June 25th 2020

By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH      

Yes, he really would like that to happen.  Trump has many faults.  One of them is that he has little insight.  I have a good friend who socialized with him now and then in New York City when he was still active in the real estate business.  This person remarked that one of Trump’s remarkable features, even in an entirely social situation, was that he had no sense of humor, as in “none.”  So, when Trump says, when asked about his remark about “ordering his staff to reduce testing” (which ordering, by the way, apparently never happened), “I never kid,” he wasn’t kidding.  He really would like testing to be reduced.  Why?  Because indeed the number of reported cases would go down.   

But why does he want this to happen?  I have written at length on this issue from a variety of perspectives.  But the bottom line is this.  From his youth, Donald Trump has lived a lifetime fighting enemies.  Those enemies have always been individual humans or institutions (private and government) represented by humans.  But now Trump faces an enemy that is not human.  It is, as is well-known, a virus.  And for Trump this is problem No. 1.  Most people have some notion of what a virus is.  By his behavior since the virus first appeared on the U.S. scene back in January, Trump has made it abundantly clear that he really doesn’t know what a virus is. 

But he does know that the virus, however he conceptualizes it in his mind, and the diseases that it causes which have morphed into a pandemic (another word he likely does not understand), have created a tremendous political problem for him.  (That it has created a huge health-disease problem for our nation’s people, and has already killed well over 100,000 of us, doesn’t seem to bother him so much.)  For him, the pandemic and the virus that causes it are no more and no less than his latest, personal, enemies.  But, and this is the big BUT, for Trump it is that totally idiosyncratic understanding of the virus/pandemic that explains his behavior.  This is the first enemy he has faced in his lifetime that is not a person or represented by one.  

Since he no understanding of what a virus is or of the diseases that this one in particular is causing, and certainly no sympathy or concern for those getting sick and dying, the enemy becomes a number.  In this case for Trump it is a set of them: the number of cases, the number of hospitalized persons, and the number of deceased persons.  So, in order to defeat this particular enemy, in his own mind at least, what he desperately needs is for the numbers to go down, or least to go up less quickly.  Now, he can do nothing about the numbers of hospitalized or deceased persons.  So those he simply ignores.  But the one number thing that he could do something about --- BY ORDERING HIS STAFF TO REDUCE TESTING (or, as he has done all along, limit to the extent possible the Federal government’s responsibility for testing) --- is the published number of reported non-hospitalized cases.  And a reduction in that number, as artificially low it would be, to him that would “look good.” 

And so, as I said above, for Trump, a man who has spent a lifetime surrounded by enemies, this particular enemy is neither the virus itself nor the diseases it causes.  Rather, for this poorly educated, uninformed, unintelligent, person who is obviously incapable of learning anything, the enemy is a number.  And that’s why, pure and simple, he would really, really, really like testing to be as slow, inefficient, and unreliable as possible, therefore (hopefully for him) producing as small numbers as possible. 

And so, when he said that he would really like to have testing slowed down, as he also said, he wasn’t kidding.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MS is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 35 books.  He is an occasional contributor to BuzzFlash (reborn) (after having been along-time contributor to the Original). In addition, he is a “Trusted Author” for Op-Ed News. a contributor to Reader Supported News/Writing for Godot; a contributor to From The G-Man; a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement; and a Deputy Editor, Politics, and a “Witness to History,” and an occasional contributor for The Greanville Post;   He is also a triathlete (36 seasons, 256 multi-sport races).

Dr. Jonas’ latest book is Ending the ‘Drug War’; Solving the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach, Brewster, NY: Punto Press Publishing, (Brewster, NY, 2016, available on Kindle from Amazon, and also in hardcover from Amazon).  His most recent book on US politics is The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel (Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, Brewster, NY), and available on Amazon. 

He has a distribution list for his columns.  If you would like to be added to it, please send him an email at sjtpj@aol.com