Two posts in retrospect

I spent a little time today going through recent OCA posts in Pinboard, having finally decided that I had to tag some of them with pandemic. Two of those posts look newly strange:

~ in a March 6 post, I linked to a Borowitz Report citing Donald Trump* as “the source of the community spread of coronavirus misinformation throughout the United States.” That was satire. And now in October, the Cornell Alliance for Science has identified Trump* as the “single largest driver” of misinformation about COVID-19.

~ In a March 9 post about Trump*’s paranoia and magical thinking, I quoted the journalist Gabriel Sherman:

Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me.

Given such dark imaginings, can we rule out the possibility that Trump* might have been hoping, even if vaguely, to infect Joe Biden at last week’s debate? I don’t think so.