‘A Christmas Carol,’ starring Donald Trump
This week, I started to wonder if I have been fair to Donald Trump.
First, let me help you out with some context. Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States. About 40 days ago, he got clobbered in an election. He lost by 7 million votes. He lost by more than 70 electoral votes.
I mention this because there is another Donald Trump running around claiming he was in a very close election which he very probably won. That, obviously, cannot be the same Donald Trump I’m talking about, the one who got beaten like a rented drum.
Two readers offered interesting and very similar arguments. They said that I had marveled at the speed at which COVID-19 vaccines were developed, but I did not lavish any of my praise on Donald Trump for his Operation Warp Speed, which pushed the development of the vaccine.
I thought, maybe they have a point. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to throw Donald Trump a bone. It’s the holiday season, with the whoop-de-doo and hickory dock, as the song says. And this poor man has just gotten whupped in an election and will be leaving the White House with his tail between his legs.
That night, I retired to my bed chamber and was visited by the Ghost of Vaccines Past. Not a pretty experience. I had to watch Edward Jenner extract pus from the cowpox blisters of a milkmaid named Sarah Nelmes (who got it from a cow named Blossom) and then “inoculate” (through small cuts on his arm) James Phipps, an 8-year-old boy unlucky enough to be hanging around Jenner’s property. People talk about Jenner inventing vaccines, but it really was kind of a team effort.
Then I was visited by the Ghost of Vaccines Future, which was considerably more cut and dried. Robots with wheels for legs run around spraying everybody without so much as a by your leave. People who refuse are cut and dried.
But it was the Ghost of Vaccines Present that I really wanted to talk to, although he was kind of a boring ghost, brandishing thick reports from pharmaceutical companies.
“Spirit,” I began. “I must ask you a —”
“You can call me Dave,” the Ghost said.
“Dave,” I began again. “Do you think I need to give more credit to Donald Trump?”
“The guy who got crushed in the election?” “The same.”
“Walk me through the argument for credit.”
“He started Operation Warp Speed for vaccine development.”
“Right. I mean, in my capacity as a Ghost, I tend to focus on all the people who have died because he made light of the disease and advocated treatments that weren’t safe and told people to inject themselves with disinfectant and resisted masks and never developed a national testing plan and used words like ‘hoax’ and ‘gone by April’ and ‘affects virtually nobody’ and urged citizens to liberate themselves from public health controls and got special therapies for himself and Ben Carson and Rudy Giuliani while every day regular people are dying and dying and ...”
“Dave,” I said, “you’re getting a little worked up.”
“What do you want from me? I’m a ghost. I hang around with dead people. They are legitimately sore about this.”
I told Dave about the two readers who had written to me about giving Trump more credit for the vaccine.
“Do they know that he’s been complaining since September that all the FDA safety precautions are political?” Dave asked. “And how about the thing where the Trump administration turned down the chance to buy 100 million more Pfizer doses and now those are going to the EU, and Americans have to wait.”
“Right. But somebody’s getting them. Maybe that’s good.”
“True. I was in London last night. The Cratchits are all vaccinated already.”
“Tiny Tim got vaccinated?”
“I know, right?” said Dave. “Look, I’ve been thinking this through. I think you should give Trump some credit. He screwed up everything else and got tens of thousands of people unnecessarily killed by this bug, but he did give the pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars for research and development and even more billions of dollars so they could start manufacturing before the vaccines were even approved. And that really is something, even if it’s just money and when it came to the human stuff, he was a heartless egomaniacal psychopath.”
“I’m going to do it then,” I said. “I’m going to give him credit. My own soul feels lighter already for extending an olive branch to this vile enemy of everything I care about.”
“See? It makes you feel good!” Dave said. “And it’s completely harmless because he’s toothless, right? He got his clock cleaned in the election, and now he has no choice but to walk away and leave us alone.”
“Dave,” I said. “We need to talk.”