A Dual Disaster

A Dual Disaster

We are living in extraordinary times. None of us has seen anything like it. We are living with a dual disaster, two disasters at once; and one of them is making the other one worse than it had to be. We all know about the first of them. It is the novel coronavirus pandemic. People all over the world are having their lives disrupted at best and ended at worst by a thing so tiny you can’t see it, a thing that while it has protein and either RNA or DNA is not really alive and is very hard to kill. We call it the novel (or new) coronavirus. That name isn’t very specific, for there are other kinds of coronaviruses as well. It produces a disease called COVID-19. COVID-19 symptoms mimic more common flu symptoms, but it is much deadlier than common flu. Most people who get it survive it, but many don’t. Older people, defined for this purpose as anyone over 60 (which otherwise really isn’t all that old anymore) and people with underlying health issues are more likely to die from it than others, although most of them survive it too. The novel coronavirus is however sufficiently deadly that governments all over the world are ordering people to stay home to slow the spread of the virus unless perhaps they work in a business considered “essential” like grocery stores, emergency services, medical services, pharmacies, etc. In my home state of Washington Governor Inslee has issued a stay at home order. There are lots of exceptions to it, but most of us now are supposed to leave home only to go to one of those essential businesses that can stay open. I haven’t been out of my house except for short walks in the neighborhood for five days, and I don’t expect to go anywhere for the foreseeable future. One of the things that makes this situation so stressful is that we don’t know what “the foreseeable future” is. Most of the stay at home orders are time limited but can be extended. Governor Inslee’s order is for two weeks only, but I’ll be dumbfounded if it isn’t continued far longer than that. Like I said, none of us has ever seen anything like it. We’re coping with it as best we can, learning a new reality that we hope and pray will not become a permanent reality.

That’s the first disaster. The second one has a personal name, Donald J. Trump. Trump is an absolute catastrophe as president in this time of national emergency. How do you know when Trump is lying? His lips are moving. He thinks his hurting hotel business is more important than our lives. At first he called the coronavirus crisis a hoax and a Democratic scheme to discredit him. Then he started taking it more seriously, but reports say he’s getting impatient with Dr. Fauci, his best medical adviser. Fauci tells the truth. He corrects Trump when Trump says something that is medically false, which Trump does all the time. Trump says there are effective drugs available to treat COVID-19 when there aren’t. He says’ there no shortage of respirators and personal protective equipment when there is. He has supposedly activated the Defense Production Act, but he hasn’t ordered any company to do anything. He’s not getting more respirators. He’s not getting more personal protective equipment for medical service providers. He fiddles while Rome burns. The man should be removed from office immediately as utterly incapable of fulfilling the duties of president and unwilling even to try to do so. The coronavirus pandemic would be a very difficult situation in any event, but Trump could have helped. He could have lessened the impact and helped the American people survive it. He didn’t. He’s made it worse. We already knew he was the worst president in modern American history. Now we see how destructive a really bad president can be. Our country and the world will survive both the coronavirus and Trump, but that doesn’t excuse Trump’s heartless incompetence. We’ll get through. I just hope Trump’s presidency doesn’t.