Life in the Time of Coronavirus: No, Mr. President, the Pandemic Will Not Ease by Easter

Just when you thought Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, could sink no lower in his levels of incompetence, the Buffoon in Chief is signaling his impatience with the medically-necessary steps to limit the spread of COVID-19 and is making irresponsible predictions that the pandemic will end "before Easter."

At a televised"town hall" arranged by Trump's favorite conservative media outlet, Fox News, the man who once said that the coronavirus pandemic would not have a serious impact on the U.S. and that the Democrats were exaggerating the gravity of the situation for political gain during an election year was irritated and, at the same time, making rosy predictions about when America could go back to business as usual.

Per the New York Times:

 President Trump said on Tuesday that he wanted to reopen the country for business by Easter, on April 12, despite widespread warnings from public health experts that the worst effects of the coronavirus were still weeks away and that lifting the restrictions now in place would result in unnecessary deaths.

The president said he believed a crippled economy and forced social isolation would inflict more harm than the spread of the virus. But experts have warned that spread could be slowed if businesses remain shuttered and people remain in their homes as much as possible.

 Coming on the heels of Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick's Monday night lunacy-inspired statement that many senior citizens would gladly risk death from the novel coronavirus in exchange for returning to "business as usual," the President's statement reflects the cold-blooded calculation behind their economic agenda: public health takes a back seat to economic activity.

In case you missed what Patrick, a former radio commentator and one of the right wing's media darlings, said on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show on Monday:

“No one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, ‘Are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in … I just think there’s lots of grandparents out there in this country like me — I have six grandchildren — that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children. I want to live smart and see through this. But I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed and that’s what I see.”  

This is insane. This Texas nutcase is willing to risk many senior citizens' lives, as well as those of other people with pre-existing health conditions who would die from COVID-19, in order for businesses to open and "normalcy" to return.

That's blood-chilling Malthusian logic. And millions of decent Americans will not stand for this nonsense.

See, folks, this is what happens when a large segment of Americans decides to put a preening, buffoonish, self-centered real estate "mogul" into the White House in order to turn back the clock and return the country back to the 1950s.  Instead of having a President with leadership skills on par with Franklin D. Roosevelt, we are being pushed off the proverbial cliff by an intellectual midget who doesn't understand how viruses spread, how hard it is to get a handle on a pandemic, and that you don't tell a virus, "Hey, COVID-19, we beat you, bro! Now be gone by April 12 so we can get the country going again."

Again, per the New York Times: 

Sitting in the Rose Garden earlier in the day for a Fox News “virtual town hall” on the coronavirus, the president said he was ready to “have the country opened up” by Easter and to ease restrictions he said were responsible for harming a flourishing economy.

“You are going to lose a number of people to the flu, but you are going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression,” Mr. Trump said, misidentifying the virus. “You are going to have suicides by the thousands — you are going to have all sorts of things happen. You are going to have instability. You can’t just come in and say let’s close up the United States of America, the biggest, the most successful country in the world by far.”

No, Mr. President. This crisis is not going away by Easter. The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 rises on a daily basis; do you think the worst will be over in less than three weeks?

I think not.

Source:

Trump Wants U.S. ‘Opened Up’ by Easter, Despite Health Officials’ Warnings, by Annie Karni and Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times, March 25, 2020.