October 25, 2020: Trump Predicts that on November 4, COVID Will Go Away

 

10/25/20: The coronavirus continues to kick ass around the globe – except, mysteriously, in the U.S. – where Donald Trump swears that we’ve turned the corner on Gloom Street. Now we’re headed down Sunshine Avenue.

At a Trump rally, masks are only for bandits.

 

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Was being president making Trump measurably stupider?

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In reality, a place Trump rarely visits, Friday was the worst day since the pandemic began for new cases in the U.S.

 

Yet, there he was, at one of his rallies, predicting that on November 4, news coverage of the disease would go away if Biden won. The media was making up scary stories because they wanted to harm his campaign. If a plane carrying 500 people crashed Sunday, the media wouldn’t cover it, the president wailed. They’d only cover 500 deaths from COVID-19.

 

At that point you had to wonder. Was being president making Trump measurably stupider?

 

First, let’s see if all the U.S. airliners falling out of the sky were covered this year. Okay. There haven’t been any.

 

There was one death, when a man found his way onto a runway at an airport in Austin, Texas, and got hit by a Southwest Airlines jet that was landing. But that accident was covered.

 

R.I.P. wandering gentleman.

 

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NOW, IF 11 U.S. PLANES, each carrying 500 men, women, and children, went down this week? Definitely, that would be covered. That would make headlines in every newspaper and lead on every cable news program in the land. Even Fox News would cover the story. Sean Hannity would do all five shows for the week, blaming planes falling from the sky on liberals.

 

You don’t need x-ray vision to see through Trump’s attacks on the media. The problem for an alarming percentage of Trump fans is that they are profoundly uninformed and so won’t see anything the president doesn’t want them to see. A glance at the CDC website shows that in the past seven days, the U.S. has averaged 782 deaths from the virus daily.

 

If you are someone who believes Trump’s claim, and you think the media is the problem, I will talk slowly. 

Multiply.

 

You know, the “x” button on the calculator.

 

Multiply “782” by the number of days in the week. Seven. In case you forgot. 

The number you see pop up instantly: “5,474.” That is the number of people who have died in this country from COVID-19 in the past week.

 

The media hasn’t killed a single one; but Trump’s poor leadership has greatly increased the toll.

 

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IF YOU ARE READING REPORTS from Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and I’m sure you hate to miss even one, you know that he is predicting a bad winter ahead for catching the virus. “We think the key point here is that there’s a huge winter surge coming,” he warned in a press briefing this week. Having blown our chance to tamp down the spread, a big wave isn’t fully preventable, but “expanding mask use is one of the easy wins for the United States.”

 

Murray and other scientists who worked on a recent report believe universal mask use could save 130,000 lives.

 

Or: 260 planeloads of 500 passengers and crew each.

 

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IN OTHER NEWS, Vice President Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, a man who has scoffed at those who wore masks, has been infected. Two others who have been in close contact with Mr. Pence recently, have also contracted the disease, including a second member of his staff.

 

Mr. Pence has tested negative (so far) and will continue to travel the country spreading good Christian cheer, and maybe some virus.