Covid 19 And The Viet Nam War

Today, April 28, 2020, after only four months of the Covid 19 Pandemic in the United States, we will surpass the total number of US deaths in the Viet Nam War which lasted 20 years.  As of this morning, April 28, 2020, we have had 56,933 US deaths from Covid 19 and we are averaging about 2,000 deaths a day.  In the entire Viet Nam War, we had 58,220 deaths.  The first death in the Viet Nam War took place on June 8, 1956.  The first American soldier killed in the Vietnam War was Air Force T-Sgt. Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr. He is listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having a casualty date of June 8, 1956.  The last two deaths in the Viet Nam War took place on April 29, 1975.  On April 29, 1975, Charles McMahon (May 10, 1953 – April 29, 1975) and Darwin Lee Judge (February 16, 1956 – April 29, 1975) were the last two United States servicemen killed in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The two men, both U.S. Marines, were killed in a rocket attack one day before the Fall of Saigon.  The 45th anniversary of those two deaths will be tomorrow, April 29, 2020.  If you do not see the irony in that, you are incapable of understanding irony.  The first US death from the Corona Virus is believed to have been on February 6, 2020, although we cannot precisely determine who the first casualty of the Corona Virus might have been or the precise date of that first death. We are also on the verge of becoming the first country in the world with 1 million cases of Covid 19.  In three months or so, the Corona Virus has killed more Americans than died in the Viet Nam War.  

And, the great majority of those deaths and those million plus cases of Covid 19 infection were preventable if TRAITOR Trump and his co-conspirators in Washington had done anything to save the country from the pandemic when they were repeatedly advised by the intelligence and health care communities in January and February 2020.  A news story has just been published by the Washington Post, the most reputable newspaper in the country, that the White House was advised and warned many times in the "president's" Daily Briefing Book in the period leading up to the deliberately late and inadequate action, or more appropriately inactions, from TRAITOR Trump and the White House. Nearly on a daily basis, the White House was warned that a pandemic was coming which was already proving to have devastating effects in China where it presumably originated and that it would have just as serious an effect on the United States unless decisive actions were taken to prevent it entering the country.   

In addition to those 58,000 plus deaths we have seen so far, the national economy has been devastated by both the virus and the deliberate refusals of the White House to do anything decisive to stop it.  Yes, congress passed a multi-trillion dollar relief bill but most of that money went to large corporations.  The White House has refused to help states and their governors to obtain the necessary testing equipment, respirators, ventilators, and personal protective equipment.  In fact, the inactions of the White House have created a horrible bidding war between the state governments and each other along with other countries which are also searching for those same critical supplies.  This situation is getting worse in many ways.  The meat packing industry has become a center of several outbreaks across several states including Iowa, Indiana, and Colorado.  Three plants which produce about 15% of the commercial meats in America have been forced to shut down due to the outbreaks within each of them.  According to the South Bend Tribune  "More than 150 of America’s largest meat processing plants operate in counties where the rate of coronavirus infection is already among the nation’s highest, based on the media outlets’ analysis of slaughterhouse locations and county-level COVID-19 infection rates."  That statistic is likely both a symptom of problems within the meat packing industry with the dense work settings and high speed demands on workers, and on the geography of where those plants are located.  But the meat packing industry has been enabled by the White House to stretch the limits of safe practices for all of the last three years.  Now, due to the Corona Virus, livestock farmers in the Midwest and South are being forced to consider euthanizing more than a million hogs because they are now past prime killing weight and now are literally eating their owners out of house and home with no market available.  Millions of tons and thousands of acres of vegetable crops are being plowed under by vegetable farmers all over the Midwest and South because they cannot get sufficient labor to pick those crops and do not have ready markets for many of them.  Dairy farmers are being forced to flush millions of gallons of unsold milk down drains even as lines at food banks are longer than at any time since the Great Depression and those same food banks cannot obtain sufficient food products to meet the needs of the suddenly destitute families in America.  America's farmers, especially small family farms, were already in the worst economic period they have faced since the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.  Farm bankruptcies rose by 20% in 2019 and they are rising even more rapidly in 2020. 

The sad truth is that nearly everything about this disaster was avoidable if a competent, caring, legally, and duly elected President of the United States had been in office in January when the White House was first notified of the impending disaster by the intelligence and health care communities.  But, instead, we have a TRAITOR who usurped the White House with the assistance of Vladimir Putin and Russia living illegally in the White House, refusing to take any appropriate actions in the crisis, actually advising Americans to consider injecting disinfectants into their bodies, and denying state governors the assistance we must have in order to survive this crisis.