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“Stupid is as stupid does,” the quote made famous in the movie Forrest Gump, is an apt description for President trump vis-à-vis his administration’s response thus far to the Corona virus outbreak. The underlying message contained in the oft-heard phrase is to judge people not by what they say but by what they do.

It’s become de rigueur these days for those not in thrall to the cult of trump to indulge in excessive eye-rolling in response to the cavalcade of wrongheaded decisions descending daily from the academy of fools executing the president’s “vision,” dim though that vision may be.

Many of the president’s moves to re-make the country into the futuristic purgatory portrayed in dystopian science fiction novels are quickening the pace of their progression. The risk these measures pose to the health of the planet and all its inhabitants—not just us humans—have mostly been amorphous up until now, lurking on the horizon of our thoughts but lacking any accompanying sense of immediacy necessary to elicit a realistic response from those in a position to act.

But none of these potential calamities has, until now, posed an immediate, in-your-face threat to life in the here and now. The Corona Virus outbreak is one such threat.

The actions of the trump administration thus far in moving to contain this contagion’s spread—down-playing the urgency of the emerging situation, muzzling the head of the Center for Disease Control from speaking out publicly by funneling all communication through the equally reality-challenged vice president, refusing to distribute virus detection kits, exposing unprotected workers to infected passengers arriving from the Japanese cruise ship and then neglecting to track their movements afterward, failing to provide needed information to the public about the transmissibility and lethality of the virus, punishing the whistleblower for doing her job—are not merely inadequate, they border on criminal negligence!

The enormity of the stupidity of the current president, harmful as it has been to practically everything he’s touched so far, is now crossing a new threshold with his mismanagement of the current health crisis: The inability of this man to separate his own interests from those of the people he pledged to represent is nothing new, but the current situation places his failure in sharp relief and transcends “stupid is as stupid does,” reminding us that the worst kind of stupid is the stupid things people do that endanger other peoples’ lives.

Hopefully, the spread of the virus responsible health officials fear might occur in our country will be limited in scope and duration: If not, it could provide a much hoped-for “tipping point” that raises public awareness of the very real danger inherent in having a vision-challenged and dimwitted fool like the current president in charge of the country.

Tim Konrad