Rallies are incubators for the coronavirus
Let’s stop doing mammograms, and we’ll eliminate breast cancer. Colonoscopies? If we stop those, colon cancer goes away. In fact, if we stop all medical testing, there will be no more disease. Pretty absurd. Yes?
But no, that’s what the snake oil salesman in the Oval Office is asking us to buy when it comes to COVID-19.
“If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,” President Trump said during a June 15 event for senior citizens at the White House, foreshadowing his June 20 Tulsa rally.
“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘slow the testing down, please!’ ”
Aides said he was only kidding.
He was speaking “tongue in cheek,” said trade adviser Peter Navarro.
“It was a comment that he made in jest,” said press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, while also reinforcing Trump’s absurd assertion by saying he was “joking about the media and their failure to understand the fact that when you test more, you also find more cases.”
Actually, more testing could theoretically yield proportionately fewer cases, depending upon the underlying reality, the true prevalence of the virus. Trump’s “reality show,” however, is never about what’s real, or true, or scientific in nature.
It’s always about Trump’s alternative reality that he creates in his mind for his own narcissistic purposes. But because he’s president, his reality inevitably becomes the craziness that challenges us to escape back into sanity. Unfortunately, when it comes to the virus, Trump’s reality is a deadly one. And it’s killing us.
On Tuesday, just before leaving for his Arizona rally, he denied that he had spoken in jest, contradicting his aides.
“I don’t kid,” he said. “Let me just tell you. Let me make it clear.”
Speaking that evening to Students for Trump in Dream City Church at a rally organized by the conservative non-profit Turning Point USA, Trump repeated what he’d said at the Tulsa rally.
“We’re testing so much ... Now when you have all those tests, you have more cases. So the news covers it ... but they use it to make us look bad ...”
He attacked the “fake news people” for misleading the public about the prevalence of the virus.
Three thousand young people crammed together in the Phoenix mega-church, almost none wearing masks. They shouted and applauded wildly as Trump mocked the virus, mocking it as he had done at his Tulsa rally, referring to it in racist terms.
“It’s got all different names, Wuhan. Kawuhan was catching on. Coronavirus. Kung flu. COVID-19 ... I could give you many, many names. Some people call it the Chinese flu, the China flu ...”
That cheering audience in Phoenix gave Trump the fix he craved, something he had missed in Tulsa where the crowd he expected never materialized. The venue, with a 19,000 capacity, was two-thirds empty. With only 6,200 attendees, the event was a bust.
Still, both the Tulsa and Phoenix rallies were incubators for the virus.
By politicizing the wearing of masks, mocking the virus, and holding rallies in defiance of public health concerns, Trump is actively working to spread disease. In his reality, the danger to others is not real. Despite the farcical daily virus briefings he once held, the virus has always been nonexistent in Trump world.
Ever since Jan. 20, when the first coronavirus case was diagnosed in the United States, Trump has been denying the threat.
Jan. 22: “No, not at all, and we have it totally under control,” in response to a reporter asking if he was worried about a pandemic.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
June 17: “No, because if you look, the numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It’s dying out ... in response to a reporter asking if he was worried about people getting sick at his Tulsa rally.
As of this writing, the virus is surging: highest single day cases since April, total cases exceeding 2.3 million, and a mounting death toll that surpasses 122,000.
Is testing to blame for these numbers? Hardly. It’s our reckless president’s refusal to recognize the reality of COVID-19.