Trump’s failure to grasp the politics of coronavirus is a microcosm of his entire administration, writes sullydish
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images It’s a thought experiment, I know, but bear with me: Imagine a situation where a president has been elected on a platform of nationalism laced with xenophobia and is supported by a base of cultish authoritarianism. He’s helped accelerate a profound shift in which the American right has the solid backing of more ordinary people than ever, and the opposition party remains captured by an elite that refuses to shift toward the center on cultural issues.
And then what? Nada. Actually, worse than nada. Trump immediately reversed himself on the threat, stomped all over his political advantage, and pooh-poohed any kind of news that might rattle the markets. You know the series of staggeringly inept, false, and delusional dismissals by now. February 10: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” February 26: “Within a couple of days, it’s going to be down to close to zero.
Of course, there was another way available from the get-go. He could have immediately adopted a wartime presidential posture and announced an emergency response to the threat from China. From January on, he could have deployed the government’s ultimate power to get American manufacturers to produce ventilators, masks, and tests on demand, gotten the military to set up field hospitals, and announced — and even obeyed — a partisan cease-fire because of the severity of the crisis.
So he will improvise and reverse himself again before this is over; he will turn vital government information into performative propaganda; he will undermine his own appointees; he will use the epidemic to punish enemies and reward friends; and he will be focused at all times on himself. As tens of thousands of Americans will literally gasp for air, their lungs sustained only by ventilators, he will grasp at petty slights.
“When a person coughs, the droplets are typically somewhere between 8,000–100,000 nanometers in diameter. Most of these droplets, especially the large ones, will quickly settle and end up on surfaces. The smaller droplets stay in the air longer — but are still large enough that a properly-fitted N95 mask could filter them out, since N95 masks are 99.5% effective against particles sized 750 nanometers or bigger.
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