Other Nations Are Nearing The End Of Coronavirus Crisis. Not America.

[Celerity]

There is a new spike in Coronavirus cases, and it is entirely Donald Trump’s fault.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/other-nations-are-nearing-the-end



WASHINGTON, DC -- Those of us who’ve been paying attention to facts and science have known for weeks that the United States is far from done with the coronavirus. Indeed, there’s no end in sight. None. The pandemic, here at least, will go on and on, killing Americans and crippling our economy as our idiocracy seems to be simultaneously gaining strength. As I write this, America has surpassed the record for new daily cases. Back on April 25, the former high water mark for the virus, we hit 36,001 new cases in a single day, nationwide. Today, June 24, the United States hit 38,672 new cases -- and rising. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a ceiling any more, and the death toll will continue its climb toward 200,000 and beyond. Why is this happening, especially when other nations are nearing the end? Donald Trump, of course. Duh. And, yes, I’m absolutely blaming him for the entirety of this resurgence in the virus. Unlike the initial spike in cases, which was only partially due to Trump’s incompetence and single-minded focus on re-election, this new spike is all about the newly poisonous language and political tactics Trump has been playing with in the past month or so.

Even the most cursory examination of the stats and charts show that we were on our way toward a survivable rate of transmission when Trump decided to screw it all up -- not unlike how he screwed up his foundation, his university, his casinos, the rest of his presidency, and the past several weeks of his re-election campaign. Trump always makes things worse for Trump, but his most unforgivable decisions involve making things worse for the rest of us, too. With the coronavirus, though, Trump didn’t just “make things worse,” he made things unforgivably catastrophic. His mortal sin in all of this was turning the pandemic into a partisan issue when it should’ve had nothing to do with party politics, at least in terms of how the federal government would approach the crisis. Almost from the beginning, Trump framed the pandemic as a “Democrat hoax.” He urged a rapid reopening in defiance of experts, deliberately inciting a backlash from Democrats who knew that’d be a calamitous blunder. Then he attacked any Democratic governors who defied his insistence upon reopening the economy, indulging the whims of the mob over the caution of the experts. Likewise, he attacked Democratic governors who cried out for help from the White House, only to be confronted by Feds who hijacked their incoming supply of PPE.

As a result of Trump’s blurts on Twitter and during his daily Trump Show, protests erupted in various state capitals, most shockingly in Michigan where men armed with semi-automatic rifles invaded the capitol building to accost Governor Whitmer. Naturally, the protesters didn’t socially distance or wear masks while being compacted into tight indoor demonstrations. The partisanship worsened in recent weeks as Trump turned mask-wearing and social distancing into a matter of “political correctness” -- as something only the allegedly frightened Democrats wanted to enforce. Anyone wearing masks, Trump said, were just doing so to voice their disapproval of him personally. While continuing to treat a massive cataclysm as a right versus left issue, Trump is currently behaving as if there is no pandemic. During a recent press event in the Rose Garden, Trump’s staff rearranged the seating from being distanced to being shoulder-to-shoulder. He’s now held two campaign rallies, one in Oklahoma and another in Arizona, where there was zero social distancing and only a few visible mask-wearers among the Red Hat disciples. Ignoring the matter is far worse than his initial downplaying of the crisis, given the wealth of knowledge we’ve accumulated since March.

At this point, Trump has essentially decided that the pandemic is no longer his problem -- it’s now the purview of governors, while everyone’s to blame except him. It’s China, or it’s Mexico, or it’s the CDC, or it’s the aforementioned Democratic governors who are Trump’s handy dandy scapegoats -- not the man at the top of the heap where the buck is allegedly supposed to stop. Perhaps the most blindingly criminal decision he’s made so far -- beyond the incompetence, beyond the partisanship, beyond the rank ignorance -- became public this week. Several days after Trump told his fanboys in Tulsa that he ordered his staff to “slow the testing down, please,” we learned that the federal government will no longer be supporting drive-up testing sites. It seems intentional now, this degree of utter cruelty -- this degree of malfeasance. Trump is so driven to relentlessly perform CPR on the economy in order to get re-elected that he’s chosen to murder by negligence thousands more Americans who could have been saved were it not for his callow, irresponsible, sociopathic compulsion for self-preservation and literally nothing else. When the history of this era is written, the name “Trump” ought to be presented in the same light as the worst despots throughout world history and the words “slow the testing down, please” need to be a major chapter title.

This nightmare is far from over.

[Dawson Leery]

1. F**K Conservatives

They have murdered hundred of thousands in their militant selfishness .

[Wounded Bear]

2. We used to have intelligent conservatives in America...

not so much any more.

[hunter]

3. This is Trump's wall. Citizens of the U.S.A. won't be welcome anywhere.

Citizens of other nations won't be visiting the U.S.A..

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. And still other nations are having surges in their own Corona Virus

cases. Brazil is poised to catch up to us in number of cases and deaths. India will eventually surpass all of us. Assuming we ever get remotely accurate numbers from them.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

[Celerity]

5. Modi and Bolsonaro are authoritarian thugs, Rump is jelly

[triron]

6. And the point is? Are you implicitly questioning the validity of the post's argument?

Trump is an utter disaster to the USA (and the whole planet really).

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. All too often people here seem to think that this is the only country

with increasing Corona Virus cases. It's not. Yeah, Trump blew it big time, but he's hardly the only leader who did so. He's also had a lot of help from Republican Governors. Then there's Sweden.

Brazil is already on track to surpass this country in cases and deaths in just a few months. Also, as I like to point out, just give India time. I suspect they already have a million cases, just not well reported. Too bad we're not getting reports from that country about what is probably going on. I'm guessing mass burials at night. That is currently happening in more than one place. Can't recall which country, I think some Middle Eastern one, that was apparently doing that. That particular story was on NPR.

If, by some horror, Trump is re-elected, this country will devolve to essentially Third World status before long. It's already on it's way down. Having things like a large standing army make it hard to tell. But this is probably a lot like being a citizen of Rome would have been in the 5th or 6th century CE. It was living on past glory, as we are today. There are enormous domestic problems, and Trump is trying to give his equivalent of bread and circuses, i.e. rallies, to appease the masses. I am personally glad that I'm over 70, have only one child, who is not going to reproduce. I'm glad I won't have grandchildren to live into the disastrous future.

[Politicub]

8. Our country is underdeveloped in so many areas.

Welcome to the banana republic states of America.