Opinion : Letter to the Editor: Grading the Governments performance on Covid

Editor:

According to Stephen Moore the tally for how much the federal government spent to combat Covid-19 is $5 trillion more or less; more than the cost of WW1 plus WWII.  How successful was this effort and was it well spent?  Two years later what is the honest assessment?  Could things have been worse if the government had spent nothing and done nothing?  What would have happened if we had not shut down businesses, churches, schools, restaurants, parks, basketball courts, and playgrounds?  Would we as a free people have been better at protecting ourselves with the proper knowledge - without government interference?  We will never know the answer, but the left believes that it was government intervention that saved millions of lives.  But with all the intervention and dollars spent the death toll is north of 850,000 and climbing.  

It was decisions made by people like Gov. Andrew Cuomo who forced the already vulnerable elderly into care facilities that were already infected - thousands of grandma's and grandpa's died.  Now is the time to assess the functions of CDC, FDA, and NIH, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walinski (they have flip flopped more than a dying carp)- what grade should we give; and question what will they do to prepare for the next pandemic?  There is one program that did work - wait for it - President Trump's operation warp speed, which did an end-run around drug and vaccine regulations that hold up lifesaving medicines for many years.  Mr. Moore contends we are still paying the price for many of President Biden's screw-ups as we deal with the less deadly Omicron and other variants still to come.  

President Biden's HHS stopped all shipments of effective treatment by Regeneron because a CDC model concluded wrongly that the delta variant had disappeared.  Thanks to that blunder many thousands died or were hospitalized because the government denied them treatment.  Other promising therapies, such as Glaxo, have run into regulatory hurdles preventing or denying their use. Mr. Moore asks, wouldn't it have been more competent and more humane to let doctors (treating clinicians) and patients make these decisions rather than Washington Bureaucrats and politicians?   The former paraphrased from Washington Examiner, February 1, 2022, Stephen Moore, "The Greatest Government Failure in American History."  I already know what the "what abouters" will critique.  It's all Trump's fault.  Well, folks that's in the past nothing can change what has happened, but we can prepare for future perils, and I am holding this Administration responsible.

Accordingly, I had a visit with one of our Medical Caregivers recently.  I greatly respect his skills and I am convinced he has prolonged my life as he kept sending me to specialists until finally months later I had a diagnosis and provided a treatment program that to this day has worked - although costly - I qualified for a grant program - I am eternally grateful.  I digress - to the point his quiver appears to empty.  The therapeutics he wishes to use are unavailable to him.  One has to ask why; one more error by Washington and the Bureaucracy.   Way to go Joe and company.

If men were angels, no government would be needed.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary -- Federalist #51 James Madison

Regards,

John Stiegelmeyer

Vinton