President Trump wants to reopen America for business.
Frustrated by the election-threatening collapse of the US economy, he is desperate to see his beloved stock and job numbers going up again rather than continuing to dive.
Trump is bemused as to why everything has had to grind to a sudden halt and would like everything back to normal ‘very soon’.
There’s just one problem: Coronavirus hasn’t got the presidential memo – and doesn’t care what the President of the United States has to say about anything.
In fact, as Trump was saying all this last night, it was wreaking deadly havoc all over the country with ever greater savagery.
Trump is bemused as to why everything has had to grind to a sudden halt and would like everything back to normal ‘very soon’. There’s just one problem: Coronavirus hasn’t got the presidential memo – and doesn’t care what the President of the United States has to say about anything. In fact, as Trump was saying all this last night (pictured at the White House press conference last night), it was wreaking deadly havoc all over the country with ever greater savagery
Frustrated by the election-threatening collapse of the US economy, he is desperate to see his beloved stock and job numbers going up again rather than continuing to dive
And this is just the start.
America is on the same trajectory as Italy was several weeks ago, and if the carnage that’s unfurled there now unfurls in the US, as many experts believe, then it may decimate human life like no other single entity in the nation’s history.
Right now, the only thing that can possibly stop this happening is a complete and total shutdown of the kind Trump himself ironically once demanded on all Muslims entering the US after ISIS terror attacks.
Coronavirus will kill many more Americans than Islamist terrorists.
And unlike the deeply flawed and bigoted Muslim ban, which was soon massively downgraded, it doesn’t target any particular group.
COVD-19 attacks and kills anyone and everyone – regardless of their skin color, religion, political belief, gender or wealth.
It’s the most indiscriminate of enemies and is gathering strength and venom as it careers around the world.
Governments have been scrambling to find a way – any way – to contain it, and almost all of them have now arrived at the conclusion that the best way to stem the tide of infection is total lockdown.
This means a complete cessation of any ‘normal’ activity.
America is on the same trajectory as Italy was several weeks ago, and if the carnage that’s unfurled there now unfurls in the US, as many experts believe, then it may decimate human life like no other single entity in the nation’s history. Pictured is the growing death toll in the US
Governments have been scrambling to find a way – any way – to contain it, and almost all of them have now arrived at the conclusion that the best way to stem the tide of infection is total lockdown. Pictured is the states taking their own lockdown measures during coronavirus
If Americans think their current lack of ‘freedom’ is bad, they should see how China handled its lockdown. But it worked. Just as Italy finally looks to be getting on top of its own hell after two weeks of belated enforced lockdown. Pictured is US’s increasing death toll compared to Italy’s falling death toll
This means people whose jobs don’t directly contribute to fighting the virus stop working and stay at home.
This means everyone exercising draconian social distancing.
This is how China, where the virus emanated, finally got on top of it – along with massively intensive testing of the kind America has abjectly failed to deliver.
If Americans think their current lack of ‘freedom’ is bad, they should see how China handled its lockdown. But it worked. Just as Italy finally looks to be getting on top of its own hell after two weeks of belated enforced lockdown.
As with populist British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, President Trump’s natural political skills that made him so electorally popular, sit uncomfortably with this crisis.
The American people are incredibly fearful, for very good reason.
They want firm calm decisive action, unambiguous accurate advice, and constant reassurance that their government is doing everything it can to fight the virus.
What they don’t want is a blustering bravado-laced leader shooting from the hip every day, lying about being ‘in total control’ of the virus, espousing unproven ‘cures’, picking idiotic fights with the media or political opponents, and giving false hope about when this will all end.
President Trump, like Johnson, has been flailing through this crisis because all his natural instincts are to maintain everyone’s ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’, and because he appears to be motivated more by a desire to save the economy than lives.
I don’t think he’s a callous uncaring human being, contrary to what some believe. I’m sure that beneath Trump’s typical self-aggrandizing ‘I’m handling this beautifully’ self-confidence lies a guy secretly panicking at the rapidly escalating US coronavirus infection rate and death toll.
And I’m also sure he believes with every fiber of his being that getting the economy going again will be crucial to America’s recovery from this crisis.
After all, Trump’s a money man to his bootstraps who has spent his entire life driven by a craven love of business, success and cash.
Trump boldly declared that America will be open again for business ‘very soon.’ He said: ‘A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. Lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. We’re not going to let the cure be worse than the problem’
President Trump’s natural political skills that made him so electorally popular, sit uncomfortably with this crisis. The American people are incredibly fearful, for very good reason. They want firm calm decisive action, unambiguous accurate advice, and constant reassurance that their government is doing everything it can to fight the virus
So, for him to now see his presidency consumed by the greatest disintegration of the economy in US history will be hitting him harder than he is letting on. One minute, Trump was cruising to re-election, the next he is staring down the barrel of a disaster of epic proportions that threatens to derail everything, including his chances of winning again in November.
But frankly, I don’t care about whether or not he retains the White House.
I only care about lives being saved.
And so should the president.
His comments last night were exactly what he shouldn’t be saying.
Trump boldly declared that America will be open again for business ‘very soon.’
He said: ‘A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. Lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. We’re not going to let the cure be worse than the problem.’
This all sounds perfectly logical, except that almost every expert now agrees if the lockdown is lifted, then the price America will pay in human life will far eclipse anything it will gain in any possible short-term financial benefit.
And if the virus is left unchecked to complete its lethal work then the eventual toll on the US economy will far eclipse anything we’re even seeing now.
So, the very last thing America should do right now is reopen for business.
If it did, then the virus would ‘spread widely, rapidly, terribly and millions could die’ according to Tom Inglesby, a director at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Trump was asked if Dr Anthony Fauci (pictured) America’s No1 infectious disease expert and a reassuring face and voice during this pandemic, agreed with him about putting the economy before public health. ‘He doesn’t agree,’ Trump replied. He was not at last night’s presser
Trump doesn’t buy this apocalyptic view.
Last night he even started absurdly citing irrelevant normal flu statistics and even car accident numbers as some kind of justification for his belief everyone’s overacting to this crisis.
‘If it was up to the doctors,’ he moaned last night, ‘they would keep it shut down, they would say “let’s shut down the entire world.” You can’t do that.’
Actually, if you have to, you can.
And that is pretty much what is now happening.
Not because scientists and doctors want to be annoying, or damage his election chances, but because they know it may be the only way to save millions of lives.
Trump was asked if Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s No1 infectious disease expert and a reassuring face and voice during this pandemic, agreed with him about putting the economy before public health.
‘He doesn’t agree,’ Trump replied.
Right, so here’s the choice for Americans: listen to the finest and most experienced expert mind on the virus in the country, or a man – and I say this with all due respect to the president because I am no better qualified myself – whose sole contribution to tackling infectious disease prior to this was to be a well-know germaphobe.
I know who I trust, and it’s Dr Fauci.
President Trump needs to understand very clearly that lives matter more than money.
The economy will eventually recover, because it always does.
But lives lost to the virus will never be recovered.
America must stay locked down for as long as Dr Fauci says it needs to.