Stupidity Is Contagious

COVID-19 has become like an annoying pop star whose songs always make you cringe when you hear them; you avoid it as much as you can and hope it goes away but you know you're going to have to deal with it for a long time.

In that spirit, The Centers for Disease Control recently completed a series of guidelines for how individuals and businesses should adapt to COVID-19, especially when it comes to reopening stores and offices.  I say "completed" because the White House has refused to issue them, calling them too excessive and intrusive, even though the guidelines (which still got out, albeit unofficially) could give Trump what he wants - an improving economy by November.

Meanwhile, the White House has been ignoring the very recommendations the COVID-19 task force has been advocating for the past nine weeks - except for testing, which has been going regularly in the West Wing even as Trump says it's not necessary (and he also thinks we won't need a vaccine either).  Then Trump's valet tested positive for the virus, then Mike Pence's press secretary Katie Miller (wife of xenophobic Trump adviser Stephen Miller) also tested positive, and now the CDC's own director, Dr. Robert Redfield, may have been exposed to the virus and is, therefore, self-quarantining. 

And so this guy.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been at the forefront of fighting the COVID-19 crisis and has been giving the soundest, most professional advice in how to deal with it, has been following his own advice, but thanks to numerous White House staffers who aren't following it (lest they get Trump upset), he's now having to quarantine himself to ensure that he doesn't possibly give the virus to anyone else. Though blocked from testifying before a committee of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, he is still going to testify by virtual hookup before the Republican-dominated Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.  (Its chair, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, will be leading the committee from home - he too is under self-quarantine after being exposed to a staffer with COVID-19.)  Though outnumbered, Democrats in the committee will still be able to ask Dr. Fauci relevant questions.  Such as, "What the hell is going on?"

The plot is beginning to unravel, but if the American people buy all of Trump's bunk that the economy will recover and that he's the best person suited to handle our way through the virus and its aftermath, this country is finished. There won't even be an aftermath.  Trusting Trump to guide us to the other side of this pandemic is like having the confidence to cross the Pacific in a plastic laundry basket.