It is possible, given a president's necessary interactions with the public, staff and others seeking his ear (not to mention a reelection campaign), that Donald Trump could have taken precautions and still fallen sick with COVID-19. But it's more likely he got it because he refused to take any precautions. And that he infected other staffers and associates who were around him. On the plane with him to the Cleveland debate. At the garden reception where he welcomed his Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.
Not only has Trump not regularly worn masks, he belittles those who do, as he did with Joe Biden during the first debate. And according to White House reporters, he has made it clear to staff that he didn't want them wearing masks around him since he chose not to. Those in the debate audience on his side rejected them too.
Even late Friday morning, after Trump's diagnosis, a CNN reporter reported being surprised that none of the White House staffers he saw in the building were masked.
This mirrors the minimizing of COVID-19 Trump has done with the nation. He has deemed it less serious than the flu, or on its way out, or treatable with quack remedies. He has contradicted members of the White House COVID-19 task force who didn't share his sunny outlook.
His attitude has been adopted by governors of Trump's Republican Party, such as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. Like him, she has shunned mandates that could make citizens safer. She at least had the option of requiring tougher measures but refused to take it. And she won't give localities or school districts the option to set their own safety mandates.
Now Trump is paying a personal price that we hope won't be nearly as steep as the one more than 207,000 people in this country have paid _ their lives. And many Americans must face the risk of getting it without health coverage, flexible work options, living situations or access to testing and protective equipment.
His sickness put lots of Americans at risk, causing doctors to dole out scare drugs given only on compassionate grounds or to high officials. It had analysts exploring the potential impact on national security, including possible moves by Iran and North Korea. The U.S. military was on heightened alert. Many people's lives were thrown into chaos, including those of the people who had to drive him around while he was still hospitalized, unmasked, so he could wave to people. They later had to quarantine for 14 days. He put at risk top military leaders, and people in the White House around him when he swept back in unmasked. And then he tweeted that people shouldn't fear COVID.
His campaign spokeswoman Erin Perrine even had the audacity to say that Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent in the presidential race, lacked firsthand experience of having had the coronavirus.
I wish the president and Melania Trump full recoveries, but I can't suppress some feelings of anger. At least some of the sickness and loss of life America has seen can be attributed to the president's cavalier attitude and outright mishandling of the pandemic. I can't help thinking about a woman named Lauren Blumberg who contacted me last month about losing her mother to COVID-19, on Aug. 25. Her mother, Carole Blumberg, was in her late 80s and had lived in an assisted living center in West Des Moines, Iowa. Lauren expressed anger over what she saw as a lack of respect for elderly people and "forgotten members of society with no one to advocate for them."
"I want to stand up for my mother and the countless other senior citizens who cannot," she wrote me. "I want to know why there is not a uniform system of COVID-19 testing and policies implemented for residents in nursing homes, long-term care and assisted living facilities." She couldn't understand why "the Big Ten Conference can easily test its coaches and players, but our nation's elderly continually fall through the cracks."
"There was nothing exceptional about Mom," she wrote. "She was not famous or well known. What is exceptional is she was a (my) mother, a grandmother and sister. Now she is a statistic. A forgotten member of our society that has passed away from a virus that has changed the landscape of our world."
Eloquently put; you can feel her anger.
Isn't it ironic that this president, who hasn't wanted to talk about COVID-19 since its earliest days, has unwittingly now made it the center of everyone else's conversation? We can only hope everyone else takes it more seriously than he apparently does, even now.
