For some time, it is clear, President Trump has been pretty
much done with COVID.
On June 17th, he said that the coronavirus was "dying
out."
Nine days before, on June 8th, he said: "We may have
some embers or some ashes, or we may have some flames coming, but we'll put
them out. We'll stomp them out. We understand this now. We'll stomp them out
and we'll stomp them out very, very powerfully."
On July 2nd--his impersonal locution, I think, was
interesting; it was suggestive, perhaps, of his own remove from the issue--he
said: "The crisis is being handled."
Two days later, during a July 4th address, he sought to
minimize the virus's severity. He said
that "we have tested over 40 million people. By so doing, we show cases,
99% of which are totally harmless."
My previous post was written June 22nd. At that time, more
than 120,000 Americans had died as a result of the virus.
As of today--three weeks later--there
have been approximately 15,000 additional American deaths.
