Wake Up by Piers Morgan

Author:Piers Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-09-16T16:47:52+00:00

TUESDAY 24 MARCH

America is on the same trajectory as Italy was several weeks ago, and if the carnage that’s unfurled there now unfurls in the USA, as many experts predict, then it may decimate human life like no other single entity in the nation’s history.

Right now, the only thing that can possibly stop this happening is a complete and total shutdown of the kind Trump himself ironically once demanded on all Muslims entering the USA after the ISIS terror attacks. Coronavirus will kill many more Americans than Islamist terrorists ever have.

Governments have been scrambling to find a way – any way – to contain it, and almost all of them have now arrived at the conclusion that the best way to stem the tide of infection is a lockdown similar to the one we now have, finally, in the UK. This means a complete cessation of any ‘normal’ activity. This means people whose jobs don’t directly contribute to fighting the virus stop working and stay at home. This means everyone exercising draconian social distancing. This is how China, where the virus emanated, finally got on top of it – along with massively intensive testing of the kind America has abjectly failed to deliver. If Americans think their current lack of ‘freedom’ is bad, they should see how an authoritarian state like China handled its lockdown. But it worked.

As with his fellow populist Boris Johnson, President Trump’s natural political skills that made him so electorally popular sit uncomfortably with this crisis. The American people are incredibly fearful, for very good reason. They want firm, calm, decisive action, unambiguous, accurate advice and constant reassurance that their government is doing everything it can to fight the virus. What they don’t want is a blustering, bravado-laced leader shooting from the hip every day, lying about being ‘in total control’ of the virus, espousing unproven ‘cures’, picking idiotic fights with the media or political opponents, and giving false hope about when this will all end.

Trump, like Johnson, has been flailing through this crisis because all his natural instincts are to maintain everyone’s ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’, and because he appears to be motivated more by a desire to save the economy than to save lives. I don’t think he’s a callous, uncaring human being, contrary to what some believe. I’m sure that beneath Trump’s typical self-aggrandising ‘I’m handling this beautifully’ self-confidence lies a guy secretly panicking at the rapidly escalating US coronavirus infection rate and death toll.

And I’m also sure he believes with every fibre of his being that getting the economy going again will be crucial to America’s recovery from this crisis. After all, Trump’s a money man to his bootstraps who has spent his entire life driven by a craven love of business, success and cash. So, for him to now see his presidency consumed by the greatest disintegration of the economy in US history will be hitting him harder than he is letting on. One minute, Trump was cruising to re-election, the next

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