Assuming responsibility

Irony represents a powerful weapon, especially when handled with dexterity. After three month of daily extensive media coverage on the imminent CORONA threat, even senior journalist’s highest frustration tolerance limit crashes under Trump’s invulnerability illusions. Yesterday Anderson Cooper reported that experts from the University of Washington estimated about 200.000 US deaths caused by CORONA until October 1. Despite this dire situation some high profile politicians behave as if their gaze got tired of following the invisible virus. Actually one of Trump’s recent spontaneous remarks was: “If we stop testing right now (for CORONA-virus) we will have very few cases, if any...” Such out-of-sight-out-of-mind approach prompted Cooper to ironically wonder whether Trump have surpassed the object permanence stage of development that normal 2 year olds are proudly acquiring. And his answer was that “the president perhaps hasn’t reach that stage (i.e., of object permanence), not at least when it comes to a virus that have claimed 116,000 deaths” only in the US. This biting sarcasm was meant to expose and corrode the president’s “twisted logic”, his failure to grasp the good warning signals testing are meant to bring, and his intention of hiding CORONA under the rug. But is Anderson Cooper’s strategy effective?

     At the beginning of March many tourists had definite plans to relax on various Cruise Ships. For example an Australian couple bought tickets for a local cruise around New Zealand. Despite the depressing CORONA news they supposed it would be safe to embark on their long awaited journey as the authorities approved the trip, the tourist agency seemed ok with it and they were not actually going towards China. If anything was not ok the organizers should announce us, they lightly reasoned, relaying for their go ahead decision on the organizers’ responsibility. However, after just a few days it became obvious that relying solely on Cruise’s responsibility was actually a bad strategy. During the cozy events enjoyed by everyone in the first half of the trip CORONA insidiously rolled up her sleeves and made a big catch, including the husband of our Australian couple. His symptoms were severe, and his unpleasant convalescence was longer than the cruise itself, but he survived. That is probably one of those situations where not thinking with your own mind could triple your losses (with the holiday savings invested in a ruined holiday spend on a virused cruiser that made you sick to the point of life-threatening).

     On June 20 Trump plans to organize an election rally in Tulsa (Oklahoma) where about 19.000 people are invited to spend a few hours indoors listening to their dream candidate and cheering out loud their support. It is an official event and authorities approved it, so most people could lightly reason it should be ok to have republicans from across the US crammed into the same space. This kind of events are so much part and parcel of the American culture and politics that people could not give them up just because an invisible virus decided to stubbornly move around. Plus CORONA represents not news anymore as everyone got accustomed with, and even bored by this obsolete topic. And just a few days before, many cities had multiple days of approved and unapproved protests for social justice and chanted their loud support for the Black Life Matter (BLM) movement. Now it’s time for republicans to cheer up, and make their voices heard, and enjoy the fun, emotional, spontaneous, optimistic, inimitable Trump speeches they craved for. And during those speeches nobody will take CORONA seriously, as this topic will be approached lightly, and optimistically, with the invulnerability approach so energetically put forward by Trump’s prevailing attitude. So there is a good chance that the nasty virus will be looked at differently, as an actually unthreatening inconvenience, at least for that day.  

But CORONA doesn’t really care about US politics, or BLM, or whether she can operate on land in Oklahoma or on the sea near New-Zealand. Her only aim is to have a big catch. So chances are that two weeks down the road some republicans will get infected, and will further share their experience with their friends and family. And in the many weeks before the November election some former Oklahoma rally republicans will be unable to vote because voting is irrelevant for those who inadvertently passed on the other side of life’s threshold. That’s another way in which America is leading the world in terms of CORONA infected cases and fatalities, evening the number of affected Caucasians so as to keep up with the disproportionately large number of black cases occasioned by poverty, and lack of education, an lately by the numerous BLM unrests.    

         

Finally, what still surprise me is how ready and willing some people are to delegate their responsibility to whatever authority they happened to have above. By now everyone on the planet have heard in his language multiple messages about CORONA’s whereabouts and what we should do to avoid meeting her in person. However, if a Cruise company in Australia, or the Republican Party in the US, or the Government in Sweden says that it is OK to have a large meeting, or mingle with random strangers as we normally do, or to enjoy our already paid cruise, there will always be people who show up. Since the event was approved by an authority figure, they lightly reason it must be safe and sound to follow. Plus, they are convinced it’s not a big deal to participate, they are just engaging in normal behaviors that were impossible during the last months and stolen from them. I still can’t approximate how massive a threat must be to make people take it seriously, or whether it is humanly possible for a public event to be announced and not attended. Probably not!