Here is a joke that's apparently enjoying a cachet among third graders at my daughter's school:
Q: Why was the clock worried about coronavirus?
A: Because its hands are always touching its face.
I like my third grader, but, in general, the people making light of coronavirus are looking more ridiculous with each passing hour. At the recently concluded CPAC conference, in Maryland, the standard line regarding the virus was that the Democrat Lamestream Media was exaggerating the threat in order to smear Trump, who of course has the situation under control. But now an attendee has tested positive for Covid-19 and the American Conservative Union is tweeting out its concern, noting that neither Trump nor Pence had interacted with the infected person—whew! Meanwhile, Trump fanboy Matt Gaetz, R-FL, ridiculed the alarm over Covid-19 by wearing a gas mask to work. I think that was Wednesday. Today, one of his constituents in northwest Florida died of the disease. Hilarious!
Then there is Trump himself. He said nothing about the pandemic until, on February 26, with the stock market sinking, he went before the cameras to predict that 15 current US cases would soon go to zero. Ten days later, there are more than 330 confirmed cases, and 19 Americans have died. Yesterday, at the CDC, in Atlanta, Trump gave one of the most bizarre-o performances of his tenure in office. Of the things he said that can be fact-checked, only his uncle having taught at MIT is probably true. It seems this bit of Trump family history was offered up to account for what he called his "natural ability" in science. "I like this stuff, I really get it," he explained. He worked in an advertisement for Fox News, called the governor of Washington "a snake"—because no time is the wrong time to slime people—and claimed that anyone who needed to be tested was being tested, which isn't in reality's zip code (unless you live in another country). Regarding the cruise ship anchored off the California coast with at least 21 sick people onboard, he said he'd prefer if it stayed at sea.
"I like the numbers being where they are," he said. "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."
It seems he's too dumb to understand that, in a public health emergency, it makes him look bad to admit that he's focused on not looking bad.
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