For the record: why I quickly called ‘B***s**t’ on Trump’s ‘increased testing, more coronavirus cases’ story

Trump’s lies during the pandemic point to a cruel endgame

As fears rise about the recent spike in coronavirus cases and US health officials believe time is running out to get this disease under control, I think it’s time to address President Donald Trump’s sustained meme that coronavirus infections have increased in America because the country has increased testing.

“You test more, you get more cases,” as Trump puts it. And of course America has the best testing in the world.

I called “Bullshit” straightaway.

Accepting Trump’s bullshit-of-the-moment means you would have to accept three additional pieces of bullshit.

You’ll first have to believe the coronavirus hasn’t been actively infecting people lately.

Next, you’ll need to subscribe to the unsubstantiated idea that the risk of humans transmitting the virus among each other remains the same, or decreases, as the economy opens.

Finally, you’ll have to accept an equally baseless thought that hospitalizations caused by the virus will remain the same, or decrease.

You will not find a single senior CDC official — or any other public health professional researching COVID-19 — who will say the first two are true.

The virus is still here, remains deadly, and is quite contagious.

This explains the recent precipitous increase in the seven-day average of coronavirus infections.

Even if you wish to believe the virus had nowhere to go except to lounge around folks already infected and wonder what to do next, your premise wouldn’t explain the increases in hospitalizations — especially in states that rushed their exits from shelter-in-place precautions.

Let’s break this down for the folks in the back since I want this bullshit obliterated for what I plan to write later: the virus is infecting people right now. The exponential spike in new infections last week alone is faster than the relatively gradual increases in testing capability during the same period.

This means the number of tests conducted has no bearing on the truth: the disease keeps spreading despite the White House’s denials — especially since more people aren’t staying at home these days.

And as of this moment, some of the most prominent public health researchers are forecasting (pdf), at minimum, short-term increases in COVID-19-related hospitalizations.

“More testing” doesn’t necessarily mean more people will go to hospitals.

Many COVID-19 patients are sent home with a set of care instructions.

Therefore, being tested positive and sent to a hospital means you’re in sufficiently-awful shape and will require more constant medical attention. 

Placed another way, you would’ve likely visited a hospital if you felt sick, with or without testing.

Trump’s team is every bit aware of these facts.

I hope you recall the President’s “Kind of death” speech he gave in late March where — after his days of pandemic denials and straight-from-the-sphincter predictions of low death rates — he warned Americans to prepare for 100,000-240,000 deaths.

This prediction is significant.

And not because 2.2 million Americans would die if the government “did nothing”, as Trump said, since that was never a serious option to consider after he snapped out of his “It’s a hoax” delusion.

Trump publicly established his human sacrifice budget for reelection: 240,000 lives.

The seven-figure death estimate was added for effect.

This blood budget takes into account the weeks he spent doing nothing to protect America from the coronavirus, in addition to the deaths we’ll continue to see from Trump coaxing businesses and workers to sacrifice themselves outdoors while the disease remains out of the government’s control.

All this despite Trump’s assurances in June that the virus will fade away.

The deaths can be much higher than the forecast, however. I’ll get to that later.

Trump is done fighting the coronavirus, which has been his ratings albatross from the moment he downplayed the pandemic in the face of a rising bodycount.

Giving the public time to focus on Trump’s serial management malpractice during the crisis will only remind them of why he has no business standing near the Big Chair.

Trump’s only path to reelection — as many of you already know, and assuming his campaign still has a realistic shot — is the economy.

And Trump wants to be reelected as if the electoral college is his oxygen.

Therefore, America needs to go back to work during an uncontrollable pandemic to make Trump’s dream come true.

And your life has now become a budget line item.

We’ll need another week or two before we can determine how many of these new infections will lead to worse outcomes, but I’m sure the White House’s death predictions didn’t account for America hatching out of shelter-in-place so soon.

Plus the current surge in COVID-19 cases is estimated to last for weeks.

As a result, you’ll have the President to thank again for the next bodycount wave. 

And he’s about to blow his human blood budget soon …

song currently stuck in my head: “free spirit” – walt barr