At present, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 are on track to have their worst weekly performances since the 2008 financial crisis, and unless you’ve been quarantined without access to internet, TV, or newspapers, you probably know why. Panicked over the spreading coronavirus, investors have received a never-ending parade of bad news, beginning with the president’s rosy, divorced-from-reality claims that the disease is nothing to worry about—as his Centers for Disease Control said the exact opposite—, followed by: a press conference that somehow made people more terrified than they already were, the appointment of Mike “I helped cause an HIV outbreak in Indiana” Pence to lead the government effort to stop this thing, the news that health officials have been gagged from speaking about it without Pence’s approval, and a whistleblower complaint suggesting that the administration doesn’t have an earthly clue what it’s doing. Then on Friday, World Health Organization officials announced that they were increasing the risk assessment of the virus, now in at least 56 countries, to “very high,” saying, “We are on the highest level of alert or highest level of risk assessment in terms of spread and in terms of impact. This is a reality check for every government on the planet: Wake up. Get ready. This virus may be on its way and you need to be ready. You have a duty to your citizens, you have a duty to the world to be ready.”

In light of such dire warnings, what has Donald Trump been up to of late? Well, on Thursday, he spent 45 minutes meeting with the cast and crew working on a low-budget play about the “deep state”: