Dear Mr. Trump, you really must work on convincing your fan base that the corona virus is very serious. If you don't, too many of your voters will die. Let me explain. Perhaps I should start with a couple of pictures? Here's one that shows who helped you defeat Mrs. Clinton in 2016:
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| Trump voters by age group 2016 |
Most countries now have realized that the new corona virus will eventually infect more than half of the population, and I think you know that now, too. Most countries have also realized that if this happens too quickly, many more people than the "usual" 0.5% or so will die, because the hospitals will be overwhelmed. Even your nice blond friend in the UK, who tried to be brave and just get all the young people infected quickly, eventually understood that!
I am sure that you are keenly aware who loves you, and who votes for you. You have proven that often enough to all of us! Hispanics almost always vote for the Democrats (even for women!), so building a wall to keep them from coming is certainly called for. But I am getting side tracked, forgive me. The real issue is older people. Folks above 50 are not just more likely to love you than those young, no-nothing liberal college kids, but they are also much more likely to vote!
Now here's the problem:
The stupid "imported" corona virus primarily kills older people! Even if ICU beds and ventilators are available, nearly 10% of those over 70 die. If we run out of ventilators, which is likely to happen at many places, that number goes up a lot. Let's be clear:
The virus kills your voters, Mr. Trump!
Of course, you knew that, because those scientists have been saying that for weeks now, and eventually, you just had to start believing them. They just should have said it on Fox News earlier! Now it's too late to do some things that worked so well for places like Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. With tens or hundreds of thousands already infected, tracking all their contacts and putting them all in quarantine for 2 weeks is not possible anymore.
So you just told everyone to stay at home if they can, and to avoid any gatherings of more than 10 people. If everyone just stayed home for a couple of weeks or perhaps months, and we close those pesky borders, then the whole thing will go away!
Funny enough, some of those almost-socialist states like New York and Massachusetts have already done things to help, like closing all restaurants and schools. Who would have thunk they'd help protect your voters? Well, there may be one little problem: your voters still believe what you told them earlier. To paraphrase Alan Dershowitz: can't they see that you were right when you call the virus harmless in February, but that you are much more right now, when you tell them it is dangerous enough to stay home?
Now, the excellent job you have done in the past three years to teach your base to only believe what you say, even if it disagrees with what almost everyone else in the world says, comes back to haunt you. Clearly, you must have known more than those pesky scientists in February! Why else would you have needed to make sure to check with you or your Vice Mike before saying anything? It all fits!
So, funny again, now the Democrats believe your new message more than the Republicans! Funny, because just 8% of Democrats believe what you said about the virus, while 74% of Republicans believe you. But when it comes to changing plans to avoid crowds, 59% of Democrats said they had done that already, while just 40% of Republicans have. So not only are your voters more likely to die from the stupid virus because they are older - they are also more likely to be infected!
This has to change if you want to have any chance to be re-elected. Sure, some smart patriots have looked into options to delay the election, or to just declare it invalid because of the virus, but that may not work. Much better to keep your voters alive! If 60% of the population gets infected, and just 1% of the infected people die, that's still more than a couple of million voters - mostly your voters!
So, Mr. Trump, please keep hammering away at the "stay home" message until every Republican gets it. Perhaps call it "our patriotic duty" or something great you can come up with. Since we are living in the land of the free and the home of the brave, some free and brave souls will probably still go around, so please also add some other measures that have been shown to work. A lot more testing, and putting everyone who is infected or has been in contact with an infected person, in quarantine would be a good start. And how about having our great American corporations produce lots of lots of face masks to protect people? Using face masks when in public is one of the things that all the countries that really contained the virus have in common. Right now, we have don't have enough of them, so we have to reserve them for the doctors and nurses. But if we can manufacture enough masks in this great country to everyone can use them in public, then spreading the virus by coughing just won't work that well anymore. Maybe we can even put our great military to work on this!
If you get this right, your loyal fan base will love you even more, and you may even gain some of those undecided people. Sure, your fan base will still love you even if you get it wrong because they know that the Democrats are to be blamed, but there just won't be enough of them left to get you re-elected! So please, get to it!
Full disclosure: I'm not really one of your fans. But a lot of my windsurfing friends are in the 70s, and therefore at increased risk. Some have spouses with pre-existing conditions that are at even higher risk. I'd really hate to loose friends to this virus, so even if doing the right thing now may help you to get re-elected, I still want you to do the right thing. So perhaps cancel that next golf trip, and go to work instead!
