In two days both Donald Trump and Melania Trump “gave in” to the use of the mask. The first for a visit to the Walter Reed military hospital while the second for a visit to the Mary Elizabeth House, a reception facility for single mothers and their children.
A choice, that of wearing masks, that arrives in the days when the United States begins to register an exponential and record increase in cases again, with a real pandemic wave that is moving across the territory, registering real peaks of infections of tens of thousands of people.
A choice of common sense and good health that POTUS wanted to “define” as due not so much for the virus as for the visit to the hospital but that, in fact, was remarked on by the First Lady. But above all an admission of a problem hitherto denied that comes indirectly but very clearly: if Donald Trump was not convinced of the usefulness of the masks, if what we witnessed was a one-off, if, in short, it was a simple circumstance linked to the contingency, what sense would it have to wear a mask specially customized with the Presidential logo (moreover a unique worldwide where all the leaders preferred the canonical white masks).
A decision that has, as the New York Times points out, an impact of very strong anticlimax and which comes with a decidedly alienating timing. Hopefully, it’s just the beginning of a new chapter in the US pandemic management.