MORE PROOF THAT THE PANDEMIC IS NOT HEADED DOWN

…The Memorial Day contrast of a president & company that refuses to wear a mask

Trump fired off tweets, berating “The Fake & Totally Corrupt News” for reporting on his Memorial weekend golf outings.

This Memorial Day was like no other in the United States.  While some Americans sheltered-in-place, others flocked to the beaches.  All the while, the nation’s political leaders honored the generations of war dead.  But that was also a stark contrast.  As the former Vice President Joe Biden, and his wife Jill were laying a wreath, and both were wearing masks.  President Trump, Vice President Pence and Defense Secretary Mark Asper were going about their honoring duties, all without masks.

(Trump says he “looks ridiculous in a mask”.  The truth is, he “looks ridiculous not wearing a mask”, when he should be making an example to the rest of the nation.)

These disparate approaches played out, as the country’s reported death toll from the Covid-19 deaths edged closer to 100,000.

Trump took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery and later gave remarks at Fort McHenry in Baltimore to honor those who have given their lives in wars past and those fighting today on the front lines of the pandemic.

“As one nation we mourn alongside every single family who has lost loved ones, including the families of our great veterans,” Trump said. “Together we will vanquish the virus and America will rise from this crisis to new and even greater heights.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill visited the War Memorial Plaza in New Castle, Delaware, on Memorial Day. 

Biden had emerged from his home for the first time since mid-March as he was following the states rules to “shelter-at-home”.  He properly emerged for laying a wreath at the Delaware Memorial Bridge Veterans Memorial Park.  “Never forget the sacrifices that these men and women made,” said Biden, of course, Trump’s presumptive rival in November. “Never, ever, forget”, Biden added.

These somber gestures felt so much more removed than usual from the usual summer kickoff of crowds heading to beaches and holiday resorts.  Americans this year sought to loosen the shackles of all the public health lock-downs aimed at preventing the pandemic from claiming even more lives.  We will soon see if this latest move is going to send spikes in the coronavirus pandemic.

Across the country, a majority of states relaxed restrictions ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, prompting a new wave of challenges over public gatherings and sparking fresh warnings from state officials fearing new instances of “community virus spread”.

In Ocean City, Md., videos showed visitors filling the boardwalk, and only some were wearing masks.  From Newport Beach, Calif., to the Tampa area along Florida’s Gulf Coast, crowds were sometimes dense.  In those latter cases, it forced those authorities to close jammed parking lots.

In midtown Houston on Saturday, videos showed more than 100 party-goers packed into a swimming pool area at a club.  They were ignoring social distancing orders to maintain space, or to wear masks a day after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) eased some restrictions on bars and restaurants.

Another weekend video showed a crammed pool at Lake of the Ozarks, prompting Randall Williams, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services Director, to warn on Monday that such behavior could have “long-lasting and tragic results”.

Flags flew at half-staff at the White House and other public buildings to honor the Americans who have died of Covid-19.  But the number is now eclipsing the combined total of US deaths from wars in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan.  And as Dr. Anthony Fauci puts it bluntly:  “The coronavirus deaths are being undercounted”.

At Arlington Cemetery, Trump added a large wreath of red, white and lavender flowers before the Tomb of the Unknowns, he then saluted. (For a man that avoided Vietnam due to a false claim of “bone spurs”, he should not be saluting.) 

In fact, this cemetery had been closed to the public for months because of the pandemic.

At Fort McHenry, Trump likened the service of American soldiers who repelled a British assault during the War of 1812 to the “tens of thousands of service members and national guardsmen” who are caring for patients and delivering supplies during the pandemic.

Again, the president wore no mask, a deliberate defiance of guidance from his own public health officials, as he seeks to portray a picture of a country returning to normal despite the ravages of the pandemic.  More than 38 million Americans are out of work, and Trump himself has said the economic recovery likely will not start happening until after November.

Before heading to Arlington in the morning, as usual, Trump fired off some tweets, berating “The Fake & Totally Corrupt News” for reporting on his weekend golf outings.  This was despite the mounting death toll. He defended his recreation as getting “a little exercise” and as “my first golf in almost...3 months.”

Most publications have said that, what should have been a weekend dedicated to the nation’s war dead, it was instead filled with the president’s tweets of insults and his baseless claims of “fake news” while playing golf.  It is well known that Trump played more golf in his first year than President Obama did in 8 years.  And Trump had loudly complained about Obama’s amount of playing golf, while he had said he would be too busy to play golf if he was elected…..RIGHT!

Then, Trump just had to take a swipe at former president Barack Obama, while saying the media, which he attacked as “sick” and “deranged,” do not mention “all the time Obama spent on the golf course.”  Back in 2014, Trump had the gaul to criticized Obama for playing golf when there were two confirmed cases of Ebola in the United States.  Yes, he actually criticized Obama, while Trump has almost 100,000 dead American’s under his watch….amazing.

In an even earlier tweet Monday morning, Trump threatened to move the Republican National Convention from Charlotte, because North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, is “still in shutdown mode & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed ... ..full attendance in the Arena.”

Trump had earlier suggested that the convention, scheduled for Aug. 24-27, could be moved to Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), would love having the convention in Florida, and he has begun reopening much of that state.

The president continues to push the states to relax restrictions.  On Friday, he ordered states to allow churches to reopen “right away”.  (The US president does not have the authority to order any state's churches to do this.)  And Trump has been met with words of caution from most public health officials.

“With the country starting to open up this holiday weekend, I again remind everyone that the coronavirus is not yet contained”.  This was from Trump’s, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, Stephen Hahn, on Twitter on Sunday. “It is up to every individual to protect themselves and their community. Social distancing, hand washing and wearing masks protect us all.”

In New York, the state hit hardest by the coronavirus, Memorial Day was marked with car convoys and small ceremonies instead of big parades. In a year that marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, veterans wore masks and saluted while standing at socially distanced intervals. At the floating Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), wearing a mask, honored both veterans and essential workers on an occasion he called “especially poignant and powerful.”

Even before the busy holiday weekend, some experts were warning of a second wave of coronavirus infections across the Midwest and South.  A new study estimates the virus, which has infected at least 1.6 million people in the United States, may still be spreading at epidemic rates in 24 states.

Democratic leaders in Congress said the national coronavirus testing strategy released Sunday by the Trump administration is “disappointing” and once again it offloads wide-scale testing responsibility to the states.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, issued a joint statement Monday saying the Trump administration still lacks a “serious plan” for scaling up testing to mitigate spread and facilitate the reopening of the economy.

“This disappointing report confirms that President Trump’s national testing strategy is to deny the truth that there aren’t enough tests and supplies.  It rejects responsibility and dumps the burden onto the states,” the leaders wrote.

In the report, federal health officials pledged to acquire 100 million swabs and 100 million tubes of what’s known as viral transport media.  These are the swabs & chemicals used to preserve test specimens and to distribute them to states to conduct their own testing.  States would be tasked with finding additional testing materials if their needs outstrip what federal health officials supply.

We have a long way to go before this pandemic is on the way down. 

And there is a good chance that there will be Covid-19 spikes which will stop the re-opening of many of the nation’s states.

Copyright G. Ater 2020