On Wednesday, at an Oval Office event honoring the nation’s nurses, President Donald Trump said that the WuFlu or Covid-19 was worse than the attacks on Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Although I have become a fan of Donald Trump, I have serious issues with this analogy.

First things first, the WuFlu, or Chinese Lung Rot as my social media friend, Sarah, calls it, is a horrible, nasty disease foist on the world by the power-mad, deceitful Chinese Communist Party. It will be a while before we know the truth about how it was made and how and when it escaped the Wuhan virology lab where it was being manipulated. I am not a WuFlu hoaxer. Are we clear?

That being said, comparing the WuFlu to sudden attacks is not a fair comparison. Here is what President Trump said in the Oval Office:

The New York Post reported:

“We went through the worst attack we’ve ever had in our country,” the president said of the virus which has killed more than 71,000 people in the United States.

“This is really the worst attack we’ve ever had. This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center. There’s never been an attack like this,” he continued.

No, there never has been an attack like this. That is a fact. This is an attack. However you believe this virus came to be and spread, we are under attack. More from the New York Post:

In total, 2,403 Americans were killed in Pearl Harbor, while another 2,977 people died during the September 11 attacks.

The death toll from COVID-19 in the past two months has already exceeded the number of Americans killed in the two-decade Vietnam War, and is only expected to rise.

I have a real problem with making these comparisons. You cannot take a one day event and compare it to the WuFlu. If you call the battle against Covid-19 a war, you have to look at the total war. Yes, 2403 Americans died at Pearl Harbor. In total, 405,000 Americans died in World War II. Looking at one day doesn’t give you the picture of what really happened.

Likewise, thinking about September 11, 2001, 2,977 died on that horrific day. That was just the very beginning of the death and destruction. The Global War on Terror has been going on for nearly two decades. American service personnel have died or been wounded. But, that doesn’t begin to cover it. The deaths of the first responders, who heroically went down into the gaping wound where the North and South Towers once stood, are not counted in the one day total. Those first responders have died of cancer and lung diseases and are still dying.

The numbers of the WuFlu are manipulated by the Centers for Disease Control. The New York Post article cites the number as 71,000. The CDC website, as of yesterday, cites 44,016 people dead from Covid-19, 99,942 dead from Covid-19, pneumonia or influenza. The media keeps touting the 71,000 number but I couldn’t find it on the CDC site. Oh, and just so you know, 771,637 Americans died between February 1, 2020 to May 5, 2020. Aren’t their deaths just as tragic.

The toll from the Covid-19 is going to be different. Yes, people have died and will died. The deaths are tragic and unnecessary. The deaths should make us all angry and fighting mad.

The bigger toll of Covid-19 is going to be the loss of jobs, the mental illness and depression, the fear and anxiety, the loss of animals euthanized because the meat processors were closed, the fields plowed under. It’s not about Wall Street or corporate profits. It’s about the individual lives who have been disrupted by the disease.

The WuFlu should not be compared to any other National event. It is its own event. Some of the wounds have been self-inflicted and we will be counting the costs for decades to come. That’s the real tragedy.

Featured Image: World Trade Center Attack/YU-Bin/Flickr.com/Public Domain Mark 1.0