We wish Donald Trump, the president of the United States, a speedy recovery from COVID-19. We wish the first lady a speedy recovery as well.
The same for Hope Hicks. And Secret Service agents now infected. And the very many people Trump interacted with the past few days as he crisscrossed the country campaigning, often in front of largely unmasked crowds. We hope Judge Amy Coney Barrett — Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, who recently stood near the president, unmasked — is COVID-negative. We are grateful Trump and Joe Biden did not shake hands or get too close to one another in their Tuesday debate.
This is a gravely serious situation for the most powerful nation on Earth, one struggling with a pandemic and a deep recession, with looming international threats, in the final legs of a sprint to a November election: infections in the very seat of power, potentially enabled by a superspreader-in-chief.
Trump is 74, among the age demographic typically most harmed by the disease; one study says 9% of septuagenarians who test positive for COVID die. The president’s doctors have repeatedly said he is the picture of health for a man of his years. If that is really true, we pray it pays dividends now as he battles a disease that has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Americans — 160,000 of them aged 65 and over.
We wonder whether Trump, who may have been an asymptomatic spreader for days, will rethink his stance on masks. In that debate, he belittled Biden’s tendency to wear face coverings, as he so often has, saying, “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from him and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.” Despite debate rules telling audience members to remain masked, the president’s entourage all removed their masks upon entering the venue.
In early February, Trump told Bob Woodward the virus was “deadly stuff,” “more deadly than even your strenuous flu,” before he went on to liken the virus to the flu, repeatedly telling them the flu was worse and COVID would magically melt away.
At a rally of largely unmasked acolytes last week, Trump said, “It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, if they have other problems, that’s what it really affects,” adding, “It affects virtually nobody.”
We fervently wish Trump’s case is quick, and that he does not end up among those he defined as “virtually nobody,” both for his sake and for the sake of our nation.
