He Shoulda Zagged

Watching the numbers of Covid-19 cases grow around the world and in our little American corner of it is very revealing. About a week ago the United States had about one third of all the cases of the virus on the globe, but only a quarter of the fatalities. While our percentage of cases is holding at about a third of the planets burden, our death toll is quietly creeping up. We are now between a quarter and a third of the reported deaths from the virus. This makes sense, as the deaths are always a lagging indicator. First one must be ill with the virus before they die. If the sudden irradication of the virus occurred, we would see the case count stop, but those infected would still proceed to whatever outcome was their’s to have. The death toll would increase even after the case count stopped. There is around a 10 day lag time, and as the case curve flattens the deaths take a quick jump as a percentage of total cases. The biggest spikes of two weeks ago are just starting to resolve now.

There are 187 countries with confirmed cases of this out of 195 countries on the globe. The planet houses a bit over 7.5 billion people. The United States claims close to 330 million of them. Not quite a third of a billion. If Covid-19 were a product, we would have cornered the market. Clearly, the United States response to this has not worked. We have been one of the least effective countries in controlling our outcome, unable to mitigate its attendant grief. If the numbers get confusing there are plenty of graphs depicting overlapping curves of countries and there we are, soaring above the pretenders to the crown.

These numbers are not political spin. No one really disputes them. Oh, they spin them and make them unrecognizable or simply lie about them, but behind closed doors they know how bad these numbers are. They know how much of the failure of the response is on the record, irrefutable, just data.

President Trump is fully aware of all of this. It doesn’t look like it. He lies with commitment, whole hearted endorsements of disinformation. He looks like he thinks what he is saying is true, but he has to sell it. He has to. He can’t have this one go down like Trump Steaks, or Trump University or the Trump Charity or Trum Casinos, or…. Well, you get the picture. No, he had to sell this one. This is an all-in poker hand, nothing left on the table.

The stakes? Everything.

With this great an imperative for the President, there are no guard rails to the attempts to find a way to divert the blame. Come on boys! This is it! Outside the box, doesn’t matter, throw it out there. I need ideas, boys, I need ideas! Kellyanne, is the coffee ready?

The urgency of the need and the intellectual resources the President has available to him was bound to lead to some hilarity, and gosh, it didn’t take long!

Four days ago the CDC released a report that unequivocally stated that the virus was not man-made or genetically modified. But yesterday the President started pushing the idea that something fishy was going on in China, that this “plague” had escaped from the Wuhan labs that had been working on related issues prior to this, with the United States knowledge. There is no data suggesting this virus existed prior to it being plausibly traced to the wet markets of Wuhan, but there is no proof that it didn’t escape the lab, either, and that will be good enough for Trump. He needs a scapegoat. If it is found that it actually did escape the lab where it was being studied undetected by the rest of the world, so much the better, but it doesn’t really matter. The President trades in accusations, not actualities, and right now he is in desperate need of bad guys, wherever he can get them.This is so important to him that his finger pointing just might put his trade deal with China into a tail spin, and you know how he feels about trade deals.

The need for scapegoats also explains why he simply will not fully engage the federal government in this fight, why he refuses to declare unbridled warfare against it without prodding, without goading, being dragged into every ventilator, every swab. It’s all about being able to point at the governors for cover. This was supposed to be their fight. Did you see they passed on a ventilator purchase in 2015?

Son-in-law Jared has delivered a couple of doozies to this end. Mr. Kushner has been inexplicably put in charge of another administrative Coronavirus team that no one has seen and has never seriously been referred to but is independent of the VP Pence team. But the Kush has appeared at a couple of the varsity outings and said some carefully crafted words. His first outing he wanted everyone to understand that the ventilators in the federal stockpiles belonged to the Feds. The states had to get their own. These here are ours. No matter that the statute that refers to the medical stockpiles specifically states that the purpose of having a stockpile was to expedite disbursement to the states. He was inartfully attempting to suggest that the Feds had been responsible and prepared and the states had not and now there were consequences, but that is not what anyone heard. I think that there are good reasons that the Kush is rarely allowed around a podium. It was the better part of a year into this Administration’s tenure that anyone knew what his voice sounded like. Inexplicably, they decided to give him another chance, and he would not disappoint.

He made his Mission Accomplished speech on Fox News when he announced we are past the medical crisis and this is a great victory for the federal government. That was four or five days ago, right when we passed one million cases of the virus in the U.S. He had tried to emphasize how great the Fed was and by extension if you are having any discomfort you should call your statehouse. This also largely backfired. I think it may be some time before we see Jared again.

Complicating this is you have some Governors who have become superstars because of their efforts, their resolve, their unwillingness to accept what looked impossible. Cuomo’s efforts have been undeniable and certainly well documented, and the daily comparison between the Gov and the Pres was glaring. Cuomo was the headliner, but there were others that distinguished themselves from both parties. These governors were making it more difficult to paint them as the incompetents, while the evidence of the Administrations failures was mounting and appearing in major pieces in important sources. The New York Times published a long piece documenting the many miscues that had led to our current situation.

The villification of the states was not going terribly well and that helps to explain the more concerted effort toward China. If people misunderstood the President and thought he was suggesting that the Chinese created a new virus and unleashed it on the world, well, that happens sometimes. When the CDC’s report put the kibbash on that wink-wink, he would make do with the idea that the virus was being studied legitimately and escaped, like John Dillinger. Gave ’em the slip, see. In fairness, this is possible, though at the time of this writing I have seen no evidence to that end.

This led to some very uncomfortable declarations. The President said he had seen a great deal of evidence that the virus originated in the labs of Wuhan. When the follow up question asked him what evidence that might be, he said “I can’t tell you. I’m not allowed to tell.” The Secretary of State made the same case on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”. Pompeo took the gloves off and started beating on China, stating they had a history of this and that their labs were substandard and their government covered it up and he cited “experts” that suggested that the virus was man-made. He had a potential case up to that last bit. When the CDC report was referenced that said there was no evidence of human genetic manipulation he said he had no reason to disagree with them. I was confused. Was it Orwell or Monty Python? I couldn’t tell.

President Obama gets an occaisional shout out by 45. He has been saying that the previous administration had dropped the ball and left the cupboards dry, no tests at all. This had been repeated for two months, and finally it dawned on someone to ask how that was possible, since a test couldn’t be developed for a virus that did not exist. Even Obama fetishists don’t think he was clairvoyant. Well, most don’t. This will not matter to our current President. He will continue to use the line. His folks won’t mind. They know it was Obama’s fault. Why is a detail.

There is no evidence that the administration will back off of the strategy of assigning blame. Let’s be honest. He can’t. The way he sees the world there is no option. The other threats come from within and he his doing his best to silence them. Dr Fauci has been forbidden from testifying before the House as they investigate the federal response. The President is picking off the inspectors general one at a time as they become inconvenient or simply need to be punished for previous crimes of honorably serving. It’s a scorched earth policy.

I have been thinking recently how badly he fumbled the ball, though. Not in the way you think. Sure he’s a disaster in nearly every way a human being can be, but he could have easily walked away with all the marbles. He could have written this whole story so differently, and ironically he would have walked away with everything he wanted.

If he had really listened and realized he wasn’t going to dodge this, that it was going to be really bad in terms of both public health as well as the economic impact no matter what he did, and taken the people’s side. Bail out the people. Go all in on their side, letting some of his buddies twist, they would be fine, and just become the guy that did everything he could to bail out the little guy. We still talk about FDR simply because of this. Be all in for me, for you, for people like you, for people nothing like you, for everybody. He would piss off some old pals, but he would be a national hero. Four more years would be like falling off a log. Landslide win. Unlimited political capital. He would be able to pick his agenda. He would still be Trump but with no way to attack him, no way for the press to bring him down. No one would care. He saved the country! Even if, like FDR, nothing changed no matter what he did, things just kept getting worse, the people would know that he did everything he could to help them.

He could have even done it cynically. He wouldn’t need to become a better man. Make the play knowing he would be seen as a god and his financial adversaries would take a hit while his stock would soar with a newfound love he could never imagine being worthy of but sure as hell knew how to take advantage of. People would want to stay in a Trump hotel or golf on his courses just to honor this great man with the huge vision and a heart of gold. His golden years would be golden indeed. History would be rewritten, more grey now than black. He would be honored in a way that money can’t buy. And ironically it would pay exorbitantly well. The ultimate win/win.

But he is always true to himself. He went for the short con, the easy money. He always has.

He’s going to need a great hole card.