With the 2020 election less than 8 months away, President Trump appears much more concerned about his political prospects than about the deadly threat posed by the spreading Covid-19 coronavirus epidemic.
He has suggested scientists are much closer to creating a vaccine than they really are.
He has contridicted health officials who have publicly worried about the growing number of infections in the U.S.
He has even questioned the coronavirus fatality rate compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO).
As of Monday morning, reports the New York Times, at least 545 people have been treated for coronavirus in 34 states and Washington, D.C. At least 22 have died.
In tweets Monday morning, Trump “made it painfully obvious that he is in complete and utter denial about the coronavirus threat,” says Vox, adding that the stock plunge on Wall Street left the president with two options: “acknowledge the public’s legitimate fears and take steps to improve confidence in the US response, or blame the media and convince everyone that the problem isn’t real at all.”
“Guess which one he took?”
Trump is said to have been shocked when told recently that so many Americans die each from common influenza (caused by another variety of coronavirus). Now he uses it to play down the Covid-19 threat.
And according to another tweet from Dr. Dena Grayson, an expert on pandemic threats and a former Democratic candidate for Congress, Trump even got that wrong.
Grayson says that in fact, the fatality rate for the new coronavirus is more than 30 times higher than the regular flu.
Trump’s seeming optimism is also not reflected on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers of both parties are taking the virus threat seriously indeed.
And some have good reason to do so.
“Several lawmakers appearing at the recent American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gatherings in the Washington, D.C., area interacted with individuals who have since tested positive for the highly contagious virus,” reports The Hill.
Among them: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who say they’ve self-quarantined after coming into contact with an infected person at CPAC.
Adding to congressional anxiety is the fact that older people who get sick from the coronavirus appear much more likely to die than those who are younger.
“The most vulnerable population are people over 70 … which is all of the Democrat leadership and most chairmen, and a third of the U.S. Senate,” one unnamed Republican lawmaker told The Hill.
Returning to Trump, he has in the past been scornful of vaccines, disparaging the vaccination schedule followed by the parents of most young children, and refusing to ever get a flu vaccine shot himself.
“Now, as his federal health agencies tackle the rapidly morphing coronavirus epidemic and he and his administration come under fire for serious missteps in managing it, Mr. Trump has had to adjust his messaging,” reports the Times.
“He is now all in on a vaccine and the sooner the better,” the Times says, noting that just a few years ago Trump blandly said he just didn’t “like the idea of injecting bad stuff in your body.”
But, the Times says, Trump “is clearly picking and choosing among the public health facts that he finds appealing, preferring his own judgment to that of experts, as he always has.”
So who does Trump blame for America’s worries? The Democrats and the news media, of course.
But this time he may be on shaky ground.
Trump “better be very careful on a public health crisis in trying not to seem like he is optimizing it,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told Politico. “There is no aspect of the coronavirus story that is helpful for Trump right now. It has lose, lose, lose all over it.”
