Over 320,000 deaths have occurred in the United States due to COVID. In the recent surge, 3,000 people are dying daily and hospitals throughout our land are filled to capacity; patients are now being treated in parking lots and office space.

Based on scientific evidence all of this was predicted, if safety precautions were not stringently undertaken. The evidence and guidance were ignored by the president; worse, he chose ridicule and sophomoric behavior to downplay the threat that was looming and growing. “Fire Fauci” replaced “Lock her up” in campaign chants. And the deaths began to mount.

A recent letter to the editor complained that the Monitor failed to give President Trump the credit he deserved for saving American lives during the pandemic through the implementation of Operation Warp Speed. When reading, I wondered if the writer was suffering from delusions or amnesia from taking hydroxychloroquine with a dose of chlorine. The failure of presidential leadership is stark and vile.

Instead of following the science, Trump made science the enemy. In April he proclaimed the virus was waning and that we should all go to church on Easter. He interfered with the CDC’s collection of evidence of the virus’s spread, and has had his political appointees interfere with the CDC’s independence. He belittled those who wore masks and downplayed the ravages of the accumulating deaths because he knew it would interfere with his distorted narrative that the economy was strong, and the pandemic was part of the media’s “fake news.”

He was a snake oil salesman at first playing with the lives of the elderly, the sick and the infirm, and now all Americans. His only expression of outrage concerns his false claim that the election was stolen from him. His own attorney general, cybersecurity chief, and in excess of 50 judges – federal and state – Republicans and Democrats, have universally found that there was no evidence of fraud to upset the election results.

As for Operation Warp Speed, Pfizer received no federal money in the development of its vaccine and the Trump administration failed to purchase from Pfizer an additional 100 million doses of the vaccine when offered, which were then sold to the EU. It was Congress that appropriated the money for deployment and development of the vaccines, not Trump. It was the scientists who developed the vaccine, not Trump. It was the FDA and the drug companies that fast-tracked the approval process, not Trump.

When the history of this time is written, “warp speed” will be known as the time of over 300,000 untimely deaths in less than nine months with many more to come. Science and frontline workers will be applauded, and Trump rightfully condemned.

(Steven Gordon and Lucy Karl live in Hopkinton.)