The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid

by Lawrence Wright

On March 6, on his way to play golf at his resort in Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, the president stopped off at CDC headquarters in Atlanta. There were no more dire warnings from this quarter; the CDC was now a captive agency. The object of the president’s visit was to publicize the fact that the revised CDC test was finally ready. The president claimed to feel right at home in the laboratory because of his innate understanding of medicine. “My uncle was a great person,” he said. “He taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump.*1 I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”