Bruce Jenket: Swift action by Trump administration keeping death rate low

To The Daily Sun,

If you are looking for hope in these trying times turn off the left-leaning media outlets like CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS and turn on the daily briefings with President Trump, VP Pence and the Coronavirus Task Force. They provide the latest numbers, trends, supply shortages, new therapies, coronavirus epicenters and guidelines to beat this epidemic. Responsible networks carry the full briefing so we can see what is being said and done by those in charge. Irresponsible networks show snippets of that briefing and sprinkle in their political misinformation to paint a picture of ineptness by the current administration.

I'm disturbed by the negative headlines I see every day I open my web browser. Here are todays.: “Rattled by crisis, one of America’s worst weeks draws to a close (The Washington Post), “Virus outbreak, concentrated on the coasts, now threaten middle of USA (NY Times)”, “For Dr. Deborah Birx, urging calm has come with heavy criticism (NY Times)” and “Teen turned away for lack of insurance may have died of COVID-19 issues (CBS Los Angeles)”. Who writes this trash and worse yet, why do readers believe it?

There is so much misinformation being put out that it has become impossible to keep track. I don’t have the time to look into each allegation and I doubt anyone else does. I did check what I saw as the most egregious of today’s headlines “Almost one in four Americans lost job or furloughed because of coronavirus, poll finds (Reuters)”. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/almost-one-in-four-americans-lost-job-or-furloughed-because-of-coronavirus-poll-finds/ar-BB11OwCc?ocid=spartanntp). So, I did the numbers and before the coronavirus about 150,000,000 Americans had jobs. If one in four lost their jobs or were furloughed that would mean 37,500,000 unemployment claims would have been filed. Here is the report by the Department of Labor (DOL) two days ago (i.e. 3/26/2020) (https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf). The number of new claims was 3, 283,000, a factor of more than 10 times less than Reuters claimed. If you read the entire Reuters article the last line states it was an online poll of 1,112 respondents. I don’t understand how this is even newsworthy.

I have great hope for this country. The letters I read of people helping people in our communities reinforces why I moved here 19 years ago. Our numbers in N.H. are low, with 187 cases and two deaths as of March 28. People are taking this seriously.

Before closing I do want to point out that we are in the best country in the world for health care. I did the numbers from the World Health Organization (WHO) (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) and worldwide the number of cases and deaths are 598,236 and 27,372 respectively. That is a death rate of 4.6 percent. Here in the U.S. the number of cases and deaths are 104,256 and 1,704 respectively. That is a death rate of 1.6 percent. I’m convinced that is due to the swift actions by President Trump and the leadership of VP Pence and the Corona Task Force.

Bruce Jenket

Moultonborough