Dr. Apathy to the Rescue

     We're fucked.
     That's the long and the short of it, folks. There's no rudder on the ship of state. No one at the wheel. The elevator's in free fall with no Dead Man brake.
     We're on our own. This virus has caught us on our back foot, with our pants down despite there being a corrollation in coronavirus-related deaths in China and the degree to which the local medical infrastructures are overtaxed. And it looks more and more like if anyone will seriously address this global crisis and step up and be a hero, they will have to work against the government instead of with it.
     I wish I could be more optimistic about our chances during this coronavirus pandemic but I cannot and still be faithful to the truth.

     And it figures that the one guy who knows what he's talking about, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases and has advised six administrations, is also the guy Trump's trying to muzzle. It's become screamingly obvious by now that the closest thing this shit show of a government has to an actual coronavirus policy is, "Don't make the *president look like a fool."
      Even though he plainly doesn't need assistance in that area.
      At a recent congressional subcommittee hearing, Dr. Fauci advised members of Congress that the coronavirus has spread to 33 states. That's 66%, a full two thirds of our country, that now has professionally diagnosed cases of the COVID-19. He also warned Congress that, with numbers like that, and considering how frighteningly communicable coronavirus is, that "anything could happen."
     According to al Jazeera 12 hours ago, 95 countries, almost half the planet, have confirmed cases of coronavirus. Combined, 106,161 people have the virus, with nearly 3600 reported deaths. And it's obvious that number's shot up since that article went live.
     Communist China, Ground Zero for this new pandemic, while they predictably lied to their people about it, have nonetheless struggled and had succeeded somewhat in curtailing the spread of, if not containing, the virus (even if their quarantine facilities leave much to be desired). Another Asian country, South Korea, is among the world leaders in terms of combating the virus. They've opened drive-through centers where people can get tested in 10 minutes and get results within days.
     Taiwan, yet another Asian country, is also leading the charge against the disease in their testing and containment protocols, having learned from their SARS epidemic.

     And then... there's the United States.
     Despite this disease spreading across four of the five continents  and throughout Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Central America, the Middle East and Europe, Donald Trump thinks this is just an ordinary flu bug. He actually didn't know until recently that people could die of the flu, despite an estimated 50,000,000 dying from it during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, of which his own grandfather was one of the earliest victims. In fact, here's what self-described Dr. Trump has said about coronavirus:

It's an ordinary flu bug.

Even if you get sick, you can still go to work.

It'll disappear by spring.

I got good genes that were passed down to me by a smart uncle and I trust my guts.

Only 10 people have tested positive for it in the US. 

South Korea's not testing, they're "just taking samples."

    None of these things are even remotely true and are all contradicted by medical science and statistics, especially Trump inheriting knowledge from a smart uncle. He's also lied that anyone who wants to be tested can get it. A nurse in Northern California and another in Florida begs to disagree. In fact, there are so few tests that the CDC, incompetently run by another Trump lackey with no experience in confronting infectious diseases, has so few tests to distribute that they've made the testing criteria inhumanly stringent with self-quarantining being the course of "treatment."
     Far from only 10 cases of coronavirus being diagnosed in the US, nearly twice that number (almost all in King County in Washington state) have died, with the actual number of diagnosed cases in the US, according to Johns Hopkins' interactive map, being 537 as of this writing.
     Our government assures us there will be 4,000,000 testing kits available by next week, although others in the government have said that it will actually be closer to 1,000,000. And even if those 4,000,000 testing kits (if they work) are readily available and the testing criteria loosened, even those may prove to be a drop in the bucket as one expert warned the United States could be hit with 96,000,000 cases of coronavirus, according to a presentation that had to be leaked.
     As far as coronavirus is concerned, Trump has two priorities and two priorities only: How much it affects Wall Street and, his primary concern, how it will look on him during his re-election bid.
     This is the first truly serious emergency that Trump has ever faced during his alleged "presidency" and, according to his critics, he's performed according to expectations, which were low to nil. If there's any doubt regarding that last statement, I refer you to Trump's train wreck of a photo op-campaign whistle stop at the CDC in Atlanta in which he was publicly fellated by the CDC's Director, the aforementioned shockingly unqualified Dr. Robert Redfield.
     Almost immediately, Trump compared the perfection of the testing kits to his "perfect phone call" to Zelensky on July 25th and perfect transcript of it, called Washington Governor Jay Inslee "a snake", boasted about his ratings on his pack of lies on Fox "News" and the guy who said there were only 10 domestic cases of coronavirus had just signed an $8.3 billion supplemental spending bill to combat the disease.
     Trump asked for just $2.5 billion.
     And, as proof that a president's words have impact, a reporter asked people outside where a Trump rally was to be held in North Carolina what their thoughts were on the coronavirus outbreak. One woman actually said she believed the disease that has killed 3900  people worldwide doesn't exist. "I don't trust anything the Democrats say," she concluded.
     Matt Gaetz showed up for a vote last week wearing an outsized gas mask to ridicule the existence of the virus itself just before one of his own constituents died of it. Jailbird Jim Bakker is selling fake cures on his TV show even though he was ordered by the New York AG's office to stop doing so. HUD Secretary Ben Carson went on TV today and was asked by George Stephanopoulos if he would preview the action plan for the 3500 passengers of a Grand Princess ocean liner due to dock in Oakland tomorrow. Carson flatly said No. (21 people onboard have been diagnosed with coronavirus and the administration has no plans to quarantine the crew and passengers.).
     It seems no one with any influence is taking this seriously or is using the pandemic to suit their personal ends and the people with little to no influence are being silenced by this administration that is literally acting as if it wants to kill as many Americans as possible.
    These clips we've been seeing of Trump, forced by political exigency to address the pandemic, are precisely the kinds you see in the opening credits of zombie movies along with people in masks, people collapsing, the US president allaying fears with smooth lies and untruths just before society collapses in a writhing sea of rotting flesh.
     This could very well be the start of a Danny Boyle movie and, thanks to one Donald John Trump, descendant of a viral pandemic victim, we all have a ringside seat.