For the last month in New York, the self-care rules of lockdown have lurched wildly as we figure out how to be at home without going mad. In my house, we’ve been through schedules, no schedules, dressing in the morning, not dressing in the morning, hours of school work to no school work. As soon as we get used to one thing, it becomes oppressive and we unravel and start again. In all of this, however, there has been one, consistent tenet of self-preservation: avoid watching Donald Trump at his White House briefings.

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It’s not always possible. He’s always on, somewhere, pecking the air with his hands, calling reporters who asks tough questions “loud mouths” and lashing out, before retreating into reflexive self-praise. It is strange to remember a time, before the virus, when some aspect of these performances was compelling, the car-crash quality of “what’s this guy going to say next?” so hard to pull away from. Now, it’s impossible to watch Trump without jump-starting a sense of physical revulsion so extreme it’s like a prelude to violence.

And yet. The decision to tune out the president in times like these also feels like a dereliction of duty. We know by now there will never be a gotcha moment with Trump; that however aggressive or canny a reporter’s questioning, he’ll never concede to the slightest error. The only satisfaction we’ll get is to watch aspects of what, until recently, has been the criminally tame White House press corps finally adapt their approach to get under his skin; keep to one question, keep it short, push back when he blathers and, when he stands down one reporter, ensure the mic is passed back to her by another.

His need for attention is so vast and his self-awareness so stunted that he keeps coming out

None of it lands. But it has been instructive to watch Trump slide into meltdown practically every day as these tactics unhinge him. His need for attention is so vast and his self-awareness so stunted, that he keeps coming out, standing at the podium for what feel like Fidel Castro stretches of time, apparently untroubled by the possibility that his daily performance is the most terrifying aspect of the whole crisis.

Actually there is one, even more terrifying aspect of Trump’s briefings, which is that, with his uncanny ability to play on the fears and prejudices of his base, nothing he has done will undermine his popularity. Why would it? The joke at election time was this guy’s going to get us all killed, and now a version of that prediction is actually coming to pass, still one imagines his blame-shifting to the Chinese, or the World Health Organization, or Europe, or the Democrats, will be accepted by the same people who shrugged off all his other lunatic assessments.

Joe Biden, a daffy centrist with what appeared, during the primary debates, to be a nasty temper, poses a serious threat to Trump to the extent that he can’t reduce him to a single minority category. In his way, Biden, with his lounge-singer swagger and air of total self-confidence, is as Teflon-coated as Trump. He doesn’t sweat the details, is peevish when challenged and has been known to talk absolute garbage – all expressions, to a greater or lesser degree, of the licence give to certain white men in politics. At this stage, the stakes are so high that all of this has to be swallowed or parked for better times. All that matters is getting Trump off the podium.

• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist