As the impact of coronavirus grows, politics has not waned. Suffice it to say, none of this is helpful. And all of it is designed to polarize the country at a time we require concerted action.

Take, for example, the current Congressional negotiations over coronavirus appropriations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has packed her House bill with priorities having little or nothing to do with coronavirus. White House officials told The Daily Caller that Pelosi pushed for $1 billion to “reimburse laboratory claims,” which would not include barriers to funding for abortion clinics in the future – thus burying open-ended funding for abortion in a bill designed to save lives.

Pelosi’s bill would also include mandatory paid sick leave forced on private businesses – not as a temporary measure, but permanently. As Billy Binion of Reason points out, “businesses would be federally required to provide seven days of paid sick leave – with or without a pandemic.” In fact, the bill includes language that mandates paid sick leave “due to an instance pertaining to stalking, domestic violence, or sexual assault.”

Then there is former Vice President Joe Biden, who took the opportunity of coronavirus’ spread to make a speech laying out what his priorities would be as president. That speech was certainly an easy putt: all Biden had to do was point to Trump’s failures, then suggest that he could singlehandedly fix those failures without any practical specifics. And that’s precisely what Biden did: slam Trump, while providing no path toward the accomplishment of his wish list.

It was a foregone conclusion that Biden would slam Trump for being “overly dismissive” in the early days of the pandemic; it was a politically polarizing move to slam Trump for labeling COVID-19 a “foreign virus,” which it clearly is. It was similarly polarizing to slam the Trump administration’s decision to ban travel from Europe – a move that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases called “compelling,” adding, “Of the 35 or more states that have infections, 30 of them now, most recently, have gotten them from a travel related case from that region.”

Biden nonetheless stated, “banning all travel from Europe or any other part of the world may slow it, but as we’ve seen it will not stop it.” Technically true, but irrelevant: nothing will stop coronavirus now. The only question is how to flatten out the growth curve.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Congress, “The real risk in general right now, and this is why the president took the action he did last night, within the world now over 70 percent of the new cases are linked to Europe. Europe is the new China, and that’s why the president made those statements.”

And Biden naturally had words for Trump’s handling of the government overall:

Public fears are being compounded by pervasive lack of trust in this president, fueled by adversarial relationships with the truth that he continues to have. Our government’s ability to respond effectively has been undermined by hollowing out our agencies and disparagement of science and our ability to drive a global response is dramatically, dramatically undercut by the damage Trump has done to our credibility and our relationships around the world. We have to get to work immediately to dig ourselves out of this hole. And that’s why today we will combat and overcome the coronavirus.

This isn’t exactly rally around the flag type stuff. And no matter what Biden says about his strategy for overcoming coronavirus, he isn’t the president, and his words have no actual impact.

When Biden says, “anyone who needs to be tested based on medical guidance should be tested at no charge, at no charge,” he lays forth no plan for how these tests will be produced or distributed. When Biden explains that “we should make every person in a nursing home available for testing,” he offers no pathway toward realization of that goal. When Biden demands that “we need to surge our capacity to both prevent and treat the coronavirus and prepare our hospitals to deal with this influx of those needing care,” he offers no actual strategy for realization of that goal.

All of which means he’s playing politics. It’s obvious that we need more ICU beds, more testing kits, more funding for those who will be economically devastated by the sudden stop in the economy. But Biden’s words don’t accomplish any of that. They’re designed to elect him president. They very well might accomplish that goal.

In the meantime, Americans will grow more panicked, less trusting of authorities, more likely to act irrationally. Some of that is on Trump and his slapdash response to the crisis, obviously. A lot of it is due to a media and Democratic Party that aren’t looking to come together across the aisle and enact solutions on behalf of the American people.