I Was Wrong
I can admit it, Don Trump cannot, and that’s why America is toast
Four days ago, on 21 March, I made a prediction that in five days, America’s total of those infected by the Covid-19 pandemic would top China’s, and that a thousand Americans would have died from the disease.
I was only half right.
Although as I write these words the death toll stands at 1 054, China’s infected total is 81 285, barely moved since my prediction, and America’s number of cases is 69 219. That’s 12 067 short of China’s.
It won’t happen today, but it will almost certainly happen tomorrow.
Why being wrong is a good thing
Obviously, I have no power over the pandemic. All the spreadsheets, all the finger-pointing, all the words in the world give me no ability at all to determine the future. Whatever will be, will be.
At the time, the American total was just over 20 000, rising at 3 000 daily. That’s twenty days short of China’s total.
But my spreadsheet was based on an exponential increase, rather than a simple straight-line increase, and I gave it five days, not twenty.
So. I’m off by twelve thousand. That’s twelve thousand Americans who haven’t got the disease, a day saved, the curve flattened out by 24 hours.
That’s twelve thousand Americans who won’t be turning up at the hospitals and clinics today. They will tomorrow, but the fact that an extra day has passed means that the load on America’s medical resources is reduced right now. That means that the disease will peak later, and that an extra day’s worth of preparation is available.
But not for Trump
Don Trump’s plan to return to business as normal with packed churches on Easter has been met with almost universal criticism.
For example, by America’s church leaders.
It is the height of hypocrisy for Trump to suggest that Easter is a time to defy public health recommendations and ‘reopen’ America. … We need a resurrection of Jesus’s concern for the most vulnerable, not a capitulation to corporate greed that could cost millions of lives.— Rev William J Barber II
Other church leaders said that a premature “resurrection” would be a disaster, and that America would look callous and foolish.
Medical experts also condemned Trump:
Nobody voted in Donald Trump thinking he would become a ‘one-man death panel’ empowered to dispense with American lives like cannon fodder. It would be political suicide for him and murder for many others. — Amir Attaran, professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa
Don Trump seems unable to admit error in even the smallest detail. His usual response to being called out on a lie or some boneheaded claim is to double down, leaving his staffers scrambling to find some way to save face without losing their jobs by admitting the truth.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he was regarded as just a genial buffoon — as indeed he is in the rest of the world — rather than somebody whose pronouncements carry weight, backed up by law and nuclear weapons.
Trump is heading for a wedging. He desperately wants to be re-elected, because the thought that he might be fired by the American people is too awful for him to contemplate, and to do that he needs the economy ramped back up.
The problem there is that restarting the economy in the middle of a pandemic will cost the lives of untold thousands of Americans. Possibly including himself. Estimates range up to figures in the millions.
If the hospitals are jammed solid with coronavirus cases, the morgues are overflowing, and people are faced with the choice between catching the disease at work or staying healthy at home, I don’t think it requires too much brainpower to predict the effect on the American economy.
More than Trump possesses, it seems. He imagines he can, by the power of positive thinking, defeat a killer virus, make up the immense losses already suffered, and defy science and logic.
Day Five update
The “wobble” in the curve is plainly visible now. Tomorrow will be crucial. Will the pandemic resume its exponential climb, or will the effects of the isolation, distancing, and quarantine measures already taken begin to flatten out?
Personally, I’m with Trump. I hope that “as if by magic” the disease will run its course and vanish.
Mindless optimism is all very well, but being of a more realistic mindset, I don’t think America is anywhere near the point of reducing the spread of the virus to manageable levels. Clearly, with his cabinet secretaries and senior staff standing shoulder to shoulder at his media performances, Don Trump doesn’t believe in the social isolation message his own government is supposedly promoting.
Meanwhile in Australia
The toilet paper battles have eased, supermarket shelves are being restocked, people are staying at home, and the big question is now whether hairdressers should remain open.
“Just bonkers,” claims a spokesman for one of the largest chains, in response to the lifting of a guideline that haircuts be limited to half an hour.
Unless one is using Edward Scissorhands technology, social distancing is impossible in an industry where direct contact with the client is necessary to do the job.
I made up my mind a week ago. I’ll aim for a Rapunzel hairstyle rather than be in close physical contact with a hairdresser who has been within sneezing distance of dozens of clients in the preceding hours and days. Typhoid Mary doesn’t cut it.
Britni
Britni Pepper writes for Kindle Direct Publishing. She runs a blog where she reviews erotica, and rambles on about this and that. She may be reached on Twitter and Facebook.
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