New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says “we are not flattening the curve,” and talks about his state hitting peak cases of coronavirus in two to three weeks. The Tokyo Olympics, set to begin July 24, have been canceled. Seventeen states have ordered residents to “shelter in place,” with another 10 states issuing partial shutdowns.
Sounds pretty grim, right? But, wait, there is hope!
President Trump, who less than a month ago called the coronavirus “a hoax”; then said he takes no responsibility for the virus’ spread and rates his performance a 10; said Tuesday he hopes to have the country back to normal by Easter, or roughly three weeks from now.
Three weeks! It would indeed be an Easter miracle. It would also go against all medical advice.
“I would love to have the country opened up, just raring to go, by Easter,” Trump said. “I gave it two weeks. We can socially distance ourselves and go to work.”
Sounds great! We can all go resume our normal lives. No more binging “Tiger King” and figuring out work from home procedures. Awesome!
You know what else it means? SPORTS ARE BACK, BABY!
Major League Baseball will have merely hit a bump in the road and can easily squeeze in a full 162-game schedule. You can just see Trump envisioning himself throwing out the first pitch at the defending champion Washington Nationals’ first home game, a triumphant hero.
The NBA and NHL can resume their seasons and head into the playoffs – CHA-CHING!
The NFL season never really ends, we’re led to believe, and pro football will be back with the draft less than two weeks after Trump’s proposed “back to work” date. What the hell, might as well get right into it with voluntary mini-camps, too. When you’re already on the hook for up to $1.4B in concussion settlement claims and have been executing a decades-old plan of making players expendable pieces of meat, what’s a few cases of COVID-19 gonna hurt?
Of course, all of this is utter fucking nonsense. Just add it to the list of things you would have classified as “too dumb even for Hollywood” before you witnessed the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
No one is going back to their offices anytime soon. Despite what Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says, we are not going to sacrifice the lives of our elders to save the stock market. No one running any of the major sports leagues thinks they are resuming action in a few weeks. It’ll be a few months, at minimum. Even then, when will it be safe for fans to return en masse? A difficult question that we’re miles from even needing to ponder.
Trump and Vice President Pence have said they have never given serious consideration to a national shutdown. They didn’t have to. The governors of the most populous states have largely done that on their own. Well, except, yeah, there’s Florida.
But the bigger point is that Trump’s words will go unheeded. After diminishing the role of Dr. Anthony Fauci, you get the sense that most of America has realized the president’s press conferences are a clown show. People are starting to tune him out, and are urging others to listen to the medical experts instead.
And this will be the best you will be able to say about Trump’s presidency when this is all said and done:
At the moment he faced the greatest crisis this country has seen in a century, he was so utterly stupid that everyone — including all the sports leagues — just ignored him and, instead, did the right thing by simplystaying home.
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