The early days of the COVID scare have fogged over a bit. It is understandable, we’ve all been through a lot of trauma over the last year.

It is hard to recall details. As an example of things easily forgotten, it is hard to recall things like Trump not allowing the cruise ship to dock in San Francisco because it would “increase the numbers” and that he “liked the numbers where they are”. Trump also refused to do a lot of testing because it would “just increase the numbers”. We marveled at the stupidity and callousness.

We are rightfully consumed with outrage over the fact that Trump and company wouldn’t advocate universal mask-wearing, that we have a vaccine now that many Trump supporters won’t utilize, and that we lost 600,000 people (so far) to a disease in which it looks like half, or much more than half, could have been prevented by very simple measures. These are the things that are front and center in our mind, we’ve forgotten so much.

We have another to add to the list to the crazy things from the early period, but this one that had not been known. According to the Washington Post, came during that point in time when Trump was in an absolute panic that the projected economic consequences would derail his campaign, and was still fixated on “numbers” and whether there was a quick, easy way out. He wanted a COVID strategy akin to nuking hurricanes.

He had a thought!

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, as White House officials debated whether to bring infected Americans home for care, President Donald Trump suggested his own plan for where to send them, eager to suppress the numbers on U.S. soil,” with Trump asking aides, “Don’t we have an island that we own? What about Guantánamo? We import goods. We are not going to import a virus.

At this point, the disease had already begun to spread to Iran and Italy. It never occurred to Trump that once it was out in a few nations, the virus was going to import itself. It never occurred to him that Guantanamo likely sends patients with complicated cases to the mainland for medical care and doesn’t have the staff or facilities to care for these people?

See below. Our comment is exactly the same, breathtakingly stupid. Some also note that Trump demonstrated a “genocidal callousness.” We aren’t sure. We truly wonder if he was smart enough to understand, or had the mental ability to concentrate on anything but his own fate.

The level of incompetence and stupidity is breathtaking.

— Scott (@scottmo61199325) June 21, 2021

****
Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak