Stop all the antics and take the coronavirus seriously

I hadn’t heard of Rudy Gobert before he became one of America’s most hated men. But now that I have, I’d like to give him a proper salute.

He’s done us all a favor by calling attention to something none of us should do: play around with the prospect of catching the novel coronavirus.

On the pro basketball court, Gobert, the twotime NBA Defensive Player of the Year, has established himself as a skillful, disciplined athlete who protects the rim with artful ease.

But off the court, the 7-foot-1-inch Frenchman sometimes is known to be a playful clown.

This past week he joked around one time too many. On his way out of a press availability Monday, he playfully reached out with both hands to touch and rub all the reporters’ tape recorders on the table in front of him before a game against the Detroit Pistons.

Some joke. Two days later, he was diagnosed with the coronavirus. The NBA suspended the rest of the season indefinitely. Other teams and staff who had come into contact with Gobert were instructed to self-quarantine. A teammate, NBA AllStar Donovan Mitchell, also tested positive for the virus. But, it was Gobert who appeared to catch the most grief from fans, as his clowning was rebroadcast repeatedly on TV and the internet.

One of the first rules of humor is to make sure that you’re ridiculing something that deserves it. Gobert seemed to recognize his error when he expressed his profuse apologies.

“The first and most important thing is, I would like to publicly apologize to the people that I may have endangered,” he said on Instagram. “At the time, I had no idea I was even infected. I was careless and make no excuse.”

A chastened Gobert deserves our appreciation, in my view, for his example of ironic justice. In trying to belittle the seriousness of the COVID-19 crisis, he belittled himself and amplified the seriousness of the crisis.

“I hope my story serves as a warning,” he continued, “and causes everyone to take this seriously.”

Good for him. If anything redeems his foolishness, it is the attention he inadvertently brought to the need to take COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, seriously.

A similar backhanded salute goes out to Rep. Matt Gaetz. The Florida Republican and devoted supporter of President Donald Trump famously wore a gas mask on the House floor during a vote on funding to fight the coronavirus. Whatever amusement he might have drawn from the stunt was dampened later by the knowledge that one of his Florida constituents had died from exposure to the virus.

But there’s more. On a flight aboard Air Force One on Monday, after having been in close contact with the president in a car on the way to the flight, Gaetz learned that he, too, had been exposed to the virus earlier at the Conservative Political Action Conference forum.

But Trump’s associates are not the only people who are now, at last, taking coronavirus seriously.

On Friday, after a week of escalating cases, event cancellations, sports season suspensions, a record-breaking financial crash, and growing demands for testing and other actions, President Trump declared a national emergency, freeing up as much as $50 billion to assist state and local governments with the outbreak.