To the Editor:
Democrats and liberals need to get their facts straight. Donald Trump never said the virus was a hoax. What he said was: the media and the Democrats complaining that he was not taking it seriously, was a hoax.
He later went on to say:
"We are totally prepared, it doesn't mean we won't. But think of it. You hear 35 and 40,000 people, and we've lost nobody, and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode."
His rambling, sometimes incoherent communication style may need a little context here. He was referring to there being tens of thousands of flu deaths to very few deaths from the new virus at the time.
The president has claimed to have understood the severity of the pandemic from the beginning; this is unfortunate. If true, that would mean the hoax was not the Democrats and media sounding the alarm, but the president calmly downplaying the severity of the threat and claiming that "we are totally prepared."
I am challenged to find a single action by the president since that speech that looks like a steady implementation of a well-thought-out plan for the challenges we are now facing. Instead I see a man dragged, reluctantly, to do what is necessary, reacting from one self-made crisis to the next.
To be clear. The virus is not the president's fault. His reluctance to take it seriously before it became a worldwide pandemic is something for which he needs to take responsibility.
Ron Day
Milford