Requiem for an infection

President Donald Trump is healthy again, or at least he appears to have returned to the same level of vigor that he possessed before his battle with COVID-19 earlier this month. And that’s a good thing, both because it’s generally viewed as immoral to wish sickness upon another human being and because it’s definitely better when our transfers of power are enacted at the ballot box and not by the Grim Reaper.

These were some of the thoughts bouncing around in my brain as I composed the column that appeared in this space Oct. 4, just two days after the president announced via Twitter that he had tested positive for coronavirus.

My case, in a nutshell:

While Trump deserved abundant criticism for the way his administration had handled the pandemic, no one deserves to get a potentially lethal virus, which should never be thought of as having a moral compass.

Things were developing quickly on the day I hammered that one out. By the time I filed, the president had gone in less than eight hours from feeling OK to experiencing mild symptoms to walking across the White House lawn to the chopper that whisked him to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

The situation was fast-moving enough to prompt questions both moral and logistical, such as whether it would be wise to take a long bike ride on Saturday and miss the window to retool the column if Trump took a turn for the worse. (I did, but only to preserve a sense of calm, and it was lovely.)

Trump was, according to all reports and visual evidence, not a model presidential patient. In addition to obliging his thoroughly Pence-like physician, Sean Conley, to initially conceal the extent of the president’s symptoms — such as whether he was ever on, y’know, oxygen — the president decided to take a Sunday-evening spin outside the hospital to greet the throngs of fans who had gathered outside. This obliged Secret Service agents to place themselves (and their co-workers, families and anyone else in their divergent paths) in unnecessary peril.

By this point, the column was in print and I had already received emails from several readers and even a co-worker who took issue with the notion that Trump didn’t deserve the virus.

“The man's criminally negligent response to the pandemic has taken thousands of lives,” wrote Brunswick’s David Valachovic in an Oct. 5 email. “He chose to not take the measures that would have saved Americans because he feared if he revealed the truth it would collapse the markets and ruin

his prospects for a second term. He publically lied about the seriousness of the pandemic and openly mocked those who took the recommended precautions. His decision to flout the recommendations of experts is why he has the disease. ... Your column entirely ignores the people he has victimized.”

All of Valachovic’s points were, of course, incontrovertible.

I responded by noting that I was fully aware of the counterargument, but there was a difference between actions that have consequences and the notion that Trump’s illness was somehow deserved.

I added that it was in my estimation “way, waaaaay too early to say that Trump’s illness will cause millions of people to rethink their cavalier attitude to the disease. In fact, the opposite could turn out to be true: If the president gets back to something like a normal routine in short order, it would be taken by his fans as an indication that ’rona ain’t no big deal.

In other words, Trump getting the virus could turn out to be another bad turn for the country’s fight against it.”

And that, sadly, is precisely what has come to pass. The president is feeling great and the virus is again running rampant throughout vast stretches of the nation, especially in rural zones in the Midwest and West.

If Trump finds himself booted from the Oval Office in next week’s vote, historians will look back and ponder if the curve of his popularity might have been bent upward by a brief speech in which he acknowledged being even slightly humbled by the experience, and that he recognized the virus’ communicability and the value of every citizen — high or humble — doing their patriotic best to protect themselves and their countrymen and — women from the disease, and the economic and social devastation that attends infection spikes.

“I know Americans fear this illness,” he could have said,

“and I feel close enough to the people of this great nation to admit that I understand that emotion — that I have shared it, have learned from it, and will rededicate myself to doing everything I can to ensure that we are able to move beyond it together.”

Look: I’ve never written a speech in my life that wasn’t intended to be delivered with Chicken Kiev, though I’ve certainly been paid to listen to a boatload of political oratory. The preceding paragraph was the work of exactly 45 seconds of composition and typing.

Be honest: It’s pretty good, right? Not Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, but not shabby.

If I can do it, why can’t he? Or more to the point: Why won’t he?