This post has been edited, to include additional information from a New York Times story which had been cited.
Am hoping for the sea-change, via the election: that the country will have voted for calm, steady, strong, caring, wise leadership.
One hopes, in short, that the Trump ride will soon be over: that we'll be done with the President's endless divisiveness, his endless lies, his cruelties, the racial dog whistles, the conspiracy theories, the contempt, the self-pity, the self-glorification. And, of course, there have been his stunning failures regarding COVID--and what has become his disinterest in, dismissal of, minimizing of (and his preference for falsehoods about) the virus.
In a July 19th New York Times story, David Carney, an advisor to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, said this, of Mr. Trump and the pandemic: "The president got bored with it."
Some governors, the article reported, "have sought out partners in the administration other than the president, including Vice President Mike Pence, who, despite echoing Mr. Trump in public, is seen by [such governors] as far more attentive to the continuing disaster." Mr. Carney, the Times story said, "noted that [Governor] Abbott, a Republican, directs his [COVID-related] requests to Mr. Pence, with whom he speaks two to three times a week."
The President has said, many times, that the country is "rounding the corner," concerning the pandemic. On October 23rd, he added one word to the phrase: "We're rounding the corner beautifully." On that day, in the U.S., there were over 900 deaths, due to the virus. There were also more than 83,000 new COVID cases that day--a record, at the time, which has since been surpassed.
As of today, there have been more than 9 1/4 million COVID cases in the U.S.--and more than 231,000 deaths. A death count of a quarter of a million is in sight.
