Coming from Trump, declarations of acting with "compassion and love" have a diseased feel to them

According to the CDC, various varieties of the flu have infected anywhere from 9 to 49 million people a year in the U.S. since 2010. The vast majority of cases, as occurs with the common cold, resolve on their own. Deaths are relatively rare, occurring mainly with the very young or very old who have problems with weakened immune systems. Although the current coronavirus isn’t much different in its effects than other flu-related illnesses, the fact that it is “new” and there is currently no vaccine specifically against it, efforts to control its spread until a vaccine is developed have been treated with more urgency—better safer than sorrier. 

Some of the actions taken at first glance seem to be overdone, like the NBA, NHL and the NCAA suspending their seasons—something which did not stop the MLB season during the swine flu epidemic of 2009. Still, since the coronavirus has that “exotic” nature of being an “unknown,” acting as if it isn’t really all that great a threat without all the facts isn’t a very sound idea. For some people, “safe than sorry” isn’t really much of a nuisance, especially for office workers for whom being sent home to work and getting paid is more like an opportunity to take a semi-vacation; those who work hourly wages doing real work, of course, would just have to take an unpaid “vacation.”

One of those people who seems to be taking a paid vacation into his fourth year is Donald Trump, who doesn’t seem to do much thinking on his own, especially with Stephen Miller and William Barr basically running the country while others feed him “goodies” like how to cut more taxes for himself—and what is “good” for him is “good” for “everybody.” And then there was his televised speech in which he put on his beanie cap (the kind with the little "propeller") and played “commander-in-chief” against the coronavirus "invasion."

First, Trump talked “about our nation’s unprecedented response to the coronavirus outbreak that started in China and is now spreading throughout the world.” Of course, when Trump says “our” he means “his,” and naturally he has to make sure that people know it is someone other than himself to “blame.” Trump obviously wasn’t “around” during the 1976 or 2009 swine flu epidemics, so his point of reference is a bit skewed. And frankly, with the science-challenged Mike Pence “in charge,” the only “unprecedented” value that can be applied to the Trump administration’s “response” is how slow-to-take-seriously and ill-conceived it is.

Trump continued reading off the teleprompter in a tone that suggested that he was more concerned about looking like an idiot who couldn’t read or pronounce “hard” words correctly: “This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history. I am confident that by counting and continuing to take these tough measures, we will significantly reduce the threat to our citizens and we will ultimately and expeditiously defeat this virus.” 

Uh, what exactly are those “aggressive” and “comprehensive” efforts to confront this “foreign” invasion?” “Our team is the best anywhere in the world. At the very start of the outbreak, we instituted sweeping travel restrictions on China and put in place the first federally mandated quarantine in over 50 years. We declared a public health emergency and issued the highest level of travel warning on other countries as the virus spread its horrible infection.”

This is what Trump said a week ago after the WHO estimated that 3.4 percent infected by the virus might die:

“Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this,” Trump said, going on to peg the real figure as “way under 1 percent. Because a lot people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people. So you can't put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and — or virus. So you just can't do that. So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work but they get better.”

It isn’t that Trump may or may not be “wrong,” it is just that when he doesn't take things seriously before, his subsequent “responses" tend to be  “unprecedented” only in their belated 180 degree turns. Trump had also claimed that "within a couple of days (the virus cases) is going to be down to close to zero. That's a pretty good job we've done."  Obviously a very fact-challenged assumption, and even if it such a thing did happen, it would have nothing to do with anything Trump did. He also claimed that "There's a theory that, in April, when it gets warm — historically, that has been able to kill the virus." Well, everyone knows that summer colds are the “worst” ones, and why should that be any different that with this? After all, the 2009 swine flu occurred during “warm weather” months. Trump also has claimed that the “pandemic” was a Democratic “hoax” and "fake media" creation--which of course now he is taking "unprecedented" measures against, although we're not sure if it is the virus or Trump's perceived "enemies" who are actually under attack.

Trump went on in his speech to announce a 30-day ban on travel from the EU—but not the UK, where many are criticizing the Boris Johnson government for taking things too “calmly.” Trump went on to say that he was halting all trade and cargo from the EU, which of course is the kind of thing to send the markets spirally downward, and it’s the kind of xenophobic stupidity we can expect from Trump’s principle speechwriter, Stephen Miller. The administration was subsequently forced to put out a message stating that Trump only meant “people.” But as The Guardian noted, it seems that Trump and company only really see the virus issue as an excuse to expand in its “crudely racist worldview that divides the globe into a clean, acceptable Anglosphere set against a tainted, diseased ‘abroad’”—unless, of course, you come from India with H-1B visas in hand, where many people speak English from back in the British colonial period. 

Trump went on to make claims of actions that are unlikely to occur, waiving co-payments for treatments and expanding coverage, making vaccines developed “quicker” by cutting “red-tape,” and various financial gimmicks that are more a right-wing “wish list” than what can actually happen. Probably the one that can actually be more damaging that the virus itself is “saving” $200 billion on payroll taxes for the remainder of the year; payroll taxes fund Social Security and Medicare—social safety net programs that Trump and the Republicans have been trying to destroy for ages, and this seems to be a backdoor way to do this. 

Trump’s ended by claiming that “Our future remains brighter than anyone can imagine. Acting with compassion and love, we will heal the sick, care for those in need, help our fellow citizens and emerge from this challenge stronger and more unified than ever before.” In effect, this speech was what many are saying it was: a self-congratulating, xenophobic campaign speech that says less than what the words actually say. With Trump in office, this country is more divided than it ever has been, and some “fellow citizens” seem to be more “equal” than others in Trump’s world. Coming from Trump, the declaration “acting with compassion and love” has a distinctly clammy feel to it; we know he doesn’t really mean it outside his own immediate family, just words someone wrote on a piece of paper that he was told would him would sound “good” to some gullible listeners. We are learning that women and children seeking asylum in this country are being flown directly to violence-prone Guatemala to seek “asylum” there; is this “acting with compassion and love”? Only a person who lacks “compassion and love” believes that.