Trump's Numbers Dilemma

Trump tipped his hand* about keeping COVID-19 numbers low in early March.  From Business Insider:

"I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault," Trump said in a Fox News interview.

On March 7, 2020 there were 275 identified cases in the US.   A month later, on April 7, there were 395,926 identified cases!  1,439 times more.  And today there are 746,625 identified cases! And most certainly a lot more that haven't been identified.

My guess is the US government hasn't ramped up testing as all the experts recommend because Trump wants to keep the numbers as low as possible.  Tests will significantly add to the number of people with COVID-19 on his watch.

Trump is a numbers guy.  I don't mean he's necessarily good with math, but he takes numbers as symbols of value.  He's always trying to impress people with his personal wealth.  (Except when he was paying taxes, then he worked to lower his wealth.)  He regularly touts how high the stock market climbed under his presidency - well, until the last month or so.

And now that the economy isn't producing great numbers, he wants to let people go back to work and 'get the economy going again.'  But all the health experts, even the CEOs of the largest corporations, are saying you need widespread testing before people can go back to work.

So, to get the economic numbers up, he needs to allow massive COVID testing which will get those numbers up.  He's caught between two bad numbers options.  There's no judge or senator he can bribe or threaten, no plaintiff he can pay off to make his dilemma go away.  And most of the media refuse to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

So I think that also explains his turnaround from "The president has total authority" one day to "The governors can decide" the next.  He's pushing the responsibility for the dilemma of the COVID numbers and the economic numbers onto the governors.

But then he turns around again and urges people to "liberate" their states from their governors distancing rules.

I'd say he's spinning out of control, except that would imply he was ever in control.


*I realized, as I wrote "tipped his hand" that I'd never actually visualized metaphor, but I did as I wrote it today.  From the Free Dictionary:

"tip (one's) hand
To reveal one's intentions, plans, secrets, or resources. An allusion to letting someone else see the cards one is currently holding (one's "hand")."