Thursday, May 14, 2020

For the record: Trump is a quitter ...

and we, the people, are screwed. Because the administration has not used the two month shelter-in-place period to get a tough testing, tracing, and quarantining program in place, we have both wider spread of deadly COVID-19 infections and a trashed economy. And we are going to live with this until there's a vaccine or perhaps until 70% or so of us catch the murderous virus, resulting in an estimated million-plus deaths. That's what achieving "herd immunity" means. Meanwhile our feckless president burbles on:

... the Trump administration still has no plan for dealing with the global pandemic or its fallout. The president has cast doubt on the need for a vaccine or expanded testing. He has no evident plan for contact tracing. He has no treatment ideas beyond the drug remdesivir, since Trump’s marketing campaign for hydroxychloroquine ended in disaster. And, facing the worst economy since the Great Depression, the White House has no plan for that, either, beyond a quixotic hope that consumer demand will snap back as soon as businesses reopen.

Echoing his breezy language in the earliest days of the pandemic, Trump has in recent days returned to a blithe faith that the disease will simply disappear of its own accord, without a major government response.

“I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests: This is going to go away without a vaccine,” Trump said Friday. “It’s going to go away, and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.”

David Graham, The Atlantic

This catastrophe was preventable.

We will live with -- and too many will die on account of -- this lazy, ignorant man in the White House. He can't do the job and he won't get out of the way for people who could because the only thing he values is being the center of attention. He's just a lazy, egotistical quitter.

Image by David Lawrence Hawkins.

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