have been a strong supporter of Donald Trump since the first Super Tuesday primary in February 2016, when he trounced the competition in races held in the heart of the ‘Bible Belt.’ Those results convinced me that if any Republican had a prayer (excuse the pun) of winning the White House, he was the only game in town.
One of the key elements of the Trump administration’s response to the Covid pandemic was Operation Warp Speed (OWS). A unique feature of OWS was that it was used, respectively, by Trump’s supporters and detractors to laud or denigrate the initiative, depending almost solely on political party affiliation. This bifurcation even extended to the healthcare establishment, a clear indication that medical science had been eclipsed by political science. In so doing, the physician’s creed, “First, do no harm” was shredded. The impact on patient outcomes, not surprisingly, was devastating…….
When confronted with an agenda that was contrary to professional, ethical, and evidence-based standards, these public health officials had a duty to push back, and in the absence of DOD reversal, they should have resigned and gone public with their concerns.
Watching Dr Robert Redfield, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention go on his ‘apology tour’ strikes me as being 1,500 days late, and $16 trillion short (the amount of wealth that was transferred to the top 1% as a result of these disastrous policies); not to mention the millions of people whose health was permanently damaged or whose lives were lost.
It appears that Operation Warp Speed (OWS) does, indeed, hold some responsibility for some of the problems with the COVID19 responses, however, the medical establishment and the practitioners had an even greater responsibility for the results to the patients. What can you say, they had incentives to do what they did that were given them that were totally perverse. They followed the incentives because that is what everyone does if they have the chance: they follow the incentives to get the cheese. So the question still remains, who was at fault for the bad consequences of the policies?