September 2020


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Your Opinion Matters Gary Moore Remembers 'Coach'


Trump Speech FROM PAGE 3


“vary considerably across states,” the report noted, have now dropped.


Prescription drugs: Trump has been using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index for prescription


drugs to claim drug


prices decreased “last year.” But that talking point, as we’ve explained, is now outdated. The BLS metric — a measure of drug price inflation that aims to capture what consumers, along with


their insurance companies or


other payers, are paying for a basket of retail prescriptions — now shows a year-over-year increase for 10 months straight.


recent


The president also touted executive


orders he signed


concerning drug prices, saying they “will massively lower the cost of your prescription drugs.” But it’s uncertain what the impact of those orders will be, as we’ve written.


Gary Moore with former Georgetown Coach John Thompson BY GARY MOORE, THEGARYDMOORE.COM


On Monday, August 31, 2020, I got the devastating news of the passing of the legendary Coach John Thompson Jr. I felt as though I had loss yet another important person in my life without having the opportunity to say goodbye. My connection to Coach Thompson wasn't like that of a family member even though the profound impact that he had on my life will live with me forever. He was my role model. I watched him from a distance for many years and patterned the way that I lived my life as a result of what I saw. It is because of him that I wanted to be a Life Coach and I wanted to be the best coach that I could be. My biological father (the late Albert Moore Sr.) first instilled in me the importance of giving of myself to help and empower others through sports. Coach Thompson was the living example of what my father was trying to teach me.


I was only a junior in high school


when I first heard his name, but what he meant to young people always stood out in a way that was extremely admirable


and inspirational. The


year was 1972 and he had just been named the Head Coach of Georgetown University Men's Basketball team, and by the time I completed my senior year, the Hoyas had become my favorite college


basketball team. The team


was made up of a majority of young black men who were on their own plight to adulthood and coached by a strong black man in John Thompson Jr.


The importance University than anywhere else in


the country. What made what he was saying different from other college recruiters was that it was true, and he made sure of it. He taught them how to compete and winning came along with their positive outlook on life. The basketball part was secondary but equally important to the individual success. They may not have won every basketball game that was played however, one thing that was certain when you played the Hoyas you knew that you were about to engage in a war of physical and mental toughness. That was John Thompson Jr. and I wanted to be just like him when I grew up.


I would go on to college and of education


became very clear to me the more I saw of Coach Thompson and the Georgetown Hoyas. Keep in mind that Georgetown University was one of the most prestigious private schools in the nation, so I could imagine the fact that Coach Thompson and the young black men on his team represented only a fraction of the Black population on this campus. That fact did not stop him from giving these kids the nurturing that they had to have needed at their home away from home.


He was teaching these people how to live responsibly and made them accountable for their actions. He sold these potential


student-athletes


and their parents on a dream that if they handled their responsibilities and stayed the course their chances for success was greater at Georgetown


upon my return I wanted to coach and make a difference in the lives of young people the way that Coach Thompson was doing. I found myself listening to as many of his post and pregame interviews as I could in an effort to get a better understanding of who this giant of man was. When he would speak everyone seemed to listen as he spoke with a level of intelligence that was very impressive. He always stood up for his players and looked to protect them from any outside interference no matter where it came from. When he pulled his team off the floor in opposition to Proposition 48 it showed me who he was as a Black man in America. He also showed the world what it meant to stand up for what you truly believed. I learned as much as I could about Proposition 48 and why it was so important to Coach. I didn't understand it all at the time but what I did learn about it was that the majority of college recruits that disqualified because of the proposition were black. That was enough for me to understand why it bothered him so much and why he took such a stand against it.


When I started coaching football I


would always stand up for my players. I would support them when they were right and corrected them as best I could when they were wrong. The integrity and the quality of the person outside of who he or she was as a player was always the most important part of a child's development. Coach Thompson influenced those type of qualities in me without even knowing it. In fact, I first introduced myself to him in a letter that I wrote him in 1995. In the letter, I let him know who


COACH 10


past administration proposals, require the


The orders, which largely revive Health


secretary to take


and Human Services various actions,


such as moving through the federal rule-making process. Two of the orders pertain only to Medicare beneficiaries, one of which is still subject to negotiation


with


also proclaimed: “We will always and very


Preexisting conditions: strongly


protect patients


Trump with


preexisting conditions, and that is a pledge from the entire Republican Party.”


It’s worth noting Trump in 2017 backed Republican plans that would have weakened the preexisting condition protections in the Affordable Care Act.


COVID-19 Travel restrictions: In the space of


two sentences, the president made five false or misleading claims about what he wrongly called his “travel ban” on flights from China and Europe.


Trump, Aug. 27: When I took bold action to issue a travel ban on China, very early indeed, Joe Biden called it hysterical and xenophobic. And then I introduced the ban on Europe very early, again.


The travel restrictions on flights from China that Trump put in place on Feb. 2 were not a “ban.” There were exceptions for U.S. citizens, permanent residents and the immediate family members of both. And he did not impose the restrictions on flights from China “very early indeed.” As we have reported, 36 countries imposed travel restrictions by Feb. 2.


Similarly, the travel restrictions


on flights from Europe were not a ban. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the travel policy applied only to “the entry of most foreign nationals who have been in certain


European


emphasis is ours.) The


countries,” and


also did not apply to U.S. citizens and permanent residents, and their immediate


family members. (The travel restrictions were implemented on


Europe also weren’t “very early.” In fact, a CDC study found that those restrictions


too


late to mitigate the introduction of the virus. They were implemented on March 13; by March 15, the CDC report says, “community transmission was widespread in New York City.”


It is also a matter of dispute as


to whether Biden described the travel restrictions on flights from China as “xenophobic.” At a campaign event, Biden did use the term “xenophobia” on the day the White House announced the travel restrictions, but he did not mention the travel restrictions in that speech. The Biden campaign says Biden’s “reference to xenophobia was about Trump’s long record of scapegoating others at a time when the virus was emerging from China,” and that he was not talking about the travel ban.


About two months after the


travel restrictions took effect, Biden’s campaign said its candidate supported Trump’s decision to impose travel restrictions on flights from China.


Testing: As he has before, Trump


bragged about America’s ability to test and diagnose coronavirus infections.


“We developed, from scratch, pharmaceutical


companies and pertains to only a certain class of drugs.


the largest and most advanced testing system anywhere in the world,” he said. “America has tested more than every country in Europe put together, and more than every nation in the Western Hemisphere combined, think of that. We have conducted 40 million more tests than the next closest nation, which is India.”


According to Worldometer, the


U.S. has performed more than 79 million coronavirus tests as of Aug. 28, which is more than Europe’s collective total of 78 million (excluding Russia) as well as the rest of the Western hemisphere (35 million). China, however, purports to have done the most tests, with 90 million.


Trump’s focus on total tests obscures the fact that the U.S. has tested far fewer people than other nations given the size of the American epidemic. On the number of tests performed per confirmed COVID-19 case — a better metric for understanding how well a country is doing in testing — the U.S. lags behind much of the world, per data from Oxford University’s Our World in Data.


As of Aug. 25, or around that


date, the U.S. has done only 13 tests per confirmed case, which is well below many countries received


plaudits for their


that have testing,


such as New Zealand (530), Australia (233), Taiwan (177), South Korea (99) and Iceland (42). It’s also below the level of Denmark (137), Norway (73), Finland (61), Canada (41), Germany (45), the U.K. (39), Russia (37), Italy (19) and Spain (15), among others.


also


On a per capita basis, the U.S. doesn’t


lead on testing, as


Bahrain, Denmark, Iceland, Russia, Australia and Lithuania all have done more tests given the size of their populations than the U.S.


Testing itself is also not enough


to control an epidemic — it depends on how that information is used, including


whether contact Treatments: The president


proceeded to boast about progress on finding therapeutics for COVID-19, inaccurately claiming there are many treatment options that have been shown to be effective — and prematurely concluding that convalescent plasma would save many lives.


TRUMP SPEECH PAGE 6 tracing


efforts can prevent further spread of the disease, which has been hampered by testing delays.


The Hampton Roads Messenger 5


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