There are a few bright spots. For the first time in months, there were no Covid-19 deaths in New York City in a 24-hour period, a moment of deliverance that Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio called "striking and moving." Massachusetts announced that its seven-day average of positive tests had fallen to 1.7% -- down 94% since mid-April.
The lesson for the states now in the center of the storm -- that jumped ahead of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on safe reopening -- are sobering. New York and Massachusetts bought what may still be only a temporary truce with the coronavirus by weeks of lockdowns and a strict reopening process that waited for the curve of infections to be properly suppressed before restrictions were lifted. Even now, there's no guarantee the virus won't return at dangerous levels when normal life picks up.
None of this seems to have filtered through to Trump. As always, the President was fixated on what latest developments meant for him -- especially as he rammed home his demand for all children to get back to school despite having no plan for how to make their return safe.
In a fresh sign of self-absorption on Monday, he turned perhaps the most acute current social complication of the pandemic into a charge that his political enemies wanted to keep kids stuck at home to hurt him.
"I think they think they'll do better if they can keep the schools closed in the election. I don't think it's going to help them, frankly, but I think they feel that by keeping schools closed, that's a bad thing for the country and, therefore, that's a good thing for them," Trump said.
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