In his own words, Donald Trump admitted to Bob Woodward that he knew about the extremely virulent nature of the SARS-Covid-2 virus. He knew it almost at the onset of the pandemic, with ample enough time to sound the alarm and enable the American public to take early precautions that would have prevented many of them from getting sick or dying.
In the first place, all that you need to know about the degree of virulence of this virus is its name--nothing more. The general public may have gotten used to its much shorter nickname "COVID-90" but just spelling out its full name tells you everything you need to know. Its acronym's prefix SARS stands for SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY SYNDROME.
If you have to combine two superlatives "severe" and "accute" at the risk of redundancy to stress how deadly this virus is, whoever thought up that name couldn't have done a better job. Anyone who tries to swap its self-announcing and auto-warning name with a prejudice-loaded spun-out name like China Virus--or worse, a playful pun on a yokel sport Kung Flu--is not being irreverent or plain funny. He is actively engaged in preventing awareness of the danger from even germinating in the public mind.
That is not passive concealment of a threat. That is being proactive in the wrong direction. In the beginning phases of the pandemic, there might already have existed a nominal measure of instinctive precaution in the public mind. What Donald Trump did was to convince them to let go of that last thread of basic self-preservation thought. By and large, he succeeded in doing that.
That is an amazing achievement given how America is such a tough society to "unprotect." You find coffee paper cups emblazoned in screaming red capital letters "CAUTION: LIQUID CONTENT IS EXTREMELY HOT AND MAY CAUSE SERIOUS BURN." They print the word "AMBULANCE" in optical reverse so that drivers can read the word right side up in their rear view mirrors and know to yield to lifesaving emergencies behind them. No words are minced on cigarette packaging telling what every smoker already knows. Even toys are labeled to tell specifically how old a tyke has to be first to go bouncing on a pogo stick. When it comes to protecting the health and well-being of people, America is totally unbeatable.
So why would its own President, the sum total of whose duty is to protect American lives, lead the charge in unprotecting 300 million Americans, mocking the sensible among them to the point short of yanking the protective masks off their faces? Donald Trump didn't even help put those masks on these faces, yet he's leaving no stone unturned in making sure the mask-wearer is made the pinata of public scorn and ridicule.
It's pointless to point out to Donald Trump that six million Americans have now been infected by COVID-90. That is the same number of Jews who were gassed to death by Adolf Hitler during the holocaust. That an average of 1,500 Americans are dying EVERYDAY due to the virus is a meaningless statistic to anyone who doesn't, wouldn't, couldnt and refuses to understand it.
Donald Trump is not in passive denial of the risk. He is in active advocacy of fatally accepting and embracing that risk. He is the total picture of the pundit who read somewhere that the fatality rate among people who jump off a tall building is 90%. That nine out of ten people who jumped off a tall building have all died. He grabs somebody and says, "Nine people jumped off that building yesterday and they all died. You're the tenth person to try it today You should totally jump, I guarantee you the statistics say you will live!"
NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:
Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON
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