Trouble in Trumpland: Are the Wheels Coming Off?
America goes viral, and tweets won’t fix it
Law, Intelligence, Science, Truth: four things that Don Trump can’t stand. That’s because America’s top people in all four fields have an annoying — to Trump, at any rate — tendency to explode his thought bubbles.
So he sacks them, and replaces them with yes-men, who won’t annoy him with details, at least until reality bulldozes the fantasy aside.
It’s like the French infantry in WW1. No matter how brave they were, they couldn’t overcome machine guns ripping through courageous flesh. Or the citizens of Hiroshima, loyal and dedicated to the Emperor, but one atomic bomb turned their courage, loyalty, and energy into plasma.
Truth has a way of shouldering wishful thinking aside.
America under Don Trump is brittle. The teamwork of government agencies has been hobbled by inept or corrupt leadership, nonsensical policies, and the never-ending acid of @RealDonaldTrump undermining anything positive.
Eventually, some disaster will come along that tweets or executive orders cannot fix, and real leadership and effort will be required, things that Don Trump has no more than a passing knowledge about.
That day is next week
The Coronavirus COVID-19 is on the verge of being declared a pandemic. Already it is impossible to get travel insurance that includes coverage for damages caused by COVID-19. As I write, there are over fifty confirmed cases in America and the total is growing steadily.
So far, America’s response of quarantine and isolation has worked. But a characteristic of this disease is that people may become infected, have an incubation period of up to a month before showing symptoms, be spreading the disease all that time, and especially when they finally begin coughing and spraying germs around.
Country after country has become infected, firstly by travelers from China, then by those coming from other countries after catching the infection elsewhere, and finally by domestic contacts. Once it is out in the wild, it spreads.
And, beginning with China, the absolute worst way to deal with COVID-19 is to put out media releases playing down the problem. Without swift action — the sort that makes headlines and rings alarm bells — the disease spreads from person to person, and leaps via travel networks far from any origin point.
There are not enough surgical masks to protect every American, there are nowhere near enough test kits, and an effective vaccine is six months to a year away.
Coronavirus is very well under control in our country … I think that whole situation will start working out. Lot of talent, a lot of brainpower is being put behind it … Now they have it, they have studied it, they know very much, in fact, we’re very close to a vaccine — Don Trump
It’s easy to say the thing is under control when you only have a few dozen cases (Trump said there were ten; he lied.) But the progress of COVID-19 has followed a geometric progression, doubling every few days. When the number reaches a hundred, a thousand, a million, is it still under control?
Lock ’em up!
In the months before effective treatment becomes available, the only way of dealing with the disease is by limiting person to person transmission. That means mass testing, isolating those infected, quarantining whole communities, limiting travel and public events.
Perhaps more alarmingly, the effect of shutting down production lines in China and neighbouring countries will see shortages become commonplace. America has spent decades outsourcing production of everything from surgical masks to cellphones over to nations where the cost of labour is lower. Once those container ships stop rolling in, things will get tough.
The effect of COVID-19 will be felt disproportionally. If you can’t work from home, if you can’t stockpile essentials, if you can’t afford medical care, you are going to suffer.
Sure, Don Trump and the billionaire class don’t have to worry about shopping for cans of beans and ground beef, and their paycheque will come in regardless of whether they are working or not, but for most Americans, the effects will be severe.
No amount of tweets out of the White House, no mass firings of health officials, no finger-pointings at China or Korea are going to stop ordinary Americans from being affected, if not infected.
In an election year where Trump is banking on a healthy economy to keep his job, if the wheels come off over the Northern summer, he’s going to tank in the polls. More than he already has, I mean. He is the only American president since records began to have had zero time with a positive approval rating.
In response to an item on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation news, I’ve begun doubling my weekly shopping. Spare bags of cat food. Longlife milk. Extra bags of coffee. Energy-dense foods, such as lentils and chocolate.
Toilet paper. Canned tomatoes. Prosecco. My next trip to Costco is going to be a doozy.
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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