Premise and Conclusion Analyzation

Since the Covid-19 pandemic’s emergence, combating the disease’s spread has become a major priority for governments and healthcare agencies. All healthcare stakeholders have expressed the need for support from the individual level – by following the measures prescribed and administrations – by ensuring that the measures put in place are actionable, feasible, and followed. Simultaneously, the public expected healthcare sector to flex rapidly, combat the virus, and governments to be critical in establishing policies that would end the pandemic. These expectations are somewhat global since the virus infects people of all dynamics, including politics. Thus, the least that could have happened is someone to politicize the fight against Covid-19. However, that is exactly what Trump and his administration did.

The Guardian reported how Trump downplayed efforts to stop the spread of Covid-19. According to Smith (2020), Trump knew the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic, but he intentionally chose to mislead the public by downplaying the seriousness with which it ought to be taken. For instance, Trump is quoted saying that the virus would disappear in a miracle, recommending people not to wear face masks, blaming China on the pandemic, and failing to cease international flights. Trump also ordered a slowed down on the testing of Covid-19, misinterpreted information from WHO, and lied about the infection rate status and measures put in place.

Analysis of why Trump downplayed Covid-19 reveals that his actions were immoral and politically motivated. Firstly, in his re-election bid, Trump acted tough (an unafraid hero) in the global fight against the pandemic and continued his beef against China by blaming the pandemic. Secondly, strict measures to combating the pandemic would weaken the economy, more than during the lockdown. That would be unpleasant to corporations and conservative interest groups that support Trump since they rely on the stock market’s performance. Also, he refused to support safety measures such as wearing masks to be on the opposite side of his presidential rival Joe Biden, who insisted on following WHO guidelines.

Argument Reconstruction

1. As the main advisory on health practices, if the WHO advised that people follow the social and health measures to stop the spread of Covid-19, authorities, including Trump, should have enacted policies to ensure WHO guidelines are followed.
2. However, some third-world countries, such as in Africa that could not ultimately follow WHO guidelines did not report a proportional increase in infection rates. Following them would also hurt the US economy and possibly weaken Trump’s presidential bid. 
3. So, taking Covid-19 seriously as depicted by WHO guidelines does not guarantee a change in infection rate.

C. Thus, Trump was not wrong to downplay the seriousness of Covid-19 or politicize it.

Analysis

According to the above argument, and in the perspective of modus tollens, if not following WHO guidelines and taking the pandemic seriously does not impact the infection rate, then Trump was not wrong to downplay the seriousness of Covid-19 or politicize it. This is from coursework, that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true. In this situation, if 1and 3 are true, then C must also be true.

The third argument is derived from argument 2, which is arguably not logically strong. It is based on a generalization since a conclusion like “African counties do not have the ultimately follow WHO guidelines” are drawn from a few countries as revealed in the WeForum report (Kaseje, 2020). A scientific review has also stated that inadequate healthcare capacity in dealing with Covid-19 is not sufficient to account for the low rate of infections in Africa (Chitungo et al., 2020). Besides, Kaseje (2020) reports that most African countries adopted measures such as wearing masks, the lockdown of high infection areas, and ceasing movements. Scientists have hypothesized that the differences in the rate of infections between Africa and other continents are due to rapid response to the WHO guidelines, and a significant population has the antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, which is somewhat defeating Coronavirus (Nordling, 2020). Therefore, this is not a credible inference.

Besides, countries that took the Covid-19 pandemic seriously have recorded significantly low infection cases. For instance, Taiwan has recorded 724 total infection cases, 590 recoveries, and seven deaths against 69.9 million global cases, 45.1 million recoveries, and 1.59 million deaths. Graham-Harrison (2020) reports that Taiwan authorities acted early by enacting strict measures such as quarantines, testing protocols, and movement cessation. Since Taiwan neighbors China, the country was more susceptible to high infection rates; however, the seriousness with which the Taiwanese authorities took the outbreak has successfully combated the pandemic. Therefore, taking pandemic as serious, adhering to WHO guidelines, and enacting enforcement policies would reduce the US’s infection rate. That disqualifies the Trump was not wrong to downplay the seriousness of Covid-19 or politicize it.

Works Cited

Chitungo, I., Dzobo, M., Hlongwa, M., & Dzinamarira, T. (2020). COVID-19: Unpacking the low number of cases in Africa. Public Health In Practice, 1, 100038. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhip.2020.100038

Graham-Harrison, E. (2020). Taiwan marks 200 days without domestic Covid-19 infection. the Guardian. Retrieved 11 December 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/taiwan-domestic-covid-19-infection.

Kaseje, N. (2020). Why Sub-Saharan Africa needs a unique response to COVID-19. World Economic Forum. Retrieved 11 December 2020, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/why-sub-saharan-africa-needs-a-unique-response-to-covid-19/.

Nordling, L. (2020). The pandemic appears to have spared Africa so far. Scientists are struggling to explain why. Science | AAAS. Retrieved 11 December 2020, from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/pandemic-appears-have-spared-africa-so-far-scientists-are-struggling-explain-why.

Smith, D. (2020). Trump knew Covid was deadly but wanted to ‘play it down’, Woodward book says. the Guardian. Retrieved 11 December 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/09/trump-bob-woodward-book-rage-coronavirus.