I don’t hear well. I haven’t for a number of years. Many faculty members during my days as a vice president probably attributed this to my not understanding what they were saying, but I understand when I can hear. It got so bad that several years ago the BW had me go to MD Anderson and get my hearing tested. Anderson has a rather advanced Audiology Department with great personnel. Sure enough, it was not a lack of understanding that was my problem, but too many Jefferson Airplane concerts at the Fillmore East in my younger days. I had high frequency hearing loss and needed bilateral hearing aids. They are most helpful. I wished I had gotten them earlier. So do many faculty members, I suspect.

If there is one thing in short supply in America today, it is trust in our major institutions. This surely includes the government. Who can tell when the man in the White House is telling the truth or one of his 20,000 and counting lies? Not I. In the political arena, the Big Lie has a long history and has been used to control populations for centuries. Therefore, we should not be surprised by the use of lies by the president (Biden is not for defunding the police, for example) to get himself re-elected. I’m not talking about that trust at all. That’s politics. I am talking about whether or not the American people have trust in those agencies of government whose main role is to keep them safe—the police, health departments and most importantly, one federal regulatory agency currently in the spotlight—the FDA.

The most important job of the President of the United States is to keep the people of America safe. Until the last few weeks, a compelling argument could have been made that Mr. Trump had failed to do that. The coronavirus was credited with over 180,000 deaths, 6 million cases and untold numbers of business failures with the attendant stress on small business owners, many displaced workers, and their families. The economy, once thriving a mere six months ago, was going into the tank (although the stock market was still on the rise). Things for average Americans were looking bleak and the Democrats were doing a pretty good job hanging that on Mr. Trump.

The coronavirus has changed everything from the Olympics to the national political conventions. But did it need to wreck the economy and why did it?

There were basically two paths that the United States could have taken once the coronavirus escaped China and made it to our shores.

Choice one was to…

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