BREAKING NEWS: Magic unrealism meets a deadly plague

Following the advice of President Donald Trump, states in the Sunbelt opened their economy in the faces of a growing pandemic. How is that going? Let us look at the facts.

Here are the number of cases on per day, June 1 and July 1, respectively, in three states that by early June were rapidly opening their beaches, restaurants, bars, and other businesses and that did not require protective masks. They are the ones that had the biggest increase in cases in June.

In a single month, cases reported daily increased by multiples of almost ten in Florida and eight in Texas. In Georgia, cases merely tripled.

Given that the federal government, as embodied in the Trump administration, has essentially decided to wash its hands of the problem, a big portion of the blame falls on the governors. The biggest loser in this game of gambling with people’s lives and health to create an illusion of economic growth for electoral purposes is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. It is no coincidence that DeSantis is an abject Trump toady.

As cases in Florida continue to rise in early July, DeSantis has said that he won’t turn back on reopening. Little wonder that, in my own informal research in my Miami neighborhood, most people are still not wearing masks. Negligence at the top, a cavalier attitude among supposed leaders, breeds negligence and cavalier attitudes among the people. Spiking cases augur more deaths down the road. Like the title of one of García Márquez’s novel, we are living within a chronicle of announced deaths under a president whose attitude regarding the plague might be describe as magical unrealism.