USA TODAY International Edition
When COVID- 19 isn’t about politics
Families’ pain contrasts with Trump’s rhetoric
On the day the president told Americans not to fear COVID- 19, Gary Hughes drove to work missing his mother’s voice. Every day, he had talked to her on the hourlong drive to Nashville, Tennessee, but now she was in the hospital on a ventilator. He had to stop himself from dialing her number.
On his phone, a text popped up from his sister, Jackie: “So horrible not to see mama and not talk to her and know she’s alone.”
On Oct. 5, the president left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after being treated for the virus that has killed more than 230,000 people in the USA. He stood outside the White House and took off his mask.
“Feeling really good!” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
Hughes, 53, heard about the tweet after a fretful day of keeping tabs on his mother’s condition. Don’t be afraid, the president said, but Hughes was terrified.
That’s the same thing you said in the spring, he thought. His mother had believed Trump, had not been careful, and now she was unable to breathe. And you’re telling people not to be afraid?
In a country polarized and whiplashed by misinformation and spin, people will disagree about the power of the president’s rhetoric. But for those in the crosshairs of a virus blind to politics, the disconnect between what Trump said Oct. 5 and the daily reality of strangling coughs, funeral arrangements and empty beds could not be more bewildering. The collective sense of abandon
ment, even betrayal, expands with each new case, each death, each record set. “Ungodly,” Hughes called it.
In Los Angeles, Kenia Alcocer heard about the tweet on a hospital television while her 9- month- old, who had been born premature, was being assessed for surgery. She worried constantly about contracting COVID- 19 because of her baby’s fragile health. Her husband’s work had dried up because of the pandemic, and they’d scoured empty shelves for diapers. “It made me sick to my stomach,” she said.
In San Antonio, Gary Sarli saw the tweet three days before his younger brother died. He called it “infuriating” and “insane.”
Ann Zick was home in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, when she learned what the president had said. In another room, her husband lay ill with the virus. It would sicken her, too, one week later.
“Spreading that kind of propaganda is only going to make things worse,” she said.
In Elgin, Illinois, Suzann Jonson heard it after FaceTiming with her father, who was ventilated in the hospital and could not respond. She called the tweet “a knife in the heart.”
Oct. 5 – Round Rock, Texas
Greg Gibson curled up in bed with his wife, Cindy, watching MSNBC. He’d returned to work after eight days in the hospital, but exhaustion still overwhelmed him, and he used an inhaler to keep the coughing at bay.
The newscast revisited Trump’s efforts to downplay the virus. In September, Trump insisted that he was “not at all concerned” and that “it affects virtually nobody.”
Cindy turned to her husband. “Congratulations,” she said. “We are virtually nobody.”
Oct. 9 – Winnebago, Neb.
Marilyn Blackhawk’s family gathered in a church on the Winnebago Reservation to celebrate the 54- year- old grandmother’s life. They sang Native American songs, told stories and prayed.
Blackhawk had died of COVID- 19 four days earlier, the same day Trump said not to be afraid.
While Blackhawk was in the hospital, her son, Tony Zavala, never wanted to be far away. But only his sister Nina could visit, because she’d already had COVID- 19. Zavala, 30, would park his Chevy outside the hospital.
Blackhawk kept her family and friends updated by Facebook.
“I was unresponsive but they got me back,” she wrote Oct. 1. “Continued prayers please. I was scared.”
Her last post came Oct. 3. “Goals: get better, outta this ICU. Get my nails done.”
When the time came, Blackhawk’s children were finally allowed to join her, surrounding her hospital bed. Then came the high- pitched flatline tone they had all dreaded. The crying in Blackhawk’s room grew louder.
One week after her mother- in- law died, Megan Zavala was scrolling Twitter at home in Lincoln, Nebraska, stumbled on another Trump tweet and felt a surge of anger.
“California is going to hell,” the president wrote. “Vote Trump!”
Oct. 10 – Fayetteville, Ark.
Johnny Lara Gonzales, 82, had developed pneumonia and was on myriad treatments.
He used to wear masks to the store and make jokes about the coronavirus: “I’m too tough for that COVID,” he told his kids.
Hospitalized with the virus in the intensive care unit, he had a new one to tell: “Nobody makes it out of here alive.”
He almost died a decade ago, when his former wife accidentally ran him over with his car.
The nurses and doctors brought him back then, and they did it time and time again: after a stroke, kidney failure, heart trouble.
In all his brushes with adversity, Gonzales was a fighter. He was a U. S. Army veteran and third- generation Mexican American. He was a father who achieved 33 years of sobriety. He was a bus driver for the University of Arkansas until he retired at 80.
When his lungs became so swollen they resembled shattered glass, doctors at the Veterans Affairs medical center brought out a ventilator.
“I need you to be strong,” he told his children. “This could be it.”
On Oct. 7, his daughter, Suzann Jonson, 53, watched Trump stand outside the Oval Office and declare himself cured thanks to an antibody cocktail from a company called Regeneron.
“If you’re in the hospital and feeling really bad, we’re going to work it so you get it and you get it free. … You’re going to get better really fast,” Trump said.
She called the hospital and asked that her father be given the drugs that Trump got. Nurses said Gonzales was on Remdesivir, but the Regeneron treatment was not FDA- approved.
Her father died Oct. 10, 13 days after he got COVID- 19, three days after Trump touted a cure Gonzales wasn’t allowed to have.
His three sons and four daughters keep one image of their father close to mind: Gonzales driving his red 1961 Studebaker, his pride and joy.
“I want to drive it to heaven,” he liked to say.
Oct. 13 – Primm Springs, Tenn.
On Oct. 2, Gary Hughes called his mother at the hospital to tell her Trump had the virus, too.
“Well, you’re in good company,” Hughes said.
His mother laughed.
“I hope it doesn’t make him too sick,” she said.
“I hope he doesn’t die,” Hughes answered. “But I hope he feels sick enough to understand the seriousness of it.”
Most of the family believed the virus was a hoax and would go away by the election, Hughes said. Throughout the pandemic, much of his family had been inconsistent with masks, wearing them at the grocery store or at work but not around his mom or at her farm.
They listened to Trump, who said, “It’s going to disappear.”
Hughes begged his mother: “Don’t listen to him.”
On Oct. 13, the family made the decision to take her off life support.
Hughes was too numb to cry. He hopped on his Can- Am and rode about a mile up to a bluff that overlooked the home he shared with his partner, the barns that dotted their land and a pond.
Down below, they were building a lake house for his mother, so she would have a place of her own when she came to visit, a spot to drink her coffee and sit on the dock, overlooking the rippling water. Hughes gazed upon it, knowing she would never see it finished.
Suddenly, he felt a well of hurt that he couldn’t quell. He was furious at the world. He was furious at Trump. He was furious at his mother for listening to the president. And it erupted, shattering the quiet, and Hughes screamed and screamed.
Oct. 20 – Round Rock, Texas
Fifteen days after the president told people not to be afraid, Gibson – the “virtual nobody” – took a sick day because he wasn’t feeling well.
When he got up to make lunch for his son, he launched into an uncontrollable coughing fit. He’d had fainting spells most of his life, and gasping for air with COVID- 19- damaged lungs, he hit the floor.
When he came to, his ribs hurt. His wife had been poll- watching at an election site.
“I’m injured,” Gibson said when she returned home to check on him.
She assumed he just didn’t want to help her bring in the groceries.
“No, I’m really injured,” he said. A trip to the hospital revealed Gibson had hit his head, fractured his ribs and had bleeding in his brain. He spent three days in the ICU before being sent home.
“Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” President Donald Trump’s tweet Oct. 5
Oct. 23 – Pensacola, Fla.
Trump held election rallies in The Villages and Pensacola, where thousands of raucous supporters crowded together, many not wearing masks.
He called COVID- 19 the “China plague” and said lockdowns were unnecessary. “I know it better than you,” he said. “I had it.”
An additional 83,757 cases of COVID- 19 were reported that Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University, shattering the previous one- day record set in July.
“That’s all I hear about now,” the president told another crowd Saturday. “That’s all I hear. Turn on television: ‘ COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID.’ A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it. ‘ COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID.’ By the way, on Nov. 4, you won’t hear about it anymore.”
“We’re rounding the turn,” Trump said Sunday in New Hampshire.
The virus hit the staff of Vice President Mike Pence, infecting at least five. Pence continued campaigning, and Trump kept holding rallies, often more than one in a single day.
“Rounding the turn,” Trump said in Pennsylvania. “COVID COVID COVID,” he said in Arizona. “Rounding the turn,” he said Thursday in Tampa as Florida surged past 800,000 cases for the first time.
The country kept setting records: Thursday, the daily case count hit 88,521. Americans were falling ill faster than one per second.
In Tennessee, Hughes buried his mother. Her pastor was unable to preside. He was ill with COVID- 19.
In the fellowship hall of a church, Hughes greeted family members, thanking them for coming.
He sat down with an uncle to reminisce. Despite everything, Hughes’ uncle hadn’t changed his mind about the virus that took his sister’s life.
“This is all a hoax,” he said. “It was sent from China … to disrupt the election. But this is nothing more than the flu.”
Hughes looked at him, bewildered. “We just buried Mom,” he said. “It’s not just the flu.”
His uncle rose and walked away without another word.