The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling! And the Chickens Come Home to Roost

The end of the world. Everything shut down, cancelled, locked down.

This is what we get when we elect a government of clowns. Trump’s response has been largely the usual: keep out foreigners. Tax cuts. Self-congratulation. Demonizing Democrats. And of course lies. He said everyone could get tested when that was blatantly false. He’s blamed Obama for disbanding our pandemic response team, when it was Trump himself who disbanded it.

He did give a scripted teleprompter speech. But written by the likes of Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, so it was a misleading mush of misinformation that required swift correction. Thus, intended to reassure, it fueled the panic, financial markets collapsing the next day.

Nothing in Trump’s speech called upon Americans to join together, and to shoulder some sacrifices, in a national effort to confront this crisis. (He said about three such words today.)

My previous post on coronavirus was read by some as belittling the problem. No. I did discuss how humans often aren’t rational about threats and dangers, and questioned why we don’t go nuts like this every flu season which sickens 30+ million Americans and kills tens of thousands. Coronavirus could get that bad, or worse. But, so far at least, it has not. We should act strongly to prevent it.

Cancelling and closing down everything looks like the wrong response. In terms of bang-for-the-buck it seems very inefficient and wasteful, because the societal and economic cost is huge, while (again, so far) it appears only one person out of thousands is infected. We don’t handle seasonal flu this way, despite a far higher percentage of carriers among us.

The emphasis should instead be on targeting those likeliest to harbor the virus, by testing them, and quarantining people testing positive. Testing not only ones with symptoms but anyone having had contact with known carriers.* This means a massive crash program to manufacture and distribute test kits and organize a testing infrastructure. Yesterday.

The Trump administration started off way behind the curve on testing, and didn’t (appear to) finally get serious about it until the press conference just hours ago. (Even there Trump seemed to actually discourage people from getting tested.) It’s because we weren’t prepared to deploy that preferred testing method for containing the illness that forces resorting to the very second-best alternative of closing and cancelling myriad public events.

It’s said that when the tide goes out, you see who’s been swimming naked. We always knew there’d be some crisis showing up what Trump is.

Cocksure Trumpers have long sneered at Democrats’ chances of beating him, banging on about how the wonderful economy assures his re-election. I generally wouldn’t respond; what will be will be. Well, the economy is now shot.

This was before Coronavirus. Trump’s campaign fired its pollster

Yet at least one comment as late as Thursday still jeered at Biden. Such divorcement from reality seems greater than ever. America can’t be so deranged as to re-elect Trump now.

* One of whom is Trump. He dodges and resists being tested. What a terrible personal example.