Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Doctors? Yeah right.

The Doctors are the ones who are marking every death as Covid, so their hospitals make more money and the President looks bad by pushing this fake virus!

 

You keep pushing this narrative that the only reason people are focusing on how fucked up this all has been is because we're looking for Trump to fail. The problem is, people don't even need to try: He puts it in our laps again and again and again. This would have more teeth if Trump actually tried to do the right thing. But for every "good" thing he's done, he does at least five that has set us back.

Before this crisis, Trump scaled back the CDC's ability to properly prepare for this. He failed to build up a pandemic response and threw out the plan of attack made by Obama and never replaced it so...
In February, when China was a shitshow, when Italy was starting to see major problems, when cruise ships became plague ships, Trump said it was just another Democrat hoax meant to discredit him and that this would magically disappear. He said it was under control and that we were close to a vaccine.
In March, he started touting the use of hydroxychloroquine even though scientists weren't sure it would work and eventually said it was useless. People died taking it. He repeatedly said masks were voluntary and wouldn't encourage their use. He promised we would open by Easter. When states started begging for help, he refused to give it. States started competing against themselves for PPE and ended up either spending way more than they needed to or got into deals with fake companies. He dragged his feet on getting tests available to states. He could have used the power of the federal government on both. He refused.
In April when people with guns started showing up to state capitols, he refused to denounce them and instead tweeted the states needed to be liberated. He continued to insist we were crushing the virus when his scientists were telling the public a different story. He suggested we inject disinfectants and shove lights up our asses as a treatment.
In May he started to insist we were over the hill when scientists stressed caution. He encouraged states reopen their economies ahead of the CDC's guidelines that they only do so once they've seen steady and prolonged declines in cases.
In June Trump had a stronger response to the anti-police protests than he ever did for the Coronavirus protests. He tweeted LAW AND ORDER so many damn times and insisted protesters get shot by police. If he had responded even to the state capitol protests with even just a little bit of this kind of passion, things might have been different. Trump's lackeys insisted there was not a second wave, that we were just extinguishing embers and everything would be under control. Meanwhile, Florida, Texas, California and Arizona—and much of the south—are reeling from a resurgence. Meanwhile, Europe is showing steady declines in the virus.
In July (so far) he's again insisted everything is fine, his lackeys are attacking Fauci because he dares to say we're fucking this up, he's insisting that despite steep rises in cases and hospitalizations that schools reopen. States are starting to shut down again, but he wants schools open.

Trump wasn't going to ever get this virus to disappear, but he had tools at his disposal and the platform to really emerge as a lighthouse in the storm and he continually shit on it. But please, tell me again how this is just the media and Trump haters who are looking for him to fail.

 

I don't get the blended, some in-person/some remotely thing. Will the virus take days off?

I feel like it's a way of saying "this really should be in-person, but we can't politically achieve that, so blend it!"

I understand there's some social distancing advantages. Is it really that significant?

 

Oh, good, let's check in on how a billionaire is weathering the pandemic.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

 

No. I think he inspires no confidence and, what's more, the institutions we need to run well right now (local governments, media, schools, universities, social services) tend be quite populated by people who (for generally good reasons) hate the guy.

In other words, if he left tomorrow, Obama walked back in, and all conditions were what they were, and Obama said "we gotta get back to school" the same people 48 hours before who were in mini-revolt would consider it. That's how toxic Trump is.

At this point Trump's better off using reverse psychology.

 

What a stupid hypothetical.

Obama wouldn't walk in and say "we gotta get back to school." He'd walk in, listen to learned people, assemble experts to formulate a plan, and then work hard to communicate that plan in a consistent manner.

The "we gotta get back to school," with zero attention or care for details or expertise is EXACTLY the reason why Trump is toxic.

 

The difference is that Obama, if he said, "We gotta get back," would follow that up with a plan of action. Financial support for districts that will need to pay more to substitutes; physical infrastructure improvements; transportation issues; etc. But the Trumpist/GOP mindset for decades has been to bleed libruhl, guvmint schools dry. Their klan won't stand for any "throwing money at the problem" even though teachers, for whom they seem to have taken a sudden liking, have been spending their own money on supplies the districts should be paying for since the 1950s.
Although the Trumpandemic is the proximate cause of this crisis, it had an easy target. Public education has been devalued in this country since Brown v. Board of Education sent out the dire warning signal that integration was coming.

 

Links to research or polls with a significant number of the population expressing desire "to see things go badly" so Trump can more easily be defeated?

 

Again, you're missing the point. Trump isn't saying what anyone else would say. Obama would say we need to listen to science and teachers and come up with a plan. Mitt Romney would say we need to listen to the advice of health officials. Bush Jr. would say we need to listen to our experts about how we can effectively get our economy going again. A competent leader would come out with a plan. Trump's plan is pretend this will all disappear. And that is the problem.

 

Not quite. He's toxic because, if the plan failed in some way, he wouldn't take any heat for it; on the contrary, he'd blame other people for it. He offers no cover.

CEOs are like that. I've read and listened to enough Steve Jobs interviews to know that, even when he claimed things were his fault, they weren't really, and the biggest reason why anything failed in his sphere was the absence of enough A players, like him.

And, to be clear, Apple had a lot more A players, relative to % and the projects on which said players worked, than we have trying to figure out, on any level, whether or not schools can get back.

As for the hypothetical, I'm not sure Obama would want schools to come back. I can't say. He may not. Point is, a lot of people don't want to hear Trump say anything. You, for example. Or lots of people on this board. I'm not saying I particularly do - hardly that - but, at this moment, Trump could say the sky is blue and 3/4ths of Twitter would yowl "fucker, it's red." If he says America's great, it's not; if he says it isn't, it is.

That's why he's gotta lose. Turns out, lying and shapeshifting your position all the time inspires no confidence.

 

I already explained what I meant by "driven." Driven as in taken to.