In what was one of his best intros to the state of our COVID-19 pandemic, Chuck Todd all but called out the Right for their complicity.
Chuck Todd gets the sentiment and tone right
Chuck Todd gets into his very grim analysis immediately.
“Throughout America’s COVID crisis, there has been a parade of grim statistics,” Chuck Todd said. Among them, as of this morning, there have been more than 13.3 million cases and more than 266,000 deaths in the United States alone, with little reason to believe things will improve in the short run.”
Todd then points out an inconvenient truth. In other words, we need to stop patting ourselves on the back and instead recognize we are not who we think we are, a competent nation.
“If there is one statistic that stands out above all the others, it’s this one,” Todd said. “The United States has four percent of the world’s population and somehow has 19 percent of the world’s COVID deaths. This is hardly what people mean by American exceptionalism, and no amount of gainsaying or presidential tweeting that increased testing is somehow to blame can wish away this dubious honor.”
He then points out that our personal behavior is complicit and the disastrous spread of the disease.
“This weekend tens of millions ignored pleas from health experts and some government officials to avoid travel and instead spend time at home with their immediate families,” Todd said. “The result may well be a COVID surge beyond the record numbers we’ve seen.”
Todd then tells us how we got here in the form of questions that repudiates the Right when looked into a bit deeper. It is the classic manner of hitting hard without taking an absolute stance.
“How did we get here?” Todd asks. “Did we lose faith in our government because our government gave us reason to lose faith in it? Was it a decades-long assault on science and objective facts, particularly by some on the right? Was it a fractured media environment that invites people to seek alternative facts that fit their personal worldview?”
He then soft-scolds the people for possibly tiring of the effort to avoid the virus.
“Or are we just fed up, done with months of Zoom meetings,” Todd said. ” And closed stores and kids home from school that we’ve simply had enough, enough that millions feel it’s worth taking a big risk to have a brief sense of normalcy?
At the end of the intro, he made sure to point out the pain of those who do not get a break from the pandemic—the ones who don’t get to fantasize about a better day because they are living it.
“Whatever the cause, the results are clear,” Chuck Todd said. “Millions are being infected, hospitals are near their breaking point, and health care workers are the ones paying the price.”
We must acknowledge the healthcare workers who are struggling to survive. Politics Done Right interviewed an RN at Chicago’s Provident Hospital that we will feature on Monday’s program. These guys are our heroes.