It’s summer, but the coronavirus has not gone away “like magic.” After months of heavy promotion from the White House, hydroxychloroquine is definitely not “a game changer.” And no matter what some Clorox-snorters may claim, an “internal injection” of bleach remains a bad idea.
But if the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t gone away, something else definitely has—the briefings where Trump made all those statements. Because the last time there was either a briefing or meeting of the White House coronavirus task force was April 27. Mike Pence may be out there writing editorials about what a great job Trump has done, as the numbers continue to climb, but it seems like no one is doing any job at all. It’s not just that Donald Trump has decided to hold a rally in a state and a city where cases are up 50% in the last week. As it turns out, the coronavirus didn’t go away after April, but the coronavirus response definitely did.
On Wednesday, the Chinese government cancelled all flights in and out of Beijing following a new wave of COVID-19 cases in the city. All schools have been closed. The city’s emergency level was raised to just one down from the highest. Areas of the city where cases are known are in lockdown, with stores closed and residents strictly confined to their homes. Several neighborhoods have been divided from the city by fencing and guards are manning checkpoints to make sure that curfews and lockdowns are observed. All of this came in response to 137 cases over the course of a week, with 31 coming on Tuesday.
Or, in other words, China reacted immediately and vigorously to contain an outbreak that was less than what 41 out of 50 states reported on the same day. The total number of cases in Beijing over the last week was less than what 33 states reported just in the last day.
It’s not as if Trump ever actually had a significant contribution to COVID-19 outbreak. The United States never went on lockdown. Travel was never suspended. A national program of testing and tracing never emerged. It wasn’t just that the test was late to arrive, and ineffective in its first incarnation, Trump made it clear that he wasn’t interested in managing “tests in a parking lot” that was somewhere “far away.” Unlike every other nation on the planet dealing with a deadly pandemic, Trump made it clear that he was not responsible for testing, for treatment, for anything.
In fact, Trump made that explicitly clear:
Trump has also made it clear that he’s not even going to consider shutting down the nation in response to any evidence that reopening is generating a new surge of cases. Not that he shut it down the first time. Instead, Trump is doing what he always does—pretending to lead.
Beijing is shutting down after 132 cases in just the last week. Oklahoma had 228 cases on Tuesday alone, and has already reported 259 on Wednesday.
Trump will be there for a rally on Saturday.