Trump Declares Unconditional Surrender to Coronavirus.
Contagion Accepts U.S. Concession of Defeat
White House: “We’re not going to control the pandemic”
Coming as it did during the final week of the election campaign, the announcement that President Trump’s government had surrendered completely to coronavirus did not receive the attention it deserved. But a top White House official, confirming Mr. Trump’s longstanding policy and consistent messaging on the pandemic, acknowledged that the government had now formally agreed to do nothing to slow or oppose a coronavirus victory.
“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” the president’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, announced at the end of October on CNN. The explicit acceptance of defeat was probably not widely reported because it merely reflected the de facto position of the Trump administration since the pandemic first struck.
Coronavirus reported graciously accepted Mr. Trump’s capitulation, observing that “We’ve always known his heart was not in fighting us. Yes, many more will die, but as President Trump so wisely observed previously, ‘It is what it is.’”
In the last week, Americans suffered over one million new cases, 70,000 hospitalizations and 7,800 dead, and the triumphant virus is preparing itself to run rampant over the United States for at least the final two months of the Trump presidency. Eleven million Americans so far have suffered the contagion and upwards of 245,000 are dead of Covid-19.
The president’s decision to do nothing about the current, nation-wide surge of infections, hospitalizations and deaths confirms that his decision to surrender is irrevocable, and that Mr. Trump means to observe the surrender terms come what may.
Mr. Trump is thought to have agreed to unconditional surrender because he is “tired” of “covid, covid, covid.” He has not attended meetings of the federal government’s coronavirus task force for several months and — other than ruling out lockdowns — Mr. Trump has gone silent on what others consider a terrifying explosion of coronavirus. Having surrendered, the president now needs to do nothing about the pandemic.
Coronavirus expressed measured sympathy for the president’s position. “Since I never get tired of spreading and infecting people,” the contagion observed, “I don’t understand what Mr. Trump meant about people being ‘tired’ of me. But since other people being tired of me doesn’t slow me down, it makes no difference and I don’t consider it a violation of the surrender terms.”
The novel coronavirus was reportedly undaunted by the possibility that new leadership might cause the United States to reject the surrender agreement. “By next year,” the disease observed, “millions more people will likely be hosting me in their bodies, and even if, as projected, 200,000 more people do die of me by then, I still will be able to infect others before they’re gone. Especially since so many are still doing nothing to avoid me.”
President-Elect Biden, many governors and horrified public health authorities have called for action, but Mr. Trump is sticking with his submission to covid. Consistent with the surrender terms, his government has barred the federal coronavirus task force from communicating or coordinating with President-Elect Biden’s transition team, and the president’s leading covid advisor has called on the president’s supporters to “rise up” against state governors like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan who are defying the surrender to covid.
Governor Whitmer — who had previously been the subject of a kidnapping plot and attempted insurrection because of her steps to contain the pandemic— had recently announced new shutdown orders. In a joint statement, presidential advisor Scott Atlas and the lethal infection condemned Whitmer’s actions as completely inconsistent with the chief executive’s capitulation. “This is a gross interference with our strategy of letting the virus run its course,” Dr. Atlas reportedly stated, “which has been going so well.” Michigan is now averaging over 6,600 new cases a day, five times the daily total in early October.
Although the president touted the success of a promising new vaccine (one that he and his government had nothing to do with), consistent with his capitulation to covid the federal government is taking essentially none of the steps needed for a massive vaccination program to be rolled out next year.
Some observers dispute the characterization of the president’s conduct as a “surrender,” arguing that the term might imply there was an earlier time when the president was engaged in a fight with the coronavirus. In reality, Mr. Trump actively promoted the spread of the disease throughout by opposing or undermining prescribed lockdowns, social distancing and the use of masks, and by persuading a majority of his followers to take no precautions against catching or spreading coronavirus.
These observers see Trump as more of a Quisling than a Petain. Vidkun Quisling was a World War II Norwegian traitor who actively assisted the Nazis in their conquest and occupation of Norway; Marshall Petain was a French general who — after the Germans overran and subdued France in 1940 — made peace with the occupying Nazis and administered part of France under their direction. Others see the distinction as overly fine; one way or another Donald Trump has been a valued ally and good friend of the lethal virus.
The rampaging disease is taking a heavy toll in red states whose voters considered covid a hoax or the risks exaggerated. But those not personally stricken are likely to continue to ignore the danger and are expected to cheerfully adhere to the surrender terms. They are probably unaware that a giant surge of pandemic cases and deaths is now unfolding, since their primary media source, Fox News, still declines to report on the record numbers of new coronavirus cases.
Since resistance to the pandemic continues in various states, and even some Republican governors have been disturbed by the prospect of covid overwhelming their states’ hospital systems, some Americans retain hope that the Trumpian surrender might yet be reversed and the pandemic brought under control in 2021. But with dedicated Trump supporters comprising upwards of one third of the population and serving as willing disease vectors, the virus’s conquest will be difficult to reverse, even after the new Biden government tries to upend the Trump capitulation.
