On Fox News yesterday, Donald Trump, after making the ridiculous case that he’s been “treated worse” than Abraham Lincoln, said that, in his opinion, it is now safe to re-open society. He then went on to say that, by the time all of this is over, the COVID-19 death toll in the United States could reach 100,000. As he was on Fox News at the time, he wasn’t pushed too hard, but this was a significant increase over his last public prediction, which was that around 65,000 American citizens would lose their lives to the virus. As for why he’s now changing his tune, it could have something to do with a newly released draft report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which projects that, by June 1, nearly 3,000 people will be dying each and every day as a result of the highly transmittable illness — an illness which Donald Trump said he had “totally under control” back in February.
Here is the graph from the report by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing the anticipated deaths in our future.
Why the President of the United States, knowing that this is on the horizon, would be urging states to weaken social distancing safeguards, and condoning the armed protests taking part across the country by his supporters, who are apparently intent on regaining the right to die alone on ventilators for their loved ones, is absolutely beyond me. What’s clear, however, is that Donald Trump wants to have it both ways. As Marcy Wheeler points out in the following tweet, he wants to force states to reopen, but, at the same time, he also wants to be able to point to the official White House stance on social distancing, so that, when the deaths start multiplying, he can say that his administration never wavered in their view that a lockdown was necessary.
This is a polite way of saying that Trump wants governors to ignore his stated White House policy and reopen early so he can blame them. I get why Abbott and DeSantis would sign up to be Trump's scapegoats so willingly. But Polis?https://t.co/3hvIHTbFoF pic.twitter.com/DcxzvftVDZ
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) May 5, 2020
So, just three days ago, we saw our worst one-day death toll since all of this started. [The World Health Organization reported that 2,909 people in the United States died of COVID-19 on Thursday, breaking the previous record of 2,471, which had been set on April 23.] And, today, the New York Times is reporting that, based on government modeling, we’ll likely be seeing “about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.” And, in spite of this, Donald Trump was tweeting this morning not about the need to remain calm and listen to local public heath officials, but his own polling, and the fact that he was finally getting the credit he so justly deserved for his handling of this public health emergency. “Getting great reviews, finally, for how well we are handling the pandemic,” he posted. But, even worse than the pathetic narcissism is the fact that he continues to push people on the subject of reopening America… building on his recent, thinly-veiled calls to violence, urging his followers to “Liberate” their states.
What started with bold statements about how, if it were up to him, the states would be open, and photo-ops of him in front of giant “Opening Up America Again” signs, hasn’t diminished in response to the constant warnings of public health professionals. Sure, Trump, when he speaks about coronavirus, may now include a caveat about how people should wear masks, but, at the same time, he’s celebrating the actions of those who don’t. Instead of calling out his armed supporters, who are marching mask-less on their state capitols, shouting in the faces of law enforcement officers, and violating all social distancing and safety guidelines, he’s defending them, and encouraging local leaders to bend to their will.
In response to the armed protest in Michigan last week, which you can see in the above photo, Donald Trump tweeted that our Governor should “give a little,” adding that these men with their assault weapons are “very good people” who just “want their lives back again.” And, since then, he’s said of protesters everywhere, “See them, talk to them, make a deal.” And deals are being made. Whereas other countries have pretty much stopped the spread of COVID-19, our death toll is continuing to rise, and now, in large part part due to the President’s intervention, no doubt, more than half of our governors have rolled back restrictions intended to slow the spread of the virus.
I’ve said before that I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that everyone I know will eventually get COVID-19. I just don’t see ours as a nation capable of doing what other nations have done to stop the spread of the disease. I don’t see the American people ever assenting, for instance, to have contact tracking software placed on their cellphones. I thought, however, that we could at least be sane enough to follow the guidance of public heath professionals, and slow the spread of the virus, thereby giving our frontline health care workers, and our at-risk populations, a fighting chance.
Apparently, though, that’s not the kind of country that we are. I shouldn’t be surprised. We are, after all, a country that continues to allow for the legal sale of assault weapons in spite of repeated school shootings and the like. We aren’t big on evidence or logic when it comes up against the myth of American individualism. Watching the Canadians do the right thing the other day, and outlaw the use, transport, sale, import and purchase of 1,500 models of military-style weapons, kind of brought things back into focus for me. They had one terrible massacre, and, like the people of Australia before them, they did the right thing and immediately ended it. We, however, keep right on going, in spite of Sandy Hook, and Parkland, Los Vegas, and all the others. It’s just who we are.
A majority of us apparently just don’t give a shit about community, or science, or reality, or just doing the right thing. When it comes down to it, we only really care about the myth of rugged individualism, the unfettered ability to exploit resources in the quest to make money, and the freedom to do whatever the fuck that we want. And, to be honest, I guess that’s worked to our benefit for a while. We’re good at pushing boundaries, exploiting opportunities, and finding new ways to either extract value from people or kill them. And, up until now, maybe it’s worked to our advantage. I sincerely think, when you tally up all the good, and all the bad, the United States has a reasonably good track record. [Sure, there was slavery, genocide and the atom bomb, but there was also jazz music, defeating Hitler, reaching the moon, pubic education, moving from slavery to having a black president, inventing the fucking middle class, etc.] But I have to wonder if our moment is over. We may have gotten to a point, I fear, where the things that we value may be antithetical to what the world needs. How, after all, can a country that keeps pumping out assault weapons, even as our children are being murdered in their schools, be expected to address something as large and complicated as global climate change? [We can’t even spend a month on the couch watching Netflix when the lives of our elderly are at stake.]
We have armed people in the fucking streets right now, demanding their right to ride jet skis. And they’re doing it knowing full well that tens of thousands of American citizens are dying. It just doesn’t fucking matter. We can’t be bothered… A security guard working at a Family Dollar store in Flint was just shot and killed for telling a customer to wear a face mask. And, in Holly, a man shopping at a Dollar Tree wiped his nose on an employee yesterday when he was asked to do the same thing. I know there are good things about this country of ours, but, by and large, I fear we’re a nation of self-important, magical-thinking, sociopaths. And we’re now paying the price for it.
If we live through this, there sure as hell better be a reckoning on the other side. We need to confront a lot of shit about ourselves — like the Germans and Japanese had to do after WWII — and we need to have a comprehensive plan to move forward. And I don’t just mean that we need to institute national health care, and get the money out of politics. I mean we need to confront all of this bullshit in such a way that we never, ever forget it. We need mandatory classes on media literacy. We need a new Smithsonian museum dedicated to the critical exploration of Trumpism. We need a massive campaign to…
OK, I’ve been at this too long. I need to stop. I just can’t believe that our hospitals are going to be hit by another wave, and that other people will lose friends and loved ones, the way that I have. It’s just all so absolutely unnecessary. I want to think the best of our country, and say with some conviction that we’re better than this. But the truth is, I don’t think that we are. I don’t think it’s in our collective nature to do the right thing. And, sadly, a lot of people are going to die as a result.
update: He’s still at it. Here he is saying once again that we need to open the country, even though he hasn’t yet provided a proper testing infrastructure.
.@jeffmason1: With doctors saying there might be a recurrence of coronavirus in the fall, why is now the time to wind down the task force?
TRUMP: "Well because we can't keep our country closed for the next 5 years." pic.twitter.com/2IXL8vucbl
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 5, 2020
