Covid-19's containment was never adequate, reopening was premature and poorly implemented, and the result has been the second wave; not in November but in July.
Much of the blame can be placed squarely at Trump's door; his early inaction, his continual downplaying of the risks, his premature happy talk, and his push to restart the economy. But most of all, and this is what will haunt him now, his refusal to wear a face mask.
The current reemergence of the virus has narrowed his choices to three. He can pretend covid-19 will disappear if he does nothing. Like a toddler who can't believe bad things should happen to him, if he ignores it someone (his daddy) will make the nasty flu go away. He can impose another lock-down. Or, he can begin wearing a mask (that's the only way he can undo the damage he did by politicizing mask wearing and get his army of deplorables to do the right thing).
All, from his point of view, are terrible alternatives, though the first is the only one that will be good for everyone else. Doing nothing will result either in a huge resurgence of infection and many more deaths; or it will make the governors who assume the mantle of responsibility look good and by contrast make him look ineffectual. A second lock-down would be hugely unpopular; without more safety net money, business will go broke, and people loose their homes, hardship will be intolerable for many. Even with financial mitigation, people are fed up with SIP. So the only choice left him is to model mask wearing. But that would mean admitting publicly that he was wrong. Obviously that's too bitter a pill for someone with his Dunning-Kruger sized ego to swallow.
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