Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Trump Surrenders to Covid-19
Donald Trump declared himself a war-time president when it became obvious that the outbreak of Covid-19 was not going to miraculously go away, as he had hoped. He had hoped that Americans would rally around the flag and support him in his fight to save the nation. Where he miscalculated was in failing to put up a fight at all. His approach to this war failed because it never existed. He did nothing. Now, he has announced that "we will have to live with it." In military terms, the virus has won, and Mr. Trump has surrendered unconditionally.
Mr. Trump is the master of wishful thinking. His Atlantic City casino bankruptcies say all there is to say about him. It is exceedingly difficult to lose money running such an operation. Yet, Mr. Trump managed to do so. His business career more or less imploded and he saved his brand by becoming a glorified TV gameshow host. All throughout, he maintained that everything he did was the best ever. His speech patterns are replete with phrases such as "the likes of which no one has ever seen before."
His supporters have severed their ties with reality. Whenever a fact appears that threatens to puncture their balloon, they deny the fact, blaming the deep-state or the fake news. Heretofore, that has worked because the target was a human being. The virus simply ignores the presidential Twitter account.
They have resisted wearing masks to prevent the spread of the disease out of some misguided machismo or some bizarre understanding of what freedom and liberty are. They are now reaping the rewards for irresponsible behavior. America has 130,000 dead and a rising number of Covid-19 cases while virtually every other nation has at least scored a successful counter-attack. New Zealand has managed to eradicate it thanks to geography and rapid, early action.
The magic bullet is a vaccine that is highly effective, and one expects science to develop one in the next year or thereabouts. Once developed, the human race must mass produce it, distribute and inject it. That is not the work of a few days. Yet, that was Mr. Trump's promise at one point, 300 million doses (roughly the population of the US, minus those who cannot be vaccinated for various medical reasons) by the end of 2020. One is reminded of the super-weapons programs of the Third Reich that were supposed to change the fate of the world. Too few worked to make a difference, and the factories could not produce enough of them.
The world is fairly familiar with influenza, enough that there is an annual vaccine designed to attack the variety most likely to give the human race the chills every year. It takes approximately six months to create large enough quantities for the stuff to be useful. What is significant is that the infrastructure is already in place, and it still takes that long. The same infrastructure could be adapted most likely to brew up the Covid-19 vaccine when it exists, but one does not expect the six month time horizon to lessen. If anything, it will probably lengthen as scientists and bio-engineers have not done this before.
A vaccinated America is at least a year away. The general election is less than 4 months off. Mr. Trump needs to have the problem go away, and it refused to do so. The next best thing from his perspective would be for the American people to decide there is nothing that could have been done about it, like the weather. Hence, the White House tells the voters to live with it.
The trouble is that the US has over 3 million cases of the disease confirmed as of this morning and about 132,000 dead. That is a 4.4% mortality rate. Some voters will not be able to live with it.
© Copyright 2020 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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