Wednesday, March 15, 2023

COVID CHRONICLES. Chapter 3: Graphs, graphs, and more graphs

 
Read chapter 2 here


Read chapter 2 here


Wednesday, March 11 

The CRAZY that has been an integral part of the Trump administration from day one is now in full and terrifying display. No amount of Twitter bullying is going to make COVID-19 coronavirus tremble and run away in fear. Spending billions of dollars on a border wall will have zero impact on the spread of the disease. Wishing will not make it go away.   


 The Trump coronavirus disinformation campaign went into high gear as soon as Trump considered its impact on his chances for a second term in office. Wearing his red KEEP AMERICA GREAT baseball cap everywhere, it seems, he has been campaigning on a fulltime basis, hitching his political fortune to the stock market’s star. That game plans has not been going well, especially since the first cases of the coronavirus were diagnosed in the U.S. Back on February 26th when the tally reached 15, Trump blithely insisted, “And again, when you have 15 people – 15 within a couple of days is going to be down too close to zero – that’s a pretty good job we’ve done."  (There’s an echo of George W. Bush’s infamous ‘Heckuva job, Brownie” here.)



As you can see from the chart update above, wishing doesn’t make it so. Around the same time, Larry Kudlow, White House economic adviser and former television host (where he apparently learned how to spin tales), made similar comments about the coronavirus being ‘contained’, all in the service of Dear Leader. The line graph here is from a March 9th blog post of mine; the number of cases has more than tripled since then. That’s not a definition of containment in any dictionary. 



Then Mick Mulvaney, former ‘acting’ White House chief of staff (and a former U.S. House of Representatives Freedom Caucus Crazy, a collection of all white, mostly male far-right conservatives), dismissed the coronavirus as a ‘hoax’ while speaking at the annual CPAC nutburger conference last month. This word is so overused by Trump and his sycophants that it should now be a laugh line. 


The messaging has deteriorated since Trump designated Mannequin Mike Pence to head up the U.S. response to what is now a pandemic, putting him in control of all messaging from health officials. Muzzling them, in other words, just like Chinese leaders did when they ruthlessly censored the information that the public needed, allowing the virus to spread. The better plan would have been to muzzle Trump, preventing him from his usual practice of saying whatever he wants whenever and wherever he wants, a constant gusher of fiction flowing out of his mouth. 

Mission: Impossible. The GOP is already paying for being servile and obsequious to Trump. Joe Biden’s resurrection, thanks to the latest round of Democratic presidential primaries, is attributable to a growing key constituencies who fear the consequences of four more years of Trump. (At this point, you have to wonder, how can things get any worse.)

Read chapter 4 here

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