Trump gets COVID-19 and the world goes crazy

This past week we learned that not only did Hope Hicks, President Donald Trump’s former trusted advisor contract COVID-19, but so did Trump and many of the people whom he closely associated with during a recent Rose Garden ceremony.

Predictably lots of people from the drunk at the end of the bar, to the army of pundits appearing on our major cable networks are talking about this situation.

Some are scolding Trump about his failure to seriously heed the advice of trusted medical professionals about preventing the transmission of COVID-19 including downplaying and mocking the evidence about the virus, and mask wearing. Others have joined the chorus of people who are basically saying that he got what was coming to him.

Then there have been a succession of scenarios spun about when, where, and to whom he has spread the virus.

Numerous predictions are floating around about the veracity of all these claims, and if true what this means for the near term. Some pundits like Michael Moore, have taken the conspiracy theory route, and have suggested that Trump’s contracting COVID-19 is just a ruse, a sort of October Surprise, and it was designed all along to create sympathy from selected members of the American public that will assist Trump win the election. Others have suggested that Trump’s contracting of COVID-19, is a way for him to save face if he loses the election.

In the background questions have been raised about what happens if Trump is incapacitated and Pence becomes the president? Will the Republicans temporarily hault their attempts to get Judge Amy Barrett installed to replace the vacancy left by Ruth Bader Ginsberg?

So what? What does this all mean? Have we really gotten closer to the truth? Probably not.

We are a news and gossip obsessed nation, suffering from collective attention deficit disorder, waiting for and hanging on to every small tidbit or morsel of information selectively released and creatively spun by those with vested interests or nothing else plausible to say.

Unless you work for the White House, and want to know whether to come into work tomorrow, all this speculation, like sports talk about the likelihood of a team winning the next big game, is one big distraction.

This distraction prevents us from doing our work, meaningful pursuits such as attending to and spending time with our loved ones, and following our goals and our passions. Whatever happens to Trump will have consequences for our country, but in the short term, in the day to day living we must do, is will have little effect on the progress we make on working towards our goals. And thus, we must put Trumps’ current bout with COVID-19 into perspective, see it as another distraction, and move forward with more meaningful work including but not limited to putting into putting in to place and ensuring a better and stronger democracy.