THE "FAKE EPIDEMIC" INFECTS THE US PRESIDENT

There has been a lot to take in this week and at week’s end it has been capped by the announcement (tweeted by the US president himself) that both Donald Trump and his wife have COVID-19. The fact that Trump is the sort of president he is—dismissive of even his closest advisers and with a tendency to unilaterally change course on policies publicly espoused by his own cabinet secretaries—tends to paint a picture of an entire administration thrown into a state of rudderless frenzy with the possibility of internal power struggles erupting in the West Wing. Vice President Pence, who has pretty much limited himself to being yet another yes-man in the president’s entourage, inspires little if any confidence in the public or the markets and this only adds to the problem of bringing reassurance to Americans.

It is too early to tell what will happen—how the modern-day plague will affect Trump, since COVID-19 is an entirely unpredictable disease that affects different people in a variety of ways, ranging from hardly any symptoms at all to deathly illness requiring intensive care and assisted breathing. Nor can we count on learning what the president’s real state of health is as his illness progresses, since we have yet to find out why he made an emergency trip to the Walter Reed Army Hospital a few months back and which was dismissed as “routine”, despite taking place off-schedule and in a context that was anything but.

Like some of the authoritarian leaders that he admires—Kim Jong-Un, Xi Jiping and Vladimir Putin spring to mind—the president treats his health as a matter of national security and guards this information beyond any sort of normal procedure, having in the past, for example, written his own bill of health saying, essentially, that he was one of the most healthy men on earth and then having a doctor sign it, or prompting the surgeon general to say that he was even healthier than the doctor himself—a naval officer three decades Trump’s junior.

What we do know is that, despite what he says or pressures others to say, the president is not a particularly healthy specimen. The fact that he’s in his mid-seventies, clinically obese, subject to major stress factors and, by all accounts, has horrendous eating habits place him at high risk. We learned on Friday that he had been checked into Walter Reed “for a few days out of an abundance of caution” and were told that he was “working out of the presidential offices” there. But it seemed telling that his usual unbroken flow of Twitter garrulity was conspicuous by its absence, even as the White House issued a report saying that the president was “fatigued” but in good spirits, while the first lady was suffering from “a mild cough” and headache.

The problem with any reports coming from the White House is that this administration has completely undermined the trustworthiness of anything said in the president’s name. While most Americans might contend that “all politicians lie” the current occupant of the White House is arguably the most habitually and consistently prevaricating president in the history of the United States, lying even when there is no apparent reason to and often lying the exact opposite of what he has previously lied about as if the public were too stupid to notice. So the question is, why would the majority of Americans, or world leaders, for that matter, believe a single word that comes out of the White House regarding Trump’s state of health?

And this lack of trustworthiness is bound to raise a great deal of nervous uncertainty across the United States and around the globe. This is especially true considering how the Trump administration has flagrantly denied the science regarding COVID-19 (and regarding just about everything else from evolution to climate change), scoffing at the repeated pleas of even the internationally recognized physicians and medical researchers inside of his own administration, for people to socially distance and to wear masks any time they are in contact with other people, explaining that following these simple steps could reduce coronavirus deaths six-fold.

Trump, through his most fanatical aides, has bullied people within his own cadre, making it known that those who persist in wearing masks will be looked on with suspicion and disfavor. And this sort of anti-mask herd pressure has been particularly strong over the course of the US summer months, when the president was pushing his agenda for a rapid re-opening of the economy and public schools. The president has even suggested that the virus will just magically disappear from one day to another, when experts, including his own beleaguered men and women of science, say just the opposite. 

Largely following the president’s lead and his encouragement of individual rebellion against protocols and against business and public event shutdowns to halt the spread of the virus and to thus be able to get back to some reasonable facsimile of normalcy in the near future, the US now finds itself in first place as the country which has worst handled the pandemic, racking up over twenty percent of worldwide COVID-19 deaths, while boasting only four percent of the world’s population. It seemed almost ludicrous, then, when White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows—still not wearing a mask—told reporters this Friday, “This news was shocking—if this disease can reach the White House, it can reach anyone, anywhere, in any house.”

Really??? What, as if the White House or the president had some god-like immunity? What has the science been telling this administration since February? Why does it come as a shock that the president is ill when he has scorned every precaution not only in his administration but also by holding indoor political rallies at which both social-distancing and mask-wearing were discouraged, almost criminally exposing his most avid supporters to this modern-day plague? Once known as a germaphobe, Trump would appear to have bought his own image of god-like power and believed himself to be above catching a highly infectious disease, since his COVID promiscuity has been almost tantamount to licking the handrails aboard public transport.

What is incredible then, rather than a shock, considering that the president has tempted fate endangering himself, his campaign staff, and his most fanatical supporters, is that he hasn’t fallen ill sooner. And this, combined with the reportedly unprotected close contact maintained in advance of last Tuesday’s debate with former Vice-President Joe Biden between Trump and his closest aides and advisers means that it will almost be a miracle if more cases of coronavirus don’t emerge in the White House over the course of the coming days.

With the 2020 presidential election a month away, this couldn’t come at a worse time for Trump. Average recovery time for COVID-19 patients is usually counted in weeks rather than days, and even relatively young and healthy patients often suffer severe after-effects in terms of their oxygen absorption and energy levels. In terms of his most fanatical supporters, who have followed the leader in ridiculing masks, dubbing coronavirus a “fake epidemic” and disregarding the need for drastic public health measures, accepting their hero’s view of the science as a deep state plot to make Trump look bad, perhaps the president’s illness will provide a public service by convincing his followers that if even The Donald can get it, maybe it’s real after all.   

For the sake of the country’s political and economic stability—which has already been sufficiently shaken by the uncommonly divisive and impromptu nature of the Trump presidency—we can only wish the president and first lady a speedy recovery. But as part of his COVID experience, we should also hope that the president emerges sufficiently enlightened as to start taking seriously, for a change, the worst threat to public health since the Spanish flu pandemic of a hundred years ago. So far he has ignored and sought to minimize it, placing the entire country at risk through his words and actions. But perhaps having suffered the disease himself he will, finally and belatedly, discover a modicum of empathy for others and realize that it falls to him to be a true leader rather than a demagogue in seeking solutions that will ultimately bring the pandemic under control before it brings the United States to its knees.