President acted to combat health crisis

I herewith submit this statement to contest the rather scathing article regarding both Jeanne Ives and President Trump, which was composed by Sandra Alexander. Jeanne merely showered praise of the President's efforts to combat COVID-19 early last month.

On Jan. 20, Dr. Fauci announced efforts to make a vaccine for the virus, and the next day, the CDC activated their emergency operations center to respond to the virus. Precisely one month following China's initial announcement of the virus, President Trump took decisive action by halting all foreign nationals from China on Jan. 31, for which the Democrats labeled the President a "racist." This action alone saved countless lives.

After a month filled with work by various federal agencies, President Trump imposed a travel ban to Iran and a Level 4 travel advisory to parts of Italy and South Korea on Feb. 29. At that time it was unknown just how contagious the virus happened to be.

Let us compare the response of President Obama and VP Biden to the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic. It had taken them six months to declare an emergency after 1,000 folks already died from the illness. H1N1 infected over 60 million Americans, hospitalized over 274,000 of them and resulted in death for over 12,000 of them.

That pandemic caused a serious drain on our medical equipment and supplies, such as ventilators, face shields, gloves, and face masks. Did President Obama or VP Biden highly recommend that those depleted medical items should be immediately replenished, so that we could then be ready for the next pandemic? No, they did not, so that blunder seriously placed us in our current predicament.

Furthermore, Live Science reports that researchers determined that the amount of H1N1 deaths may have been vastly underreported. Was this done to protect the legacy of President Obama and VP Biden?

Jim Norris

Downers Grove