The virus and the economic problems themselves have basically drowned out the Democrat race for the presidency. Trump is front and center in all of it, dominating the news cycle.
The news is very bad for Trump, but the focus is on him and the problems, not the Democrats.
Neither Biden nor Sanders have much going for them personality wise or policy wise. Their voices sound frail and small in the face of these enormous challenges.
Trump is clearly in his element . . . for now.
But wealth destruction, massive unemployment and death now stalk him politically as much as they do the rest of us in reality. It's not going to help him to insist he knew this was a pandemic all along as he did yesterday when he's on camera denying it was not long ago. Besides, if he already knew, he should have taken drastic action like canceling jet travel on Feb 1. Instead he simply canceled the jet travel of a few Chinese nationals. Had he been knowledgeable, he would have known too that all those travelers by jet from China had asymptomatic spreaders in their midst. That's in part why we have an explosion of cases everywhere. They also came from other hotspots on jets to America. Trump bungled this badly and allowed the pandemic to come here.
Anecdotally people in my orbit are heeding the call to stay home. Commuter trains into Chicago are nearly empty, says a close friend. Road traffic is very light on workdays here in Michigan. Work orders have dried up and employees are on-call, if they haven't been furloughed outright. Work-from-home for the $40k or less crowd is estimated to be possible for just 17% of all individual wage earners in the US. Higher earners have more opportunity for that, but it will probably not last long for some as the economy nose dives. Many will soon be underwater, if they aren't already. This is going to cost an enormous sum and do tremendous damage to the people and the economy.
And to think it was mostly preventable with a little common sense, something neither party seems capable of providing.
This is a catastrophe, a pathetic display of human incompetence.
