In the fall of 2009, I was caring for my beloved Aunt Mary, who raised me and who was dying of the effects of her dementia, exacerbated by disastrous hip revision surgery at a local hospital. Around that time, the medical establishment had released new guidelines for breast cancer screening, stating that women who were young and healthy did not have to have a mammogram every year. The reaction was swift and merciless, with women’s groups denouncing the shift as jeopardizing women’s health.
I remember talking then to a nurse who was upset at the public outcry. Didn’t people understand this was a good thing? she wondered. I told her something I’ve often thought about: To win public opinion, you have to get out in front of a story. He who controls the narrative has the power.
Whatever you may think of President Donald J. Trump and his politics — and I hold neither in esteem — you cannot deny that he has spun a narrative of grievance and entitlement that has appealed to many — white nationalists terrified of whites becoming a majority-minority; working class stiffs dreaming of wealth vicariously; small business owners and corporate executives alike who always have their hands out for tax breaks, deregulation and incentives they never pass along to their employees; and rich cronies who are proof of the adage “Show me a great fortune and I’ll show you a great crime.” (Bernie Sanders has a similar narrative appeal for the working class, only his boogeyman is Wall Street instead of the cultural elite — a message that seems to be effective, despite the blip of Joe Biden’s decisive victory in the South Carolina primary yesterday.)
Now, however, the Narrator in Chief has come up against a narrative he cannot control — the coronavirus. For one thing, like other viruses, it’s amorphous, within and without simultaneously; worldwide and growing wider. For another, it plays to one of Trump’s weaknesses, his inability to connect the dots intellectually. For a third, it attacks his Achilles’ heel. He’s a narcissist, and a narcissist has no empathy.
It’s no surprise that the Dow is down 4,000 points. Analysts point to virus fears. But this isn’t just about a virus that is disrupting the workplace, hitting manufacturing and service sectors alike. This is about a market reacting to the realization that we are rudderless, with Trump heretofore more concerned about himself and how the virus and the market are reflecting on him than he is about public health. His appointment of Vice President Mike Pence, who looked like a deer caught in the headlights at the announcement, also inspired little confidence as Pence, a homophobe, exacerbated H.I.V. as governor of Indiana and seemingly didn’t understand even the proven link between smoking and lung cancer.
The muzzling of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is also troubling. Now more than ever we need to hear from all our experts.
But we may have reached a turning point with the announcement of the first American fatality — a high-risk male patient in his 50s out of Washington state whom Trump described as “a wonderful woman.” Nonetheless, he seemed chastened at the rare Saturday press conference yesterday, no longer calling the virus a Democratic and media hoax designed to stymie the markets and him. (Hey, you claim the stock market’s rise, you own the fall.) Pence, too, seemed transformed, rightly pointing out that masks are for the sick and health professionals. They help if you have the flu but not with this virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is allowing states to conduct their own tests for the virus, which should speed up identification — crucial in a disease with a long incubation period (two weeks). It will also free up a backlogged CDC to help those states that may need it more than others.
So we seem to be moving in the right direction — finally. But how will the markets react tomorrow? (The Dow was down below 25,000 but finished at 25, 409.36 Friday.) And will this be an opening, as The New York Times’ columnist Maureen Dowd wonders, for “Wall Street bad, health care for all” Bernie Sanders, much as the Great Recession provided an opportunity for subsequent President Barack Obama?
What an irony if Trump — whose germophobia goes out the window when it comes to having unprotected sex with porno stars and Playboy models — should be brought down by a bug.