The president has been visibly out-of-step with the rest of the federal government messaging on this. One voice, no matter the position, doesn't evaporate what the hundreds of others have been saying.
What, and let someone else “hog” the attention and the spotlight? I’ve been reading about 45 since the 80s (most of the time, not by choice). “All eyes on me” seems to be far more important to the sitting president than “do the right thing”. I’m not saying “do <what he thinks is> the right thing” isn’t on the list, it’s just way down that list.
Because he judges how well he does his job on the performance of the stock market. He speaks to sooth the jitters of Wall Street.
It's not unique to the current administration. Most presidents have done this. It was even a recurring theme in the TV series West Wing.
I couldn’t imagine any of the presidents of the last decades to stand up and openly contradict his experts on something like this. Maybe behind the scenes but not in the open. He doesn’t seem to understand that he can only lose doing this.
Read my comment again. I didn't say that being contradictory was common. I said judging performance by the stock market is common.
The President has been accusing the "Bureaucrats" of not caring about average Americans, fear-mongering the virus, and claims the Deep State is after him.
The President's followers do NOT believe the government experts. As per the sitting President's plan. The sitting President has cultivated an "Us lay people vs Them bureaucrats" atmosphere.
Case in point: My own Mother believes that the Coronavirus is a Chinese conspiracy to attack the President. And nothing I say could sway her opinion. Unfortunately, the voters of the President support, and believe in him more than even family.
Because this "skill" has been honed from a lifetime of obsession with media, he's exceptionally good at bypassing anything resembling rational thought, and hitting emotional triggers, resulting in otherwise intelligent people engaging with Frankfurtian Bullshit even when they should know better (opponents and supporters alike).
Many people in this country still absolutely listen to him, and trust him more than the media when the messaging conflicts.
Sadly, in this case it puts the people who put the most faith in him at even more risk.
I've heard "just the flu bro" a bunch and people still operating business as usual in spite of large events being cancelled.
Other obstacles to perceiving it as a big deal:
- Not grasping that a fraction of a percent mortality can be a big deal. Numbers under one percent make it sound indistinguishable from flu, even if it's 10x as deadly as flu.
- Having AIDS and Ebola as your mental prototypes for dangerous infectious diseases and feeling relieved when you hear COVID-19 is nothing like either one.
We truly must be living in different universes.
> So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12370273563148697...
The top performing story on Facebook right now is a Fox News piece highlighting the President downplaying it:
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1237092136958545923
Basically the entire GOP leadership structure has decided that people are only worrying as much as they are to damage Trump politically. Essentially the only top level official giving the straight story is Dr. Fauci and he's immediately contradicted by others in the cabinet who seemed to be completely preoccupied with the stock market and the election.
I'm in WA state, where until last week testing wasn't being conducted on anyone that wasn't traveling from a level 3 country or in contact with a known infected person, EVEN IF THE WOULD-BE TESTEE WAS SHOWING SYMPTOMS. We keep talking about the count of infected (and relying on it to decide who to test) but it's unarguably low if we've not been testing, particularly as we apparently have introductions via Europe as well as China, plus community transmission.
Trump just a few days ago said that everyone who wants to be tested can get tested. According to the doctor's offices, that's still false.
Trump himself has a NUMBER of downplaying statements. So many I won't bother to list them. But lots of statements along the lines of "just the flu", among others.
> there's been an overabundance of information and caution
Hard to judge "overabundance" (see other article about how everything with a pandemic is premature until it is too late)
Today's headlines: "The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials."
Note this prevents any expert who doesn't have clearance from attending.
A few days ago: "US health officials wanted to recommend that elderly Americans avoid flying amid the coronavirus crisis. The White House overruled them"
The president tweeted this 2 days ago [1]:
> So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!
This is what the Surgeon General said on Sunday [2]:
> "If we had massive numbers of cases we would be seeing more deaths. And so we actually feel pretty good that some parts of the country have contained it just like when you look at the flu," Adams said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday. "When we look at the flu tracker, some parts of the country are having much more severe flu seasons. Some are having very mild flu seasons. The same thing for coronavirus."
[0] https://www.c-span.org/video/?469747-1/president-trump-annou...
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/stocks-dive-coronavirus-spre...
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/stocks-dive-coronavirus-spre...