COVID: The Trumpspiracy that refuses to fade
Trump supporters have short memories, but the virus is here to stay.
Outrage politics is good for temporarily firing up segments of a voting base, and it’s good for entertainers who make a living doing TV-remote clickbait appearances and interviews. But there’s a big problem with that approach — the fuse burns hot and fast, and then it fizzles.
For Trump, his allies, his defenders, and his fanbase there is one looming and uncomfortable challenge. SARS-Cov-2 and its variants are here to stay.
Outrage politics
Every political campaign indulges to some extent in outrageous claims and accusations. Donald Trump made outrage into an art form.
But every time Trump stoked a new fire, it fizzled out within months, sometimes even in weeks. He’s like a kid with firecrackers — he tosses them out there regardless of who might get hurt, and when the show is over he goes looking for more.
During his campaign alone, he presented us with:
· Birtherism
· Pizzagate
· Seth Rich
· Dancing Muslims
· Benghazi II
· Mexican Rapists
· Ted Cruz’ father as JFK Assassin
During his four-year tenure as president of the United States, his preposterous claims, grievances, personal attacks and conspiracies are too numerous to count. Some of the highlights include caravans, inauguration size, numerous BLM/Antifa fantasies, Biden in Ukraine, and so on.
Ironically, in 2016 he claimed that millions of people voted illegally. But then he won, and of course he and his followers immediately forgot all about it.
Among the Trump-fluenced, when Trump forgets the problem, the outrage goes away. But what happens when Trump wants to forget the problem, wave it away … and it won’t leave? Covid is already the herpes of Trump’s existence, both personally and politically.
Covid is here to stay — and it’s getting worse
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released revised Covid guidance based on new and updated data, urging people to get vaccinated and wear masks indoors, at least in areas suffering high transmission rates.
Brett Giroir, who was Trump’s coronavirus testing official, said in a Fox News interview, that side effects of the vaccine “pale in comparison to what you will get if you get the Covid infection,” adding that the highly contagious Delta variant poses an even greater risk. “If you have not been vaccinated, and you have not had Covid before, you will get the Delta variant,” Giroir argued. “This is so infectious that you will get it.”
In addition, new data shows that among people infected with the Delta variant, vaccinated people may carry the same amount of virus, known as the “viral load,” as unvaccinated people, creating a high risk of transmission. By July, 83 percent of Covid cases nationwide are now Delta.
The MAGA variant
It isn’t really about Trump anymore — he’s in the rear view mirror. It’s about Trumpfluence, or as I like to call it, the “Trumpflu”. Trump wagon Republicans beat the anti-vax-anti-max drums so hard and so long that they’ve created a major problem for themselves.
Various Republican leaders blocked businesses, colleges and non-profits from requiring vaccinations. In Arkansas, Governor Asa Hutchinson signed a bill banning vaccine requirements. Some states have banned inducement and reward programs.
There’s a strong and undeniable correlation between Trump-red states and counties, and reluctance to get a Covid vaccine. This means an equally obvious correlation between red states and rising infections, endangered schoolchildren, and workforce complications. A total of 17 of the 18 states that voted for Trump in the 2020 election have the lowest vaccination rates. (The exception was Georgia which went for Biden by a very small margin.)
Forty percent of Covid-19 infections now come from just three states, all with Republican governors: Texas, Missouri and Florida.
Republican leaders are now having to face the realities that Covid infections are killing their constituents, presenting extreme challenges to hospitals, and threatening their economies. One by one, they’re slowly backing away from their formerly fervent anti-science stances in favor of keeping their constituents alive and working.
Republican waffling
In a Sunday op-ed published by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Trump’s former press liaison Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now a gubernatorial candidate, urges her state’s resident to “get the Trump vaccine.” Of course she also blames vaccine hesitancy squarely on the media and the Biden Administration.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump loyalist, recently made a statement urging Florida residents to get vaccinated. The state has charted 2.6 million infections so far, and lost 40,000 people to Covid-related death. Now it’s one of the few states pushing a new surge of infections and hospitalizations. “I’m seeing a more than 350 percent increase in Covid-19 hospitalizations,” said Dr. Lilian Abbo, a professor in the Miller School of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases in Miami, Florida.
It’s also a hotbed for the new variants. By mid-July, 20 percent of Miami Covid patients had the Brazilian variant (now known as Gamma), 9 percent had the Colombian variant (B.1.621), and 3 percent had the Lambda variant that is currently the dominant COVID-19 strain in Peru.
Nevertheless, DeSantis waffled on his message. He said he understands that his constituents want to weigh their own risks and that maybe people “over 70” would look at it differently than “younger people”. He also said, “the more they’re hectored by government, that is not going to get them to yes.”
Related: Republicans urge supporters to embrace vaccines in abrupt shift of tone
“We have established this narrative that Republicans are against the vaccine,” said Brian Castrucci of the de Beaumont Foundation, a public health non-profit based in Maryland. “It’s going to be very hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube,” he added.
Fear-mongering is a big part of outrage politics, and it appeals to the grievance gene in all of us, whether we’re left, right, red, or blue.
For four years, Republicans have been drinking champagne on the USS Trump. But when your constituents start dropping dead and your businesses go dark, it’s time to stop swinging on the chandeliers. The party’s over, Trump is gone, and this cruise is done.
