My Facebook feed is alive with gleeful Democrats posting about (a) their hopes that Donald Trump will die, (b) their satisfaction that Trump’s actions have led to his downfall (i.e., infection), and (c) how events comport with religious beliefs, e.g., in a just God and/or karma.
[Democrat 1] So the fuckface in the White House has Covid. It couldn’t have happened to a bigger piece of human shit. … With any luck–or, as some would have it, any God–the shitbird-in-chief will be confirmed for Hell before the election. Godspeed, you treasonous piece of trash.
[Democrat 2] i just tested asympathetic.
[Democrat 3] I don’t understand how Trump could get Covid. He’s an idiot but the Secret Service is not. Trump probably overrode the SS.
I.e., humans can control whether or not infection occurs. The Great Father in Washington could have protected His children from this virus. The Secret Service, in turn, could protect the Great Orange Father and Slovenian Mother (not a lot of fun compared to the Secret Service lifestyle during the Obama administration).
I’m not sure I believe it. It may be a way for him to avoid the debates, and hide in his twitter bunker for two weeks, and then come out “looking strong” because he beat this thing that only kills the weak. Ya know: “It isn’t so bad.” It knocks his support for white supremacists and his debate performance off the news cycle, and once again he controls the narrative.
Trump is an idiot, except when he is a mastermind!
From an aircraft mechanic:
Trump finally passed a test without cheating
From the bête noire himself:
Responses to the above reproduction of Trump’s tweet:
Finally a Donald Trump tweet that warms the heart.
Tell me this is real. I wish no one to die or be ill… But…
Whoo Hoo!! The Cheeto just tested positive! Maybe now his dumbass followers will believe it!
How did Melania catch it given that she barely looks in his direction? Or maybe she gave it to him. On purpose??
RBG protects us, even from among the shades.
Looks like RBG successfully argued her first case before God
Melania has been an awesome First Lady due to her more or less public acknowledgment of the absurdity of the position and refusal to engage with the U.S. media, so I’m praying to our most recent god (RBG) for Melania’s swift recovery. If 50+ years of fast food haven’t killed The Donald, I’m not going to worry about him.
Readers: Are you seeing the same thing? People who think that Trump and Melania could easily have avoided coronavirus if they’d behaved in some different way? (and therefore the rest of us get to choose whether or not we become infected)
Related:
- CNN mocks Donald Trump for being averse to people coughing, June 2019
- New York Times calls Donald Trump a sissy due to “obsession with hand sanitizer,” April 2016 (Hillary was brave by comparison)
- Friend in Texas runs, but cannot hide, from coronavirus (the virus turned out to be in charge in this instance)
- Department of Awkward Timing: a pre-recorded message from Trump saying “The end of the pandemic is in sight” was played at a fundraising event a few hours before the positive test result was obtained. (Let’s hope that this will not be like organic food promoter J.I. Rodale, who said “I never felt better in my life!” on The Dick Cavett Show and died of a heart attack while still on the stage/on-camera (plans to air the show a few hours later were scrapped).
- Do CNN viewers think that Donald Trump is a god? (that was in 2019; if Trump recovers from COVID-19, which nearly always kills the humans that it infects, is it fair to conclude that Trump is at least superhuman and possibly a god?)
- “As A Doctor, Here’s The First Thing I Thought When I Found Out Trump Has COVID-19” (HuffPost): When I learned that Donald Trump is infected with COVID-19, I did not have the normal reaction that I would have, as a doctor, to an overweight septuagenarian getting infected with this deadly virus. Instead, I immediately thought of the positives that could come out of this. … Yes, there is the aspect of comeuppance, because what do you expect when you do the very thing that the best and the brightest scientists in the world are pleading the populace to avoid? [Physicists on the LHC are no longer the “brightest scientists”; it is Karen the Epidemiologist with an MPH who gets this honor]
I would say, actually that Trump taking this long to get it has shown that our efforts have worked just as you thought: it would make things take longer, but everyone would get it.
Here are the other world leaders and various and sundry functionaries who have gotten it, including Boris Johnson and Justin Trudeau’s wife, and of course Bolsonaro, who tested positive in July and is still alive:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/world/trump-covid-world-leaders.html
The reactions aren’t surprising. If Air Force One crashed and everyone on board died in a huge fireball, most Democrats would have tested positive for asympathetic, maybe a little bit of sympathy for the pilots and staff, but not much.
Bolsonaro had three positive test results on July 22 and then by the 26th he was negative.
“Bolsanaoro said he and four ministers in his administration are treating their infections with the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, despite scientists saying there was no medical evidence to support its effectiveness.”
https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/brazil-president-jair-bolsonaro-tests-positive-coronavirus-third-time
Of course, in the days after he tested positive then negative, he was accused of Crimes Against Humanity in the International Criminal Court, so maybe he’s responsible for Trump’s positive results! It’s debatable whether anyone in your Facebook feed would think Donald Trump is a human, though.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/27/895940087/brazils-bolsonaro-is-accused-of-crime-against-humanity-over-coronavirus-neglect
“The complaint to the ICC, by Brazil’s UNISaúde network, accuses Bolsonaro of intensifying the pandemic by repeatedly opposing social isolation measures.”
I should also note that in the post-digestive sense, nobody has established with certainty whether Bolsonaro’s remarkable imperviousness to Covid should be attributed to the effects of hydroxycholoroquine or “immunity via sewage.” He certainly has had a great deal of it thrown in his direction.
“I don’t think it will reach that point. Especially because Brazilians have to be studied,” Bolsonaro said, according to TV Globo. “They don’t get anything. You see the guy jumping into the sewer there, going out, diving, right? And nothing happens to him.”
The big question, and not just from a epidemiological standpoint, but from a continuity-of-government standpoint is whether Biden has it, too? Since it can take days for a person to express enough virus for a positive test result, presumably Trump had COVID the night of the debate and neither of them were wearing masks, although they were quite distant, socially. So if Trump dies and Biden dies, who do Americans elect as their next President?
Should we Zoom the VP debate on Oct. 7? If both of them aren’t incapacitated by Oct. 15, he and Biden could still pull it off over Zoom, Biden from his basement and Trump from the OO. The moderator could just cut the feed when someone starts yelling, which, alas is where humanity seems to be headed in terms of social interaction for the indefinite future.
Nobody wants to know if he is lonely.
Trump is taking his coronavirus very seriously, announcing he will be quarantining in the whitehouse until 2024.
I wonder how many of the Facebook commenters have a “Hate Has No Home Here” sign in the front yard?
Comrades, I am surprised that Trump got infected, was he not a part of the Sputnik V vaccine trial?
From looking at the numbers for his age group,
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
The IFR (Infection Fatality Rate not Instrument flight rules) is about 8%.
So Trump has about a 92% of surviving, i.e. he is more likely to die of a heart attack after eating a cheese burger.
This could be a problem for Democrats, because can you imagine what Trump will tweet after he survives COVID-19, the US should get ready for the power of this fully armed and operational Trump with COVID-19 antibodies!
Pavel: You raise a good point. My neighbors claim to believe in a just, benevolent, and omnipotent God. They attend a church decorated with a permanent BLM banner in the center and rainbow-themed items around the perimeter. If Donald Trump survives while thousands of virtuous People of Color and LGBTQIA+ community members are struck down by the non-Chinese virus, how can that be consistent with a just or benevolent God who is also powerful? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy
Note to readers: Pavel is a foreigner who has admitted in trying to interfere in our election. This may be a crime!
Comrad Touscan Sam, are you implying that our elections are so fragile that Pavel can influence them from Canada just by writing comments on this journal? This is very unpatriotic of you!
philg: Don’t your neighbours explain the “virtuous People of Color and LGBTQIA+ community members are struck down by the non-Chinese virus” by the usual comment of “God works in mysterious ways”?
Comrade Toucan Sam, I am the least of your worries. This current situation has the potential to get out of hand very quickly.
“is it fair to make the assessment that China has now officially interfered with our election?” a tweet from Rep. Mark Walker
When Trump tested positive, not only did a significant number of US comments on social media (philg’s Facebook friends and etc) started making fun of Trump testing positive, but in addition Chinese social media exploded with comments blaming Trump. It is interesting that Beijing was very quick to start shutting down these comments. Beijing probably knows that if Trump succumbs to the corona virus, the backlash from the US against China will be much greater than it is now. Xi is probably hoping for a speedy recovery for Trump.
Can you imagine the unbridled glee that Trump would be unleashing on poor “sleepy Joe” for being so weak if the tables were turned?
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/09/19/trump-reaction-rbg-death-collins-ac360-sot-vpx.cnn
Hardly the same thing, Viking…but nice try. In 2016 he ridiculed Hillary for having a bout pneumonia while on the campaign trail.
I liked Biden’s response:
Wearing a mask in public is a very low-cost measure. Dr. Jillian Horton: There is one free lunch with COVID. It is a mask..
I suppose it’s like wearing a seatbelt – some people will always see it as an unreasonable imposition on their personal freedom. The difference is that if you don’t wear a seatbelt, you’re the one who’s at risk. If you have COVID and you don’t wear a mask, you’re putting people around you at risk.
As of today, the list of prominent Republicans infected includes Trump and Melania Trump, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway, Ronna McDaniel, Chris Christie, and Senators Thom Tillis, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson.
It seems the famously germ-phobic Trump couldn’t even protect himself, let alone the American people.
Russil: If masks are highly effective for the general population, contrary to what the MD/PhDs in Sweden and the Netherlands say (and what WHO said for the first half of 2020), why shut down societies worldwide, thus denying education to children, social lives to adults, jobs to those who wish to work, freedom of assembly, etc.? Why incur the deaths from obesity, alcoholism, depression, opioid addiction, and deferred medical treatment for non-COVID problems that are an inevitable part of shutdown if all that it takes to stop a plague is a few masks?
If you’re sure that someone such as Trump, who comes into contact with a lot of people as part of his job, could have protected himself by wearing a mask, how do you explain the second waves of coronaplague currently sweeping over fully masked countries such as France and Germany?
“If masks are highly effective for the general population, why shut down societies worldwide?”
You still seem stuck on the fallacy of the excluded middle: masks are either so effective that no other measures are needed, or they’re ineffective.
“‘If masks are highly effective for the general population, why shut down societies worldwide?’
You still seem stuck on the fallacy of the excluded middle: masks are either so effective that no other measures are needed, or they’re ineffective.”
LOL. Phil-acious is a regular diet of logical fallacies: the false dilemma, hasty generalizations, tu quoque, and, especially, reductio ad absurdum, and strawmen arguments.