Dedicated to Andrew Cuomo
Here is something funny before it’s getting really serious.
We will see how history will pass judgment on Donald Trump when the Corona-nightmare is over. It is not over yet and the United States of America are hold hostage by a president with clinical narcissistic disease. This is not a rare phenomenon among managers. These people lack some qualities that are common to halfways mentally health humans: critical self-awareness and a conscience. These qualities slow you down and that’s why the mentally ills are so fast and convincing. They seem to be born managers.
Since march 18th I follow news from the USA closely. This is the moment when I got aware that the idea that Donald Trump would maybe go down in history as a strange error was not coming true in a fatal way for many americans.
The characters in this tragedy are:
The one who just didn’t get it for it was abstract and unvisible: Donald Trump.
Those who tried to explain it to him and to the states: Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, two scientists who have been working in the battle against HIV.
The one who paid for it the first: Andrew Cuomo, the governor of the State of New York.
So what is the president up to do in a pandemic? The Potus chooses the following steps:
To deny
We have fifteen cases in the US and soon it will be down to close to zero.
To try to buy a quick solution
He offers to acquire a german laboratory which is working on a vaccine.
To hope for a wonder
Hydroxychloroquine gets praised as a godsent wonderdrug. Dr Fauci disagrees in front oft he cameras.
Usually Dr. Fauci avoids this scenario trying to get the truth out without an open conflict with Trump.
To turn away the attention
To sugarcoat ugly data
By the end of march first predictions are given. The two doctors tell the US about possible outcomes. 2,2 million deaths if nothing was done and between 100.000 and 240,000 as a best-case scenario meaning that people will follow the guidelines and stay at home. So if it is only 100.000 we will have done a very good job, comments Trump. Listening to this I don’t know if he knows that he is talking about peoples lives and not about hamburgers.
To make excellent suggestions
For private life
The fear of the (others) death seems to be smaller than the fear of the economic disaster. So republicans have colorful suggestions: A you probably love your children and grandchildren please die to save the America we love fort them.
If I was a real American patriot I would need a little help now about handling this best. Do I have to take a cord and hang myself in the garage to shorten the drama or do I go outside, get infected and die alone in the woods for I don’t want to infect my beloved family? What do you prefer?
And for the economy
We can’t let the cure be worse than the disease. I DID understand the close-down leads to massive damage for all economies. I DID NOT understand where the debate about cure worse than disease leads to. How are Americans supposed to handle this suggestion? You reopen the country everybody gets infected how and where he wants and dies at home, at work or in his car? This would lead to a logistic issue. When the doctors are wright the herd immunity would be achieved rather quickly but what to do with the fast-rising number of dead bodies?
Howard Kurtz
By the end of march: Even he has got it
Around the 29th of march, Donald Trump is probably the last one to understand what the word pandemic means. Before this date his daily briefings are dominated by a lot of happy talk and the CEOs of companies who display what a great job their company is doing whilst the crisis. Before they step on the plateau they all say Thank you Mr. President and thank you for your leadership. This is the modern way to curtsey.
After the 29th of march the tone gets much more dire. Trump prepares America for up to 250000 deaths. He pictures two or three very painful weeks ahead.
What happened? Has he seen the countless dead bodies that have to be stored in refrigerated trucks for the morgues are full? Quote: There are so many of them. Have the two doctors gotten severe behind the scenes? To conflict with Trump openly is dangerous. He likes to fire people.
At this time the first 2000 humans have died in New York and the curve starts it’s typical trajectory. In Trumps words: It happens so fast. Right. The word is exponential.
In Germany, in times when in schools not everything had to be playful or was about colouring mandalas, many children learned the sense of this term with the tale of the rice grain and the chessboard.
There's a famous legend about the origin of chess that goes like this.
When the inventor of the game showed it to the emperor of India, the emperor was so impressed by the new game, that he said to the man
"Name your reward!"
The man responded,
"Oh emperor, my wishes are simple. I only wish for this. Give me one grain of rice for the first square of the chessboard, two grains for the next square, four for the next, eight for the next and so on for all 64 squares, with each square having double the number of grains as the square before."
The emperor agreed, amazed that the man had asked for such a small reward - or so he thought. After a week, his treasurer came back and informed him that the reward would add up to an astronomical sum, far greater than all the rice that could conceivably be produced in many many centuries!
There is a youtube-video out that calculates that the whole surface of Germany would be couvered with a meter high of rice in the end. Yes, it happenes fast. And in the end there are many.
In 2020 the internet has generated a corresponing expression. Something goes or went viral on the net. If I was the sandman I would tell the children that they can now experience where this expression comes from.
Meanwhile the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, arm presses with his curve. And he loses. He asks the federal government for ventilators and PPE and doesn’t get it. Nurses try to work in garbage bags, get infected and die.
There are no coordinated measures and the 50 „united“ states keep bidding against each other and the government. Cuomo says in his daily briefing that he feels like on eBay. He doesn’t fully confront the president, he needs material and Trump sends it where people are nice to him.
But a little underlying criticism and irony is often there. Subtle irony is not dangerous, Trump is not suspicious to understand the dry sense of humor oft he governor.
As Trump is angry that he doesn't use the ventilators immediately but puts them in a warehouse Cuomo lets him know: to provide and to store things we might need in a foreseeable future, that’s what we call to plan. A few days later: collecting data, analyze them and then taking decisions that’s what we call to govern. Asked by the media how he would advise Trump he answers: let your experts talk, you have very good people. That ist the polite way to tell him to shut up.
In the meantime the estimation for New York reaches 15.000 deaths.
New York Coronavirus Curve Flattening But UW Deaths Forecast Rises from 10K to Over 15K
A few days later for someone like me who doesn’t know the US and is watching from far away it gets clear why thinking people so careful with this president.
The commander of USS Theodore Roosevelt hit by COVID-19 has been relieved of duty, with the military stating he was “overwhelmed” by the crisis, after writing a letter pleading for infected sailors to be evacuated.
Starting with today, 4.4.2020, Trump tries a new strategy, he tries to sound like a member of the scientific community. He refers to the latest studies teaching him that even asymptomatic persons can spread the virus. Thank you for your leadership, Mister President. Everybody knew this for weeks.
The coronavirus‘ lesson to the inventor of alternative facts and a DIY-reality is: you don’t tell reality what it is. It tells you.
The first time I thought about leaving my country was for a strange lawyer in Berlin who claimed about fifteen years ago to introduce Sharia as a parallel law system in Germany. If Americans choose to reelect Trump in November I will need to evacuate from planet earth.
