How can you not see it?

I hesitated to write this column because so many people are suffering and dying from the coronavirus. And it didn’t seem right to place blame on someone with that as the backdrop. But it’s time for someone to yell and say, “Hey! Get your heads out of your asses and see this man for who he is!” And with that, here is my column for this week.

I think Donald J. Trump is the biggest imbecile in the world. I also think he’s a narcissist egomaniac who has never and will never, be able to admit that he did something less than perfect.

Have you EVER made a mistake? Yeah, sure you have. So have I. Many times. And I freely admit when I do. You know why? Because I am a normal human being!

But he can’t. And therein lies the problem (no pun intended).

He has mishandled the cornonavirus pandemic in the U.S. so badly that by the time this is published, over 165,000 Americans will have caught the virus. And yet he insists that no one could have handled it as well as him. Wrong. China seemed to do a pretty good job. So did South Korea. And they both had less notice than Donald J. did.

Some of you are going to insist that I say this only because I hate Trump. True, I do. But that’s not the point here. The point is that this has been as badly handled as could be. ANYONE who has even taken a single course in epidemiology knows the first thing you do is isolate. Period. No questions. You isolate.

That is the most critical step in stopping an epidemic and it has to happen immediately. Then you have a fair chance of stopping the virus from spreading.

Of course, that means you have to test so that so can isolate (as China and South Korea did).

Problem there. The U.S. dropped the ball on testing. No other way to say it. The ball was dropped, and it left the U.S. in a situation of missing its chance to stop the virus from rapidly spreading across the country.

Now, contrary to what some in the media have said, this is not because the “U.S. refused to use the test the World Health Organization (WHO) had to offer.” The U.S. chose to develop its own tests, which is rather common.

But unfortunately, there were manufacturing defects and because the U.S. had not requested the WHO test kits as back-up, there were no tests to use in the early days of the viral spread in the U.S.

That is simply, a MAJOR screw-up. That is not something to be proud of. That is not something to brag about (Trump bragged about his performance on Sunday on Fox & Friends). That is something to own. Something to make you say, “Yes, in hindsight we should have had the WHO tests as back-ups. That was a mistake on our part.”

Now the U.S. is in the situation of leading the world in active cases, and if all predictions come true (by Trump’s coronavirus team), as many as 200,000 Americans are likely to die.

Don’t think of that number in the abstract. Those are real people. Some may even be part of your social world. They may be a friend, a former neighbor, or your brother’s fitness trainer. Even if they are not, they are that for someone. They are real people in America, who may not have gotten infected if:

• The President admitted early on that the virus was something to fear, and not a “hoax” to make him look bad in an election year (wow, how freaking egocentric was that?);
• Testing had started immediately;
• Isolation and quarantining had started at all;
• The economy was the secondary focus and not the primary focus;
• The President gave a shit about EVERYONE, not just those people who he wants to vote for him in November.

There are a lot of ifs. But probably the most important “ifs” would have been IF the President had the personality that would allow him to admit that he did not know everything, and IF he was willing to accept that what the scientists were saying was more important than what the political pundits were saying and IF he wasn’t such a narcissist that he had to take over the daily coronavirus briefings and tell lies or exaggerations that then had to be back-tracked by all of his experts.

People are going to die because of how the President of the United States acted during a crisis. This isn’t me saying this because I hate Trump. This is me saying this because I know that Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George Bush (yes, even he who messed up during Katrina), Barak Obama, and even Hilary Clinton all would have handled this better.

Trump said there was going to be “so much winning that people are going to be tired of winning!”

Well, winning this contest wasn’t what anyone wanted.

I’m just sayin.’

During Ecuador’s quarantine for the coronavirus, The Cuenca Dispatch had to suspend publication as its printer was unable to open. It will return after the quarantine is lifted. CuencaHighLife.com has offered to print the Just Sayin’ column during that period.