When the coronavirus jumped from bats to humans in a wet market in Wuhan, China, last year, a unique and deadly bug went viral. Viruses are respected and feared by epidemiologists for their ability to spread quickly and mindlessly through unprotected populations. As if to prove how vulnerable every single one of us is, President Trump and his wife tested positive last week.
On every level, the pandemic is a national tragedy, but the greatest heartbreak is that it never had to be this bad. We need and want our president to be healthy and robust. He might have remained so if he had followed the guidelines from his medical experts. They urged him to be more self-protective and more protective of the people around him. Week after week, month after month, epidemiologists and other scientists have been warning us and cajoling us and sometimes begging us to take basic precautions against Covid-19, which got a foothold in America in January and never quit.
The doctors told us, and they told the president, that easy, protective measures could be taken to mitigate the fierce death toll that was predicted. Trump chose to play down the warnings, to defy medical advice, to challenge common sense and common knowledge. All this time, leading up to his infection, he refused to wear a mask and keep a social distance from others. He insisted on bringing thousands of people together for political rallies, without requiring them to mask up. He held events at the White House, including his nomination for a second term, with no rules about wearing masks or staying six feet apart.
The week before last, at the Rose Garden nominating ceremony for the president’s choice for the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, the Trumps mingled with guests and White House staff, with the president leading the mask-free contingent. There was hugging and back-slapping. Within days, Senators Mike Lee and Thom Tillis; the Rev. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame University; former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and several other attendees announced that they had tested positive for Covid-19.
We will never know whether it was bravado or fear or defiance that motivated his choices, but Trump’s insistence on encouraging others to throw away their masks with their common sense has resulted in more deaths and more pain than we can bear.
Copyright 2020 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.