Has Trump decided we’ll copy Sweden and just hasn’t told us?

Having a pandemic is really bad. Having a pandemic and a civil war together is really, really bad. Welcome to Donald Trump’s America 2020.

If you feel dizzy from watching Trump signal left — issuing guidelines for how states should properly emerge from pandemic lockdowns — while turning right — urging people to liberate their states from lockdowns, ignore his own guidelines and even dispute the value of testing — you’re not alone.

Here’s my guess at what he is saying: “The Greatest Generation preserved American liberty and capitalism by taking Omaha Beach in Normandy on DDay — in the face of a barrage of Nazi shelling that could and did kill many of them. I am calling on our generation to preserve American liberty and capitalism today by going shopping in the malls of Omaha, Nebraska, in the face of a coronavirus pandemic that will likely only kill 1% of you, if you do get infected. So be brave — get back to work and take back your old life.”

Yes, if you total up all of Trump’s recent words and deeds, he is saying to the American people: Between the two basic models for dealing with the pandemic in the world — China’s rigorous top-down, test, track, trace and quarantine model, while waiting for a vaccine to provide herd immunity — and Sweden’s more bottom-up, protect-the-most-vulnerable-and-let-the-rest-get-back-to-workand-get-the-infection-and-develop-natural-herd-immunity model, your president has decided for Sweden’s approach.

He just hasn’t told the country or his coronavirus task force or maybe even himself.

I fear a low-grade civil war between those who will ask their neighbors: “Who gave you the right to ignore the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and heedlessly go to a bar, work or restaurant and then spread coronavirus to someone’s grandparents or your own?” And those who will ask their neighbors: “Who gave you the right to keep the economy closed in a pandemic and trigger mass unemployment, which could cost many more lives than are saved, especially when alternative strategies, like Sweden’s, might work?”

A new Mason-Dixon Line could emerge between those states led by governors who want to equip their people with the maximum protective gear and safety guidelines and those governors who are keen to reopen their states for business as usual.

According to a new poll from Pew Research Center, more than two-thirds of Americans worry that their respective states are reopening too quickly.

The tragedy of all of this is that a better president would never have allowed us to get to this edge of pandemic civil strife.

A real president would be simultaneously framing the issues for the nation and then arguing for and guiding us on the least painful course. He’d start by explaining that we are up against a challenge no one in our generation has ever faced — the challenge of a global pandemic.

All you can do is adapt in the least harmful way possible to whatever she throws at you. And when it’s a pandemic, it means there are only hellish moral and economic trade-offs — no matter which path you choose. Too closed, she’ll kill your jobs. Too open, she’ll kill your vulnerable.

The job of leadership is to choose the path that offers the most sustainable way to balance lives and livelihoods and then create and stick to the conditions that make it workable.

If you listened to Trump last week you heard a president who was all over the place. One day he talked as though he wanted to follow Sweden in getting a lot of people back to work, even if many more will get infected by the coronavirus. Another day, he boasted that we’re testing just like China — only more so. Another day he disputed the need for testing at all.

I fear that we are heading for a roiling mess. Our coronavirus infections will be exacerbated by Trump’s incompetence, while our hyper-political partisanship will be fed by his malevolence. After all, his whole political strategy is to divide us into red and blue, Republicans and Democrats, open-now advocates and goslow advocates. That’s the only politics he practices.

In sum, COVID-19 is sapping our economic and physical health, while Trump is undermining our institutions and national unity. We desperately need a vaccine — and a 2020 election outcome — that can give us herd immunity to this virus and this president.