That final turn
Trump is blithely putting people in danger to serve his purposes again. He did a rally at an airport in Omaha yesterday, and by the time he hopped back into Air Force One, the temperature had dropped below freezing.
But as long lines of MAGA-clad attendees queued up for buses to take them to distant parking lots, it quickly became clear something was wrong.
The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the cold, as police scrambled to help those most at-risk get to warmth.
At least seven people were taken to hospitals, according to Omaha Scanner, which monitors official radio traffic. Police and fire authorities didn’t immediately return messages from The Washington Post early Wednesday and declined to provide reporters on the scene with precise numbers of how many needed treatment.
Why? It’s not a state secret, why refuse to answer questions?
After Trump’s speech, where he promised “we’re making that final turn” on covid-19 in a state where positivity rates exceed 20 percent, per the World-Herald, Trump flew away on Air Force One around 9 p.m. Attendees began lining up for buses to return to their cars.
It took until after midnight to get everyone out.
Soon, officers were radioing in about numerous elderly attendees struggling in the cold, according to Omaha Scanner. Police began shuttling some people to their cars to get them out of the elements.
…
“Supporters of the President were brought in, but buses weren’t able to get back to transport people out. It’s freezing and snowy in Omaha tonight,” tweeted Nebraska state Sen. Megan Hunt (D). “He truly does not care about you.”
He truly does not care about anyone.
In a state with no mask mandates, no stay-home order, and no admission that there is a problem, what else can we expect? Our local hospital ICU is full, because they are bringing people from the Panhandle into town. The hospital in Scottsbluff is apparently full, so they are sending people all the way here. Surrounding hospitals are also filling up or full.
Meanwhile, our grocery stores do not require masks, and have done no traffic control to make sure people only go one way down the aisles so they don’t pass within inches of each other. They do have plexiglass barriers in front of their (masked) cashiers, but there are people who will deliberately violate any protocols designed to keep people safe, because…well, freedom. Trump. Liberty.
I rarely see masks on people under the age of about 55…sometimes parents with kids, but even that not often. Older people are masked, which shows maybe they don’t believe Trump quite as much as they pretend to. Or maybe they just don’t want to die for him.
I’ve yet to see any grocery stores be able to enforce traffic control… it’s like the security theatre in that round airport, they’re not built to accommodate that sort of thing. Mask wearing compliance is quite good on the other hand…
Maybe enforcement isn’t good, but if they would just establish one way aisles, that would go a long way. Most people would observe that, though of course there would be people who would be oh just so inconvenienced they can’t be bothered.
I wish mask wearing compliance was good around here.
He has yet to realise that it only takes so many turns to end up back where you start.
@AoS: In the (now defunct) large tech company I once worked for, the CEO liked to talk about how we were taking “a right-angle turn”. I could not resist privately observing that one possible result of a right-angle turn is to end up flat on one’s face. Perhaps that will be Trump’s destination.
I would knock off every crocodile on earth too. They are a danger to children everywhere they live (Australia). I personally would be willing to see every alligator go too (two legs good; four legs bad me) but alligators to my understanding are smaller and tend to eat (once a month?) smaller prey (birds, your family dog but probably not you).