He likes the numbers where they are
The Guardian too was unimpressed by Trump’s performance yesterday.
Donald Trump used a freewheeling press conference on Friday, intended to provide updates on the coronavirus, as an opportunity to attack Democrats, praise his own intelligence, lash out at CNN and spread false and misleading information about the status of the outbreak, as a slew of new cases were confirmed aboard a cruise ship off the California coast.
Speaking at the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) main campus in Atlanta, Georgia, while wearing his red “Keep America Great” re-election campaign hat, the president went on a rant criticizing Washington state’s governor, Jay Inslee, as a “snake” and saying he disagreed with his vice-president’s complimentary remarks toward the Democrat. Inslee, who ran for president last year, is overseeing the response to the most serious outbreak in the US.
Oh yes the red campaign hat. I griped about it yesterday but I forgot about the campaign aspect. It seems grotesquely inappropriate to mash those two occasions together. “Sorry about the virus, folks, now vote for me!”
In a moment that some commentators have called one of the most “disturbing” and “frightening” remarks of Trump’s response to the public health crisis, the president also said he would prefer that cruise ship passengers exposed to the virus be left aboard so that they don’t add to the number of total infections in the US.
“I like the numbers being where they are,” said Trump, who appeared to be explicitly acknowledging his political concerns about the outbreak: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”
Breathtaking, isn’t it.
It is frightening. It’s frightening that anyone can be that ego-imprisoned.
Trump also said there are some cases that aren’t reported, and that they are staying home and getting well, also keeping the numbers low. He seemed to be encouraging them to do just that. Maybe those are the ones who can’t afford to go to a doctor and be tested and treated? Then he went on about the thousands of flu deaths each year, over and over in mock disbelief. I wonder how many of those are due to inadequate health care? But of course getting his shots in at CNN and insulting Inslee was the priority.
But Trump isn’t wrong that there are surely many cases of people with covid-19 getting well on their own. Most people who become infected will probably get well on their own. And relatively few people have been tested so far in the US, so there are probably many cases of covid-19 that are unknown and unreported.
Should people go to work when they’re sick? Of course not.
Is covid-19 a serious health concern? Of course it is.
Is Trump a dangerous idiot? Of course he is.
Even Trump manages to say something true once in awhile.
By my count, he’s now up to one.
So are the people on the cruise ship getting treatment? Do they have what they need to, like, not die?
I read that testing equipment is being lowered onto the ship by (the Coast Guard?) – but I don’t remember if it said “and medication.” I hope so.
Iknklast, it’s an important question, but the bigger point is that the quarantine on board the cruise ship in Japan demonstrated that some ch a tactic was woefully counterproductive. Cruise ships are almost ideal incubators for sicknesses of any type and that was certainly demonstrated for Covid-19. In the face of that lesson, keeping passengers on board is not just an incompetent reaction, it makes the decision maker culpable for whatever happens to any additional cases that arise, including deaths.