He can’t win for losing, but don’t tell him that
As death toll rises, then rises again, Trump claims one success after another
WASHINGTON— Over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday, the Trump administration announced the move to a new phase of its efforts against the coronavirus. But from a certain angle, it looked a heck of a lot like the old phases: another attempt to hang a “mission accomplished” banner and declare the war over, even as the battle rages on and the casualties pile up.
The specifics of the most recent effort are that the president’s coronavirus task force, led by Vice-President Mike Pence, will be either wound up or changed substantially by June 1.
On Tuesday, Pence said the task force would wrap up its work by early June. “It really is all a reflection of the tremendous progress we’ve made as a country,” Pence said. President Donald Trump appeared to confirm this later in the afternoon. “We can’t keep our country closed for the next five years, you know,” the president told reporters during a visit to Arizona.
But in a series of tweets on Wednesday morning, Trump changed the message: The task force would continue “indefinitely,” but transition its work to a new phase, in which it would focus on “SAFETY & OPENING UP OUR COUNTRY AGAIN” as well as working on vaccines and therapeutics — the transition, he said, being a sign of the “fantastic job” the task force had done.
Later Wednesday, he said he had planned to wind the task force down, but changed his mind when the reaction to his announcement of it made him realize “how popular” it is.
This is familiar ground for Trump, who has been declaring success and moving onto the next phase ever since the first coronavirus cases were reported. In January, he said the five cases then identified in the U.S. were “very little problem” and he had it “under control.”
In February, he said the 15 cases in the U.S. would soon be down to zero. In March, he said he had a vision of reopening the country by Easter. In April, he said repeatedly that the virus was “going away.”
Over the course of that time, more than 70,000 people have died in the U.S. of COVID-19 and more than 1.2 million have contracted the virus. Today, there are roughly100,000 active cases across the country. And an analysis of national data excluding New York shows the number of new cases and deaths continue to rise.
Nevertheless, the “reopening” demanded by the president is underway. This week marked a kind of grand going-out-forbusiness event across dozens of states, which allowed restaurants, hair salons, retail stores, beaches and fitness clubs to reopen under varied conditions — this despite the fact that no state had met the guidelines for reopening as of last week.
Despite states like Georgia and Texas reporting a rise in the number of new cases, even as they send people back to work and play. Despite Trump administration officials privately worrying about shortages of protective equipment and ventilators, according to leaked recordings of interagency meetings obtained by Politico.
Trump acknowledged Tuesday that some people would suffer as a result of lifting restrictions.
In Arizona, he characterized Americans as “warriors” in this battle. “And, yes, will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open, and we have to get it open soon.”
At what cost, in the lives and health of “warriors?”
Well, by June 1 — when Pence projected the coronavirus task force might be done, at least with its current phase — the Federal Emergency Management Agency is projecting 200,000 new cases and 3,000 deaths a day.
In death toll terms, that’s a daily 9/11. But the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have disavowed that modelling, saying it was an unfinished draft that should not be read as a forecast and does not match task force projections.
A University of Washington model that has been frequently cited by the White House now predicts nearly 135,000 deaths by early August — twice the number the same model had predicted in April over the same time frame. The change comes as a direct result of the trumpeted reopenings of various states.
“The revised projections reflect rising mobility in most U.S. states as well as the easing of social distancing measures expected in 31 states by May 11, indicating that growing contacts among people will promote transmission of the coronavirus. Increases in testing and contact tracing, along with warming seasonal temperatures — factors that could help slow transmission — do not offset rising mobility, thereby fuelling a significant increase in projected deaths.”
Trump claimed Tuesday that the model was based on a “nomitigation” scenario, even though it expressly accounts for levels of mitigation. He also dismissed it and other models as “wrong.”
Still, he did acknowledge that “there will be more death.”
But Trump also predicted that “the virus will pass, with or without a vaccine.”
It is a prediction he has been making since January, when many people first heard of the virus. A consistent message projecting success, delivered once again as the death toll rises ever higher.