As Joe Friday used to say, these are the facts

In reference to the COVID crisis, then-President Trump caught holy heck, even though he stopped incoming flights from China right away. And developed Operation Warp Speed, to get vaccines to fight the virus.

But this COVID wasn't our first case in the United States. In 1918, in the United Sates and worldwide, under Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, the disease lasted 15 months in the United Sates, 670,000 Americans died of it out of a population of just 100 million.

If you extrapolate that out to today's 328 million population, that would mean 2.2 million Americans would have died compared to the 500 or 600 that will die from COVID. So the point is that the Spanish flu was much worse. It is estimated that worldwide, 100 million died. Ironically, the president was Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat. In those days there was a more united country, you didn't see Republicans blasting Wilson as Democrats blasted Trump.

Those who remember the detective, "Joe Friday" on TV, he used to say those are the facts.

ROGER GREGORY

Priest River