Has POTUS lost his mind?
Personally, I continue to be puzzled about what Mr. Trump thinks he's doing. There has already been a spike in new infections in several of the states that are taking significant steps toward reopening, and the most respected model of future infections and deaths-one used by the President's own task force- recently nearly doubled the number of American deaths it predicts from the virus because of an anticipated decline in social distancing. Other models agree; an internal Trump administration memo predicts 200,000 new cases daily by June, as the number of new infections in the United States outside of New York continues to rise.
This is occurring at a time when it is believed that a new and more contagious strain of SARS CoV-2 originating in Europe may have become dominant in the United States.
From every indication, the first tenuous attempts to roll back the precautions being taken to inhibit the spread of the virus are off to a rocky start. To accelerate the process seems likely to cause the virus to return with a vengeance even before the second and possibly more devastating wave of infections expected in the Fall, coinciding with the annual outbreak of seasonal flu to create a kind of viral "perfect storm" that may test the capacity of America's healthcare system to the breaking point and possibly beyond.
Experts forecast three possible future scenarios for the pandemic, two of which would render continued premature reopening of the economy utterly catastrophic, and none of which allow for anything resembling a return to full economic normality for many months to come.
No matter what happens, the economy is not going to significantly improve before November, and almost certainly for many months thereafter. Yet today Mr. Trump issued possibly the most bizarre- and ironic- tweet of his administration, the last sentence of which seems positively Orwellian.
"Be safe, move quickly?" Really?
And how, precisely, is being responsible about the pace of reopening something being done "for political purposes?" It's certainly easy to understand why the President would want things opened up as quickly as possible for political purposes. But it wouldn't help him! The economy couldn't possibly recover in time!
Of course, this is the president who insisted until a few weeks ago that the virus was no big deal, compared it to the seasonal flu, and predicted over and over again that it would just suddenly disappear. He dismissed warnings from the experts as early as January that this was coming because he knew better. He failed to take the necessary precautions to prepare the nation, and maladministration in the Executive Branch continues to interfere with the mobilization of even the resources that are available. It's wishful thinking that the universe would bail Mr. Trump out by causing the virus to evaporate just as the economy is prematurely reopened, but he seems to be counting on it to do precisely that.
Except it won't. Every piece of available evidence suggests that the precipitate reopening of the economy Mr. Trump keeps urging would simply make an already disastrous situation even worse. Infections and deaths would skyrocket, the hole the economy is in would simply become deeper, and it would be much longer before the economic situation would improve.
And a huge number of Americans will sicken and die unnecessarily.
And yet, he and his allies continue to push for a precipitate reopening of the economy. He seems willing to bet unnumbered American lives on a miracle that will somehow save his presidency.
He and his supporters are simply not rational on the subject.
Don't look to the 25th Amendment for help, though. As the impeachment trial made clear, there is simply no backbone left in the Republican Party. TrumpWorld will continue to advocate disaster, and it will be left to the American people to rescue themselves at the polls.
Yet in the midst of all of this, three things seem clear beyond question: first, that the policy of this administration and the position of the American right when it comes to the current pandemic have lost all contact with reality; secondly, that in fact, it is the President rather than his opponents, who is playing politics with the pandemic; and third, that the President is willing to bet the lives of a large number of his fellow citizens and the length and depth of the economic downturn that his intuition is right and that all the experts an all the evidence are wrong.
Sorry, but I don't like the odds on that bet.
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