’s top expert on infectious diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci. “Because it’s going to be a bad week.”</p>
<p>Mr Trump’s overly positive view of the entire situation contradicted what he said less than 24 hours prior, when he admitted there would be “a lot of death”.</p>
<p>America, to put it simply, is in a great amount of trouble.</p>
<p>For months, it failed to prepare for the outbreak, and now its already flawed health system is nowhere near ready to deal with the coming onslaught.</p>
<p><em>The Washington Post<span> </span></em>published a detailed report on the Trump administration’s response to the virus, based on interviews with dozens of sources.</p>
<p>According to the report, the government received its first formal notification of the outbreak in China on January 3 – and for 70 “squandered” days after that, did little to prepare.</p>
<p>However, China is to blame, as the country repeatedly covered up the threat of the virus until January 20, when it finally admitted human-to-human transmission was happening and made a move to lockdown Wuhan.</p>
<p>But not even China can be blamed for the way the US government handled the crisis in the early days.</p>
<p>On January 22, the day after the first coronavirus case in the US was discovered, CNBC asked the president whether he was concerned about a pandemic.</p>
<p>“No, not at all,” he said.</p>
<p>“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”</p>
<p>That was one of the first comments made which downplayed the severity of the virus.</p>
<p>As the pandemic reached a critical tipping point, shortages restricted America to respond properly.</p>
<p>There weren’t enough ventilators and protective equipment. This is largely due to the Trump administration’s slow response.</p>
<p>A review of federal purchasing contracts by AP shows federal agencies waited until mid-March – not January or February, but March – to start placing bulk orders of N95 masks, ventilators and other equipment needed by frontline health workers.</p>
<p>“We basically wasted two months,” said Kathleen Sebelius, health and human services secretary during the Obama administration.</p>
<p>The lack of federal stockpile has left states competing with each other to secure the limited amount of equipment on the market.</p>
<p>“You now literally will have a company call you up and say, ‘Well, California just outbid you,’” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last week.</p>
<p>“It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator.”</p>
<p>Trump recently admitted that a death toll of 100,000-240,000 would represent his administration doing a “very good job”. The next week will tell us how achievable that target is.</p>
