In the wake of Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, some will respond with the politically correct response and wish him a speedy recovery. Others will talk about karma: He got what he deserved.

But sympathy isn’t the point here. Sympathy hasn’t saved 209,000 lives in this country in the face of the continued efforts, led by Trump, to downplay the virus. Neither has karma. Only one thing could have saved them.

A sober, intelligent, conscientious response.

That’s the one thing we haven’t had in this country — thanks to a cavalier attitude by Trump and his supporters toward wearing masks, social distancing, and taking other precautions recommended by doctors.   

Trump has repeatedly disparaged the advice of experts in dealing with this disease, just as he’s dismissed the advice of experts on Russia, climate change, and virtually everything else. His arrogance in thinking he knows better than the experts is the cause of this. It’s not karma. Frankly, it’s hubris and willful ignorance.

The fact that he’s paying the price isn’t karmic, it’s predictable. This is simple cause and effect. Trump has always believed that he’s immune to consequences. But this proves he isn’t. He’s weathered multiple bankruptcies, scandals, investigations... you name it. But coronavirus isn’t a bank or the U.S. Senate. He couldn’t use financial or political pressure to bring it to heel.

The major tragedy is that his misplaced mantra of positive thinking has put not only himself at risk, but his followers — and anyone with whom they came in contact. He’s held maskless rallies. He’s downplayed the risk of a highly infectious disease that has killed more than a million people and pushed medical facilities to their limits. He’s mocked those who wear masks and pressured those around him in the White House to forgo them.

Like any self-styled messianic figure (“I alone can fix it”), he believes he’s special — and has encouraged his followers to believe that they’re special, too, by association.

If he could behave irresponsibly toward the virus and flout the advice of experts, they believed they could, too. They believed they were immune from consequences, just like he falsely believed he was. And not just the consequences of forgoing masks. The consequences of having white supremacist views. The consequences of misogyny. The consequences of a warped concept of “freedom” that translates as “I’ll do whatever the hell I want, no matter how it affects anyone else.”

Trump’s diagnosis in itself isn’t a tragedy in isolation. It’s part of a larger tragedy he himself has helped create and perpetuate in so many areas of our public life. COVID is a cause for sorrow, but it was long before it hit the president. It’s no more or less a cause for sorrow than it has been for any of the more than 7 million others who have contracted the disease.

The lesson here isn’t karmic, and sympathy won’t help the president or anyone else. The president isn’t immune to COVID, but COVID itself is immune to sympathy. What it isn’t immune to is rational, careful, medically driven precautions.

That’s what was lacking here.

All this could have been prevented, and Trump could have been at the forefront of it. That’s the true and incalculable tragedy.