History not only repeats itself—sometimes it does so with the same leader in a span of months when that person is as reckless, incompetent, and immoral as Donald Trump.
Months after Trump ignored more than a dozen red alerts from his intelligence agencies and other agencies that a deadly virus was headed for American shores, he's now ignoring dire warnings from top administration officials about reopening too soon.
In a May 1 phone call obtained by Politico, several officials with the departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security discussed the potentially catastrophic effects of a rushed reopening on the same day that Trump had allowed federal social distancing guidelines to expire without a peep.
“The numbers of deaths definitely will be high,” Daniel Jernigan, director of the Center for Disease Control’s influenza division, said of states that were relaxing distancing measures even though their case counts were high or still increasing.
Another official worried that if states all ended their distancing efforts in concert with the federal government, hospitals across the country could get overwhelmed much like some in New York City had been.
“If, at the end of stay-at-home orders, you were to lift everything and go back to normal business, and not have any community mitigation, you would expect to see in the second week in May we begin to increase again in ventilator uses,” the official said, according to Politico. “Which means cases increase, and by early June, we surpass the number of ventilators we currently have.”
In fact, over half the states have either begun to reopen or plan to soon. And even as Trump cheers those steps every chance he gets, he does seem to have internalized some level of risk for lost lives—a consequence he's perfectly willing to accept.
On Tuesday, when Trump was asked if Americans should accept the fact that reopening will likely cause more deaths, Trump responded, “You have to be warriors, we can’t keep our country closed down for years and we have to do something. Hopefully that won’t be the case, but it could very well be the case.”
Meh, it could very well be the case. But even as Trump cheers on America's warriors, everyone who comes in contact with him must first get a rapid results COVID-19 test. Just like old bone spurs at the height of Vietnam, Trump doesn't want to die, but he's perfectly fine if other people do as he pursues reelection.
Similarly, Trump talked up China's handling of the epidemic in January even as his intelligence officials were warning him about the burgeoning crisis. Several months later, Trump continues to ignore the inconvenient truths that are being relayed to him privately in his push to jumpstart the economy.
It's unconscionable and a complete dereliction of duty for Trump to keep foisting his precious economic restart on the American people without leveling with them about its potential consequences.