b'NOBODY KNEW THERED BE A PANDEMIC OR AN EPIDEMIC OF THIS PRO-PORTIONNOBODY WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT A THING LIKE THIS COULD HAVE HAPPENED. PRESIDENT TRUMP, MARCH 19THAdmiral Hyman J. Rickover was the father of Naval nuclear propulsion, and would share his lifes lessons with the young officers in training under him, Success teach-es us nothing; only failure teaches.That said, before offering our analysis of how the Trump Administration has handled the Covid-19 crisis, I will first apologize to the die-hard Trump supporters, those who believe he has never told a lie and that he has never made a mistakea bona fide Stable Geniusbecause there is legitimate criticism to be levied.The more meaningful apology, however, is to those most familiar with the gen-eral political leanings of this editorial staff, and those who are reflexively opposed to every word and every action of the President of the United States. We are found authentically patriotic to the success of our country in the same way we all werefor a while at leastafter September 11, 2001. In the weeks since the pandemic came to America, more people have died than in fifteen 9/11s. If at this moment in our his-tory you cannot hope for the success of the President, which equals the success of the country, then your hate for Trump has overtaken your love for America.For all our sake, however, it cannot be acceptable for the President to ignore, or not hear, one warning after another about this exact crisis. On April 17, 2019, speak-ing at a biodefense conference, Trumps Health and Human Services Secretary, Alex Azar,said,Ofcourse,the thing that people ask: What keeps you most up at night in the biodefense world? Pan-demic flu, of course. On Jan-uary 29th, economic advisor Peter Navarro issued a memo to the President warning him of a potential pandemic that could wreck the U.S. econo-my. The next day, Secretary Azar voiced the same warn-ing to Trump on a call to Air Wuhan was quarantined from travel withinForce One but was told to not China, but international flights continued. be alarmist.Tohisgreatcredit, PresidentTrumpstopped most air travel from China to the U.S. on January 31st, a move the WHO criticized at the behest of China and that presumptive Democratic nominee for president, former Vice President Joe Biden, called xenophobiche has since acknowledged that it was the right move at the time. A relentless salesman, Trump seemed to be trying to talk Covid-19 out of reality, saying:We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. Its going to be fine.Were going very substantially down, not up.One day its like a miracleit will disappear.And this is [the Democrats] new hoax!It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.After the Dow Jones, along with every other stock market on earth, crashed by a third of its value in less than ten days, the Covid-19 pandemic finally spoke to Presi-dent Trump in a language he understood. The time for denial was over.While Trump and members of his cabinet made hopeful predictions and claims of success that didnt really exist, they were in the company of just about every one of their political opponents in failing to take the Covid-19 threat seriously. Until mid-February, prominent Democrats like New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others voiced mild concern, parroting the soothing words repeated on every, major TV news broadcast through early Februarythat many more people die of the seasonal flu each year than would be threatened by Covid-19. The Governor of Louisiana and Mayor of New Orleans, both Democrats, allowed Mardi Gras to go forward, as did the very pro-Trump, Republican Governor of Florida allow TheCoastalBend.com THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINEQ2.2020 23'