A letter to the editor I wrote.
UPDATE 8/23/24 Was never published.
Editor,
From what I’ve read a big part of the fall in President Biden’s popularity has been the resurgence of Covid-19. Although it made sense in many ways to partly blame former President Trump for how bad the COVID-19 crisis was in 2020, it doesn’t make any sense to blame Biden for how bad it is now.
At the beginning of the pandemic Trump tried to ignore it and at the end of Feb. 2020 he said it was a “hoax” He didn’t use the Defense Production Act right away to make sure there were enough masks, other PPE, ventilators and testing supplies. To be fair we never ran out of ventilators, but the failure to make enough masks at the beginning I believe contributed to the Trump administration initially DISCOURAGING the use of masks by the general population, there were always shortages of PPE for health care professionals and we didn’t test anywhere near as much as we should have (I believe) because there weren’t enough supplies. He largely discouraged mask-wearing and when he did sort of encourage it it was half-hearted. He kept saying it was almost over which contributed to his supporters not taking it seriously.
Biden has always taken COVID-19 seriously and promoted masks when Trump was making fun of people for wearing them. If it wasn’t for a massive chunk of the population that overlaps heavily with Trump supporters, the vaccine effort in this country would be incredibly successful. Biden’s vaccine mandate policies will help (and they’re ethical- we have for decades mandated vaccines for school kids). His administration is helping Florida school districts defying a Republican ban on mask mandates. The Delta variant isn’t his fault. It’s likely it would have gone nowhere if more Americans had gotten vaccinated earlier, and once again, Trump can be blamed for that.
Don’t blame President Biden for COVID-19. If anyone deserves blame for it here in America, it’s Trump.
Tom Shelley
Boulder
