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I heard a story on the radio yesterday morning about a woman who said she isn’t taking her sick children to gatherings these days because of the coronavirus; she said she didn’t want to “freak people out” when they noticed her kids exhibiting signs of illness. This illustrates the lack of awareness many people demonstrate concerning the transmissibility of viruses and other pathogens. If this woman understood that exposing people to her sick children might help them spread whatever pathogen they’re carrying to others, she would hopefully think twice about doing so.

When I was still working for a government human services agency a few years ago fellow co-workers would often come to work sick despite signs on the bathroom walls advising them to stay home if they were symptomatic. To my co-workers’ credit, the workload in our department was so onerous that missing work meant falling hopelessly behind. Nonetheless, their behavior demonstrated the same lack of awareness as the woman mentioned above.

This lack of concern was evident at an art show reception my wife and I attended this past weekend; everyone wanted to either hug or shake hands.  When I responded with an elbow bump, my gesture was met by some with amusement.

Yesterday I went to see a local chiropractor whose incautious attitude toward the coronavirus’s transmissibility was aptly demonstrated. When I asked him what precautions he was taking to protect his patients from infection, my request was met with skepticism and mild annoyance at his having to wipe down the area of the face cradle not covered by the rolled paper masking. I got the feeling the doctor thought, for whatever reason, that my request was unreasonable.

The failure of people working in the health care sector to follow a proper hygiene regimen, especially during an epidemic, is surprising and alarming: The public’s confusion over how to maintain social distancing is less surprising, considering the mixed messaging on the subject currently emanating from the White House. In the words of Nicholas Kristof, writing in the yesterday’s New York Times, “at least Emperor Nero supposedly only fiddled while Rome burned; he didn’t tell the Romans that the fire was no big deal.”

The conflicting messaging vis a vis trump’s reality defying utterances only serves to add to the confusion already present because of the dearth of meaningful information the government has provided so far.

The failure of the trump administration to secure adequate numbers of test kits has created a situation in which we are forced to play Chinese Roulette with our lives. Because of the government’s inability to test those who have been exposed, we have no idea the actual extent or spread of the virus. That means unknown numbers of people who may have been exposed may be unwittingly spreading the contagion to others without any means of tracking its spread.

If the epidemic spreads like many predictions indicate, the president will, in effect, be guilty of manslaughter on a large scale, as will his accomplices in the Senate who failed, when they had the opportunity, to remove this menace from office.

Were the Founding Fathers to somehow see the tragedy unfolding today in the nation’s capital, they would be extremely skeptical over the odds their great experiment in self-government will endure.

Tim Konrad