‘Downplaying’ the virus
On Feb. 7, President Donald J. Trump told The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward on the record that, based on scientific intelligence that had been provided to him, COVID-19 was both airborne and as much as five times more deadly than “even your strenuous flus . ... So, this is deadly stuff.”
But in the weeks and months that followed, the president gave quite a different account to the nation: He regularly compared the virus to the seasonal flu — in an effort, Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward in March, to downplay the threat it posed. He continued this theme in news conferences (Feb. 26: “It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for”) and televised cabinet meetings (Feb. 27: “One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear”).
He was, of course, telling Mr. Woodward the truth and telling the American people a lie.
When his lies came to light last week, Mr. Trump’s defense was that he was only trying to prevent panic. This rationalization of deception is especially rich from a president who routinely conjures apocalyptic fantasies of hordes of murderous immigrants — with terrorists hidden among them — violating the southern border; of mysterious blackuniformed gangs boarding jets bound for a city or town near you; and of left-wing mobs poised to wreak destruction on the suburbs in the event he’s voted out in November. And who hinted he was one missile test away from pushing the nuclear button when it came to North Korea, before he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love.” All of that, of course, is untrue.
Mr. Trump’s attempted justification for his coronavirus distortion would be slightly more believable if his administration’s policies had followed the facts as he shared them with the journalist. Instead, the federal response to the pandemic has been incoherent and incomprehensible, and its results lethal.
It’s clear that the only panic he was trying to alleviate was his own as he worried what a more robust public response to the virus — one calling for national sacrifice to prevent a calamity — might do to the economy in an election year. And so there was no need for widespread testing. No need to warn the population to take precautions. No need to protect children. The virus was nothing, and the nation would hopefully be able to reopen by Easter.
Put another way: Mr. Trump chose to conduct the nation’s business as if the lie were the truth. That’s a viable (if unethical) tactic for selling high-end real estate, but a destructive way to lead a democracy or handle a pandemic. And it’s a fatally flawed strategy for dealing with a virus, which is utterly immune to salesmanship or hucksterism.
The proof of this can be seen in the tally of dead Americans that’s soon to cross the grim threshold of 200,000; in the millions of people added to the unemployment rolls due to the nation’s inability to act collectively; and in the yawning budget gaps for school districts and state and local governments made worse by this administration’s failures.
Somehow, elected officials like Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo managed to be far more straight with the public about the menace and what needed to be done to stem its spread. That’s how New York, despite its early wildfire infection and death rates, was able to reduce its numbers to some of the best in the nation. (To be sure, Mr. Cuomo deserves criticism for continuing to shroud the true number of deaths of nursing home patients across the state, but that’s a far lesser sin than the president’s lethal lies.)
The states that took an approach similar to New York’s have proven better able to avoid being overwhelmed by the virus; the states where the officials with decision-making power followed Mr. Trump’s lead are those currently battling spikes that didn’t have to happen, at least not to such a deadly extent. And the president’s downplaying of the pandemic continues to this day. It has been at the root of the thousands of daily battles over the best ways for individuals to work together to prevent the virus’s spread. If he had been more honest about its lethality and easy transmission, perhaps his fans would be less likely to throw tantrums in supermarkets when asked to take the simple preventative step of wearing a mask. How many cases would have been avoided if we had a president who forcefully dissuaded Americans from engaging in irresponsible behavior? How many lives might have been saved?
Instead, the man with the bully pulpit didn’t merely play down the virus, he scoffed at mask use and has rarely been seen using one himself. His nomination acceptance speech to a gathering on the White House lawn ignored pandemic guidelines for all the country to see. He encouraged armed demonstrators who demanded that states reopen before it was safe to do so. Even last week, he appeared at campaign rallies in North Carolina and Michigan where attendees packed in with little regard for social distancing or face coverings.
Though the Republican Party has largely abdicated its responsibility to call out Mr. Trump for his obvious lies on many topics, this episode makes the GOP’S sad state even more obvious. Their lapdog silence reminds us of the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s observation that totalitarian leaders shape their propaganda according to the notion that if you “could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
That’s a fairly accurate description of the tortured defenses of the president that are currently being served up on Fox News and the talk radio spin cycle.
Cynicism is a natural human response to this sort of thing. But don’t let it keep you from voting.