Donald Trump’s coronavirus test con game
The British government recently decreed that it was safe to eat in restaurants again. (That decree was later rescinded in a baffling set of self-contradictory further decrees.) Permit me to put that another way. The British government recently decreed that it was safe to eat food and use plates and utensils prepared by and handled by people who may or may not carry coronavirus. Put that way I hope that the original government decree sounds as insane to you as it does to me.
For my part, my days of eating in restaurants (or eating takeaway food) are over. Until the coronavirus pandemic is finished and the virus conquered I won’t be carrying out food or dining out anywhere, ever. (As a vegan I’m not missing out on that much anyway.) Everything that enters my house gets thoroughly disinfected. I refuse to put my life in the hands of people I don’t know — if I can help it.
The idea that a virus would obey a government decree is laughable, and ought to tell you just how far out of touch with reality a government can get. Doubly so when the government is the government of Donald Trump, and the official handing down the decree is Donald Trump’s personal physician Dr. Sean Conley.
Conley recently announced that, thanks to his latest PCR and other advanced tests, Trump has been “fever free for well over 24 hours and all symptoms improved, the assortment of advanced diagnostic tests obtained reveal there is no longer evidence of actively replicating virus.” Yet, according to Dr. David Shulkin, former Secretary of Veteran Affairs under Trump, “What that means is he hasn’t had symptoms for 24 hours, our general recommendations are to be symptom free for 72 hours.”
But don’t let reality get in the way of a government decree. The point to this rush job is so Trump can get back on the campaign trail, start giving his Nuremberg-style rallies and start feeding his insatiable, bottomless ego again. Like the Cowardly Lion, all Trump lacked to prove his mojo was a token medal, and Dr. Conley was happy to provide him with one. So now everyone at Trump’s rallies can feel safe and certified by government decree thanks to Dr. Conley and his PCR test, and the lowly upstart coronavirus is sufficiently and appropriately chastened.
The PCR test, in case you didn’t know, is the costly and complicated gold standard for coronavirus tests, usually delivering results in four to six hours to elite patients. Most facilities do not have the resources to run a PCR test. The test reveals if you have Covid-19 right now, but not if you’ve ever had it in the past. It’s useful in judging if you are infectious, but it requires a 72 hour waiting period to be safe and sure, as Dr. Shulkin pointed out.
Obviously, we don’t even know if Dr. Conley is telling the truth about the PCR test. He may be every bit as big a psychopath as Trump. There are plenty of psychopaths in Donald Trump’s pirate ship administration. But there are even more cowards, and Conley is probably just that, another coward in the slavish thrall of Donald Trump, willing to humiliate himself for his audience of one and exaggerate and fastrack his diagnosis to please his lord and master.
The bottom line is coronavirus is being given yet another government decree. I’m sure the deadly pathogen will give that memo all the attention it deserves. Until then, thousands, possibly millions of idiots alive right now will be dead one day thanks to this monstrosity usurping the sacred house of We the People.
There are a million reasons why Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States, this has been another one. We can’t get rid of him by clicking our heels together three times and wishing, we have to get up and vote Trump and his piratical regime off the face of the earth. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.