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Thousands of Americans die every day as a result of the coronavirus. What is it like to live in a country in a state of emergency that has come to terms with the unacceptable?
In Washington, the big question about Donald Trump is being posed again, a little more urgent and desperate than usual: Will that finally bring him down?
We read that Trump knew early on how dangerous the coronavirus is, but he asserted the opposite to his people and even admitted that he had deliberately downplayed the danger.
So he told legendary reporter Bob Woodward, hoping the star journalist would reward him with a positive book for direct access. Once again, it is Trump’s insatiable addiction to recognition that puts him in danger.
So in early February he was informed about Corona: it can be transmitted through respiratory air, “more deadly than a severe flu.” If he hadn’t told the journalist and publicly stated otherwise for weeks, many lives could have been saved. Every week that the United States had previously imposed quarantine measures, it would have saved tens of thousands of lives. But Trump took his time.
Exactly half a year ago, the United States closed public life. Professional sports, the entertainment industry, schools and universities got ahead. On March 13, Donald Trump gathered reporters in the rose garden and followed suit.
Surrounded by businessmen and advisers, he announced a national emergency and for a brief moment I thought that after all the trivializations, Trump could now fight the virus with the concentrated power of the United States. I should be wrong.
Since then we have been trapped here in a strange state of emergency, in which you do a lot and do a lot, but earn little because a man sits at the top, for whom profit has only to do with himself: The fewer corona tests and number of cases, the better for him. He didn’t even bother to develop a national strategy.
The United States never had Corona under control: If it’s in New England, it blows up in Florida. When Arizona takes a deep breath, the Falls of the Midwest skyrocket. Outbreaks are not yet tracked in many states due to a lack of evidence and contact markers. Americans stayed home at the time, gave the government time, and Trump wasted it.
In April The CDC health authority is struggling to recommend, but not mandate, the use of masks. Trump already weakened him at the time of the announcement: “You can do this, but you don’t have to. I choose not to.”
I’m mai Trump says he took hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, for crown prophylaxis, which he had previously presented as a miracle drug for weeks. Studies have long indicated that it does not even reliably help in the treatment of Covid.
At this time, 100,000 Americans had died as a result of a corona infection.
In June Contrary to all warnings, Trump invites people to attend the first massive event since March. After Tulsa, instead of 19,000 followers, only 6,200 make it to a large multipurpose room. A political failure with a high price: without distances, almost without masks, a political friend dies after Covid-19.
In July, Three months after the recommendation of his health authority, Trump wears a mask for the first time during a visit to the military hospital. A rapid rise in infections and hospital admissions in the southern states of Arizona, Florida and Texas has shattered even the last of hopes that the virus is somehow safer in the summer heat.
In August Trump encourages blood plasma for the new miracle drug and leads the head of the drug authority to grossly falsified statements, for which he later apologizes. He maintains the prospect of a vaccine until the election, even if experts think it is extremely unlikely. At the Republican party conference, the pandemic is only spoken about in the past tense, the rows of chairs on the White House lawn are narrow and without masks during the nomination speech, as they were in March.
Trump Supporter in North Carolina: Violation of Local Assembly Rules. (Source: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters)
In September schools and universities open, many without clear guidelines, some close again immediately. The election campaign is now picking up speed: Trump is sending thousands of supporters to the airfields where “Air Force One” lands. Ignore local rules on meeting caps.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, always appears with a mask and a distance, in front of a few dozen followers at most. Trump and Biden travel to the same states, but it seems as if they are traveling in different worlds.
Soon there will be 200,000 Americans dead.
Joe Biden during the election campaign in Michigan: Small groups, always with a mask. (Source: Leah Millis / Reuters)
What is it like to live in a country that hasn’t had Corona under control for six months? In Washington they wear masks well, outside on the sidewalk, inside anyway, some even in their cars. Theaters are packed. In the supermarket there are still no Clorox disinfectant wipes or masks according to the N95 / FFP2 standard that really protect. The crisis is always present on the streets of the American metropolis. The further you go, the rarer the masks get.
The sick are invisible and the figures of death are as cruel as they are abstract. The news channels mainly show the numbers on the edge. The longer you’ve watched them, the less shocking they are. One thousand Americans continue to die from Covid-19, every day.
The evening news on PBS now has a fixed section: on Fridays there are short, poignant obituaries for the victims of the crown, the rest of the week is sober. It seems to me that the nation has accepted the unacceptable: that thousands of people die from the virus every day, more than anywhere else in the world.
If you look at the number of victims, it’s like every other day is September 11th.
Trump is not the only culprit. The healthcare system has long been broken for millions of Americans. There is still no real sick pay that allows infected salaried workers to stay sick at home. There have been large aid payments that have long expired, while Republicans and Democrats have been unable to agree on new measures for months. But it’s the president who could have made a big difference just by telling the truth.
Are you interested in the American elections? Our Washington correspondent, Fabian Reinbold, writes a newsletter about his work at the White House and his impressions of America under Donald Trump. Here you can subscribe to the “Post from Washington” for free, which then lands directly in your mailbox once a week.
About 60 percent of Americans know that Trump failed with Corona. A third lives in the parallel world, in which, like everything else, everyone else is to blame, but not Trump. If the election is made for a referendum on Corona, Trump would have to lose. Democrats are doing everything they can to make it that way. Trump, in turn, is doing everything he can to make elections vote for law and order, violent anarchists, and socialism.
Returning to the big question: Does it hurt Donald Trump in the election campaign that he was convicted of fatally disparaging the coronavirus? I do not think so. Anyone who wanted to know that the president was downplaying the virus had known this for a long time. And in the parallel world the usual reflections take hold: on “Fox News” you will always find something that Trump’s opponents have also done wrong. Perhaps one also has to accept this unacceptable: a president of the United States, Trump, can lie, even if it costs lives.
A book won’t bring it down. Not the work of his “fixer” Michael Cohen or the accounting of his former security adviser John Bolton. Not his niece Mary’s poisonous book or his obscene romance Stormy Daniels. Not even the well-researched papers of colleagues from the “New York Times” and the “Washington Post.”
Bob Woodward has the president on tape, which makes his book more meaningful: We hear Trump himself say that he is lying. Woodward is more likely to form the judgment of history on Donald Trump than the judgment of the voters. And the next revelation will not be long in coming. There are still 53 days until the elections.
