In the Aug. 18 issue, a letter from Janet Gregg claimed that four years ago we were better under President Donald Trump. This is totally outrageous! In mid-2020 (four years ago), the United States was trying to deal with Trump's management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United States had 4% of the world's population and 16% of the pandemic's deaths. There were serious shortages of food, all kinds of medical supplies and even toilet paper because of the pandemic’s impact on supply chains. Instead of keeping corpses in overcrowded mortuaries, they were being kept in refrigerated trailers.

According to some economists, these basic shortages were one indirect cause of global inflation starting in 2021, as bidding wars occurred when some supplies became available but at much higher prices. In all my eight decades of life, clearly 2020 was the very worst year in the United States; I feel Trump’s denial of the existence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 was the sole cause of this situation.

Ron Koch Sr., Butler