Preface: It seems that all we have heard from the Trump Party over the past month...(I am not part of the Trump Party....for I am a longtime conservative republican evangelical)....is the low percentage of fatalities....(or high survival rate)....in this latest strain of the virus. That which is seldom addressed is that if the number of positives increases tenfold....then however low that percentage might be....the number not the percentage would increase tenfold....as it would a hundredfold....and a thousandfold....and so on. The various authorities that chose to do so....restricted close encounters....to limit positivity....while not knowing exactly how contagious the virus is....and all this to keep the number of deaths lower than what they might be if no or fewer precautions were taken. This is all Fauci and Redfield and Birx are asking of us right now....but we continue to fight them.
I commented to my wife before she retired for the evening that tests were going to show that President Trump has the virus. It seemed probable as the President and Hicks and about thirty others were on the helicopter. Well....that was indeed the case....along with Melania.
It's been my habit lately to get up a little later in the morning....usually 8 or 9....since I haven't been going to bed until 2 or 3. So I settled in this morning with coffee and the computer and the radio. Now this is something that suits me well....as I can tune in late to Breitbart or Hannity or Levin on SiriusXm....and dial the time back to the beginning of the show.....and continuously move it forward as I desire. So I tuned it back to the start of the show....and here is where I was surprised this morning....as the host was jovial.....at times chuckling....and used the word 'narrative' three or four times....the meaning being that when the President gets well then the whole episode can be used as a positive on the election.
This has been the problem that Donald Trump has brought to dealing with the pandemic.....talk radio took the ball and ran with it but it all originates with the man who dictates everything. Whereas we could have had at least a unified response with everyone on the same page....we instead had turmoil as the advice of the people who should know seemed to be more often than not at loggerheads with the people whose primary concern was the coming election.
Bob Woodward's book Rage did a good job of giving Trump's thoughts as the pandemic began and then worsened. Woodward's approach was more than fair....and Trump appeared in a good light as he took the advice given to him on closing China and Europe....but he quickly became impatient....as it became obvious in his conversations with the author that it was time to move on to the campaign for reelection....and that is the 'narrative' that the Breitbart host was talking about today....not how easily this virus is spread....or the national security issues it might present....but how it just might turn out to the President's advantage.....and that is a truly sad state of affairs.
