It’s good to see that President Trump is feeling better. And though he is not out of the woods, I hope that he makes a full recovery. However, it’s unfortunate that he is using his experience with COVID-19 to return to making reckless statements that are ultimately a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died from the illness, and many others who have recovered only to suffer longer-term health effects.
“Don’t be afraid of Covid,” Trump tweeted in announcing he was leaving the hospital. “Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
He followed up with a dramatic staged movie trailer style video of his return to the White House, and a recorded statement in which he said, “One thing that’s for certain, don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it.”
The propaganda show was unsettling given that Trump is still within the window when he could take a turn for the worse. But let’s say the worst is in fact over. Trump’s problem here is that he’s trying to generalize his experience with the coronavirus (which again, he may not be over) to the population as a whole to perpetuate the idea that it’s somehow no big deal.
The truth is that for younger Americans, the virus poses very little risk. Older Americans have an elevated risk relative to younger Americans, but still, an overwhelming majority are okay. Even if 10% of older people who get COVID-19 die, that still means that 90% survive.
However, Trump’s statement, “Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it,” is completely off base.
There have been 210,000 people who have died of the coronavirus, and more than 700 people are dying each day. Many people won’t beat it. And it isn’t because they weren’t warriors like Trump — it’s because this is a potentially deadly disease.
Also, Trump is not the average patient. He is the president. At the first sign of trouble, he was taken by helicopter to one of the greatest hospitals in the world and given VIP treatment. He had access to all sorts of experimental treatments that the average patient would not have.
It’s irresponsible for Trump to suggest that his experience — again, if he is truly over the hump — should guide the behavior and decision making of the public, none of whom have the resources that he does. This is especially true for COVID-19, which has produced an incredibly wide range of outcomes, even among those with similar demographic and health profiles. Somebody else may get a much worse case than Trump simply because they were unlucky. Trump’s triumphalism is unwarranted, and frankly, cruel to those who were less fortunate through no fault of their own.
Trump has been trying to argue that he got COVID-19 because he did not think a leader should be cooped up in the White House, so he took on more personal risk.
But this is a completely selfish way of looking at it. This isn’t just a matter of the risk that he personally took on, but the actions he took to needlessly endanger the lives of others — including attending a fundraiser when there was good reason to believe, at the minimum, that he had been exposed to the virus.
It was completely unnecessary for Trump to hold an in-person introduction ceremony for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. He could have simply sent the nomination over to the Senate. Or he could have held a virtual event with just him, her, and her family.
If he decided to do something grander, there were many other options open to him that would have been better that what he ended up doing. He could have limited the crowd. He could have kept the event outdoors with attendees more spaced apart. He could have insisted that people wore masks, and so on. Instead, he had a crowded outdoor event and also multiple indoor receptions in which people were not wearing masks.
That’s not about him getting out there for the people, it’s him playing with fire and putting others needlessly at risk to service his own ego and political ambitions.
Now, thinking he’s recovered, Trump is essentially encouraging people to behave as recklessly as he has and telling them they’ll be fine, based on his experience that is not applicable to others. Should people take his advice, they will not only put themselves at higher risk, but also their communities.
This morning, Trump resurrected an old talking point about the flu.
Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 6, 2020
This talking point was dumb enough when only a few Americans had died of COVID-19, but now it’s even worse. Over the last decade, according to the most up to date CDC data, the flu has killed an average of about 36,000 people per year. The worst year, it killed 61,000. COVID-19 has already killed more than three times as many people as the worst flu season — and since February it has killed more people than the flu has in the past five years combined.
Trump here is also presenting a false choice in which everybody lives in fear and never leaves their homes, or they follow his example of ignoring his own administration’s public health guidance.
With such leadership, it’s no wonder that the U.S. has fared worse with COVID-19 than just about any other country in the world. We did not pursue the strategy of simply going on with our lives. Nor did we limit the death toll. We have been living under some form of Trump’s “15 days to slow the spread” for the past seven months, and yet still have among the highest number of deaths per 100,000 people in the world among major countries.
For Trump to take a victory lap based on his unique experience is downright despicable.
