The entire Covid-19 debacle has been very rough on the American people, the economy, and pretty much everything else as well. Sports have been cancelled, events cancelled, millions of jobs lost, all within just the last six weeks.
During this time there has been a great deal of finger pointing, blaming and more done by President Trump. Now it seems he’s taking dysfunction out a whole new door by going to war with himself.
Color me surprised.
Just this past Thursday the 16th of April, Trump released his plan (yes, we know, somebody wrote it for him) to reopen the country. The plan seemed reasonable, simple and straight forward. It’s supposed to be a three phase plan. To review, here it is in a layman format:
- Phase One is supposed to get people going back to work. According to Trump, these are the most essential workers first and those who own businesses that don’t rely on crowds. (No theaters, things of that nature. During this phase all vulnerable people are supposed to remain sheltered in place.
- Phase Two is supposed to take place when there are no rebounds in sickness. In other words, once an area starts phase one and everything goes well for however long (it’s not specified) and people don’t start getting sick again then everybody else can start going back to work. Restaurants and bars can reopen, other small business can reopen and things should start getting back to some semblance of order. At risk people should still shelter in place and social distancing should still be the order of the day.
- Phase Three should put things back to as close to normal as we’re ever going to get.
Sounds reasonable, right? Well, it is and it isn’t.
The very next day Donald Trump took to Twitter and started acting like the President of the Confederate States of America rather than the United States of America.
Suddenly, after laying out guidelines for a safe, effective return to normalcy, he starts ranting as if the people of his base states are being held prisoner. This of course had the effect of firing up the base to the point that they, being who they are, went and did some rather stupid things.
Gun nuts protests stay at home order.
So Trump in his delusional mind sends his base out to protest in groups, without protection, without social distancing, without the decrease in cases that he himself prescribed.
Trump is literally at war with himself. He tells people to do one thing and then tells a select group of people, namely his base, to do the exact opposite.
That horrible part of it all is the fact that Trump, once again for what must be the 20th time by now, shows a complete and total disregard for human life. He doesn’t care if people get sick, he doesn’t care if they die.
Let’s face it, since Trump took office the only thing he’s had to brag about is the economy, which was doing just fine long before he ever took office. Now that it’s in the pits, he has to do whatever it takes to get it going again. To Trump, that’s the only way he’s going to be reelected: getting the economy going again.
The problem is that he doesn’t care how many people have to die to do it. Even Fox News is towing the Trump line on this by downplaying the virus yet again (like they did with Trump from the outset) and acting like there’s nothing wrong. Examples:
Once again comparing it to flu to downplay it’s danger.
https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/1251484473616670723
Again comparing to flu.
The point she and the rest of her Fox cronies miss is this: Yes, according to estimates we did lose 34,200 to the flu in the 2018-2019 flu season.
The problem is that the 2018-2019 flu season was the longest in 10 years, lasting 21 weeks.
The first case of Covid-19 in the United States was posted January 22. That means that right now we’re on week 13 of the Covid-19 pandemic and we’ve already lost 35,433 people.
That’s right, folks. We’ve already lost more people to Covid-19 than the flu of last season in half the time and that’s on top of everything we’ve tried to do to stop it.
Think about that for a moment. I mean, we don’t do anything when the flu comes along. Most of us tough it out, still go to work, still go shopping and even try to get in that movie even though we feel like five miles of bad road.
Now consider if we stop what we’re doing now and go back to normal like Trump is urging his base to do what that number is going to be like another 10 weeks from now.
Even as things are, we’re looking at 60,000 to 90,000 deaths by week 21. That’s at least double what the last flu season was.
So the next time you see a post like that or hear that on Fox News, consider the source and what they’re not telling you. Trump and Fox News war on the truth and against their own recommendations is going to kill a lot of Americans.
It in fact already has.