When the emergency rooms were full and the virus accelerated its relentless march through the southern and western states, Trump clung to the fiction that the worst is over: “We had to close it; now we are opening it,” said the President on the economy at the White House, patting himself on the back for saving “millions of lives.”
As new cases of the disease reach 60,000 a day across the country, many leaders, including those who supported Trump’s aggressive approach, now have little choice but to prioritize science over policy, leaving the President out of contact with reality.
In Texas, Houston Democratic Mayor Sylvester Turner proposed a two-week shutdown, days after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott raised the possibility of stricter measures after issuing a mask mandate that offended conservative orthodoxy. West Virginia called for time to run out in bars in the hardest hit county.
In California, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom ordered the closure of all indoor restaurants, wineries, movie theaters, zoos, museums, and closed all bars. Los Angeles and San Diego said their children would start the new school year online only. Oregon banned gatherings of more than 10 people in the interior due to an “alarming increase” in Covid-19 cases in the state. KFC encouraged franchises in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and California to stop the dinner service.
Florida, which set the record for any state on single-day data on new infections on Saturday, now has more cases of Covid-19 than all but eight entire countries.
The image is of a nation that is beginning to shut down again in defiance of the President’s triumphant but misleading claims that a “transition to greatness” is underway. The restrictions imposed on cities as large as Houston and Los Angeles could delay the surprising resurgence of the economy last month.
The modest job gains, announced by the president, could turn into permanent job losses.
“It is very clear, and we know this from countries around the world, that if you physically separate people, to the point of not allowing the virus to be transmitted … we know we can do it if we close,” Fauci said at a seminar. Stanford School of Medicine website.
“We don’t close completely, and that’s why when we went up, we started going down, and then we stabilized at a really high level: around 20,000 infections a day,” Fauci said. “Then when we start to reopen, we are seeing the waves that we see today, as we speak, in California … in Arizona, in Texas, in Florida and in several other states.”
New York and Massachusetts have difficult lessons
There are some bright spots. For the first time in months, there were no Covid-19 deaths in New York City in a 24-hour period, a moment of release that Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio called “flashy and moving.” Massachusetts announced that its seven-day average of positive tests had fallen to 1.7%, 94% less since mid-April.
The lesson for states now at the center of the storm, which preempted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines on safe reopening, is sobering. New York and Massachusetts bought what could still be just a temporary truce with the coronavirus for weeks of blockades and a strict reopening process that waited for the infection curve to be adequately suppressed before restrictions were lifted. Even now, there is no guarantee that the virus will not return to dangerous levels when normal life recovers.
None of this seems to have leaked to Trump. As always, the President was obsessed with what recent events meant to him, especially when he was quick to demand that all children return to school despite having no plan on how to make their return safe.
In a new sign of self-absorption on Monday, he turned the current most acute social complication of the pandemic into an accusation that his political enemies wanted to keep children trapped at home to hurt him.
“I think they think it will be better for them if they can keep the schools closed in the elections. I don’t think it will help them, frankly, but I think that keeping the schools closed is a bad thing for the country and, therefore, that is something good for them, “Trump said.
What really matters to Trump
The president did something similar earlier in the day, when he highlighted a tweet from Chuck Woolery, the former host of dating show “Love Connection” who warned that “everyone is lying” about the severity of the current crisis, just to “keep the “The economy is coming back, it’s about the elections.”
It’s not at all clear that most Americans caught up in an endless national nightmare are more concerned with an election, especially one that faded into the background and is still more than three months away. Parents want to know if their children can start learning again. The unemployed want to get their jobs back. The country wants to regain its pre-virus life.
Trump’s obsession with his own political perspectives has been the driving force of his administration and is a recurring theme. Its national agenda is designed almost exclusively to reward its most loyal and radical voters, and its foreign policy is geared toward creating striking photographs with the President in the lead role.
It is an Achilles heel that led to the ignominy of becoming the third president to be indicted, for abusing his power by trying to force a foreign nation, Ukraine, to interfere in 2020 to harm his opponent.
But now it is possible that as he follows Biden in the pre-election polls, the president’s impatience for the economy to grow again may turn into a fatal political failure. And it has the potential to condemn his dreams of a second term, as it made the situation worse.
The reopening of schools is crucial to the return of the economy and to the impression that the United States has recovered to the normal life that Trump is trying to transform into an “transition to greatness” electoral message. Until children are in school full time, many parents with child care problems cannot return to work, depriving the United States economic engine of its full capacity.
But characteristically, Trump ignores tricky questions, such as how to ensure that a massive return to school does not escalate the pandemic, as he considers what’s best for him.
When asked Monday what he thought about New York and Los Angeles, delaying the start of a new school year and the death of an Arizona teacher who died of Covid-19 after teaching at summer school, Trump replied: ” Yes. Schools should open. Schools should open … You’re losing a lot of lives by keeping things closed. “
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