Wednesday evening my wife and I listened live to President Trump address the nation on what we should do to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Among his recommendations were to follow the White House guidelines on social distancing. The next day I received a reminder from my county GOP not to miss the Patriot’s Dinner event, along with an encouragement to bring friends and family.

Perplexed by my local GOP’s response to the President’s speech, I Googled “White House guidelines on social distancing.” Nothing on page one, or page two, or page three.

I then went directly to the White House web site. Nope—no reference to any guidance on “social distancing.” I assumed it had to be there someplace. After all, the President of the United States had just addressed the nation. He specifically instructed us to follow those guidelines. Yet amidst a worldwide pandemic, the only information I could find among the 33 links on the White House web site was a one-sentence reference found in a link to a CDC document that stated we should, “Put distance between yourself and other people if COVID-19 is spreading in your community.” Just put a little distance between you and the next person—but only if you think the virus is “spreading.”

It reminded me of the movie “Cool Hand Luke”, when the warden said to the assembled prisoners, after striking down Paul Newman’s character, Luke Jackson, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

As to protecting the elderly, the President reassured us that for the vast majority of Americans the risk is “very, very, low,” and then told the elderly to be “very, very, careful,” without telling them what that means. No wonder the next day my wife spotted an elderly woman in the Albertson’s grocery store, driving down the frozen food section while breathing through a portable oxygen tank. Left to herself to define what “very, very careful,” means, my wife suggested to the woman that she not be in the grocery store. The lady snapped back about people needing to mind their own business, apparently having a different definition of “very, very, careful.”

The President also reassured us by stating that his Administration was working with communities to limit large gatherings. But still today every concert planner, sports league, university president, transit authority, nursing home director, mayor, and governor, is left on their own to Google their way into making decisions that will decide whether tens of millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans become infected.

As a final irony, the President has required that deliberations among staff and the CDC remain classified. We can only presume that somewhere in those classified documents are definitions to phrases like “very, very, careful,” “spreading,” and how much distance exactly we’re supposed to keep from one another. All of which would be almost comical if lives were not at risk. What the President is discovering is that offering tax cuts and lower interest rates is easy. But great leadership means just that—leading. Even when the decisions that are right for the country are unpopular.

The good news in all this is that my daughter just called to tell me she’s flying from California to Colorado one way for only $29. Apparently, the airlines are discounting fares to encourage people to travel around the country. Without question, “This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.