Trump’s last gasp: The pandemic isn’t real and
everything’s fine
Opinion by
Columnist
Oct. 26, 2020 at 11:15 a.m. CDT
America
faces no issue more pressing than the coronavirus pandemic,
and so the president has found the message that he believes will carry him to
reelection. It goes something like this:
Everything
is fine. The pandemic is no big deal, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
We could
call this “denial,” but that doesn’t begin to describe it. Because not only are
we in the horrific situation we’re in because of President Trump, in the last
week before the election he’s actively trying to make it worse.
By 9
a.m. on Monday morning, Trump had sent three tweets whining that the media are
paying too much attention to the pandemic, including this one:
Now
here’s some of what’s actually happening on the pandemic:
·
The number of Americans who have died of covid-19 has moved past
224,000
·
On two days last week, the daily number of new infections topped
80,000, higher than at any point since the pandemic began
·
In states around the country, a surge of covid-19
hospitalizations is swamping hospitals, leaving some intensive
care units at full capacity
·
The White House itself is the location of a new outbreak, with at least five aides and
advisers to Vice President Pence testing positive
The
president himself is not concerned. “We are coming around, we’re rounding the
turn, we have the vaccines, we have everything,” he said on Sunday at one of the rallies
that themselves seem to have led to coronavirus spikes in many of the
places where they have been held.
And the
White House is now barely concealing what has been the case all along: They
have no intention of working to contain the virus.
Appearing
Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” White
House chief of staff Mark Meadows said, “We’re not going to control the
pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics
and other mitigation areas.”
Asked
by host Jake Tapper to clarify, Meadows said that containment of the virus is
essentially impossible, “Because it is a contagious virus. Just like the flu, it’s
contagious.”
In
other words, the administration sees public health measures including
mask-wearing and social distancing as essentially pointless. You just have to
wait for a vaccine and treatments for the sick.
When
pressed, Meadows said that people could adopt “social distancing and masks when
we can.” This is how Trump and other Republicans describe public health
measures: not as particularly important, but a matter of personal convenience
and taste.
As Gov.
Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota tweeted last week:
The
pandemic is exploding in her state; only North Dakota
tops it for new cases as a proportion of population.
We
can’t forget this critical fact: Mask-wearing didn’t have to be
politicized.
It
wasn’t inevitable. Trump made it that way, not only with his personal refusal
to wear one, but even more importantly by deriding people who wear masks as
weak and encouraging protests against efforts by Democratic governors to impose
public health measures to contain the virus. He turned refusing to wear a mask
into a badge of tribal identification, a way of saying “MAGA 2020! To hell with
you, liberals!”
And
despite his insane insistence that 224,000 dead Americans — with who knows how
many more to come — is the best we could possibly have done, all we have to do
is look around the world to see how things could have been different.
We
could have been like Canada (just under 10,000 deaths), or Japan (1,700
deaths), or Germany (just over 10,000 deaths), or South Korea (fewer than 500
deaths). Why did those countries succeed where we failed so spectacularly?
Two
closely related reasons: They had competent leadership, and their populations
didn’t go to war with themselves about whether to take simple public health
measures — in part because those leaders weren’t so spectacularly stupid as to
encourage people to flout them.
But
Trump did. And even though he’s likely to lose the election primarily because
of his failure on the pandemic, his narcissistic recklessness will keep killing
people even after he’s gone.
What’s
going to happen if Joe Biden wins the election and takes office in January?
He’ll certainly do a better job managing the practical things the federal
government has to do, such as coordinating distribution of protective equipment
and finally creating a national testing strategy. And he’ll sign a relief bill
that provides more funds to schools, local governments and businesses to enable
them to operate safely.
But
when he tells Americans to join together in a common effort — one that requires
the participation of all of us — what’s the response going to be? It’ll be just
what it is now, except worse.
Trump
supporters will storm into stores without masks to show that they oppose the
new president and still love the old one. They’ll be egged on by Republicans in
Congress and at the state level, looking to stir up anger they can capitalize
on to hamstring the administration and boost their own political futures.
Democratic officials at every level will be the targets of more threats, plots
and perhaps outright violence.
The result
will be that the pandemic lasts longer than it needs to, and more Americans
will die.
It’s just
one of many ways we’ll be living with Trump’s toxic legacy for years to come.
And that’s
if he loses. It’s almost impossible to imagine how bad things will get if he
wins.
