Trump clearly finds his role as “wartime president” to be dull and dreary, and he wants to be done with it. His end game with the virus seems to work something like this:
1. A fairly relaxed regime of social distancing should be applied for a limited timeframe to bend the curve. Government assistance deals with any short term problems.
2. Deus ex machina! The virus just goes away with the summer heat, or a vaccine magically appears, or we develop herd immunity at the speed of light, or something.
3. Social distancing is eliminated. The economy comes roaring back by the early summer. It’s morning in America! Party like it’s 2019!
4. Trump wins in November!
This is a fantasy, of course. There will be no miracle solution in a few months. Large segments of the public will be demoralized by deaths, unemployment, lost investments, and crippled businesses, and the promised government assistance will be too little, too late for most; the likelihood of a V-shaped recovery driven by consumer demand is pretty small. Without a sensible plan to deal with subsequent waves of infection, the virus will come back again, and again. Recovery will be irregular and halting.
What would a fair and plausible end game look like? I will address that in a future post.