Late last week President Trump switched tactics in dealing with the gathering corona-virus from benign neglect to watchful waiting. But he’s still betting that the problem will go away once warmer weather sets in.
Is that a bet that our nation should take, especially from a man who has managed to go bankrupt four times and is now gambling with not just other peoples’ money, but with their lives?
This will be his last big gamble, and it’s in a game he cannot win. In fact, it’s two games in one. The first is a political game comparable to the infamous Chinese water torture. The second is the popular children’s game, Whack-a-Mole.
Day-by-day, new cases will pop up here and there in different parts of the country. In some cases, the afflicted people will have had no apparent contact with anyone else infected with the coronavirus.
Virtually all of these people will recover, especially those who are relatively young. Trump and his minions will congratulate themselves for containing the outbreak.
Corona-virus danger
But along with each of these putative “containments,” even more cases will continue popping up. In fact, within perhaps one or two months, a large number of Americans will begin to perceive that we have indeed reached a tipping point. Like China, South Korea, Italy, Japan, Iran, among other nations, we too will be afflicted by the corona-virus pandemic.
Think about it! After China and India, we are the third most populous nation in the world. Tens of millions of foreign tourists visit us each year, while tens of millions of Americans travel abroad. Epidemiologists are virtually unanimous that this deadly virus will soon spread all across the globe.
Meanwhile, the American electorate will perceive increasing numbers of their fellow citizens succumbing to this deadly illness. Trump himself, has just moved on from total denial to conditional denial, and on to his most comfortable stage of grieving, anger.
While he has grudgingly dropped his claim that the spread of the virus to the United States was just another “Democrat hoax” – like the Mueller investigation and the House impeachment – he has bet his political career on this whole thing blowing over in a couple of months.
Although the corona-virus is quite contagious, it’s anybody’s guess how many deaths it will cause in the United States. Still, the president’s utter lack of leadership – let alone lack of concern – will cost him dearly this November.
