Trump confronts a new form of risk in Covid-19, more personal and perilous

If anything, the toll of the virus, on Mr. Trump and his nation, has reinforced how little his life of chance-taking had prepared him for the cold math of infectious disease

President Trump’s relationship to risk has often come down to an abiding self-belief: It will all probably work out for him because it generally has.

“Whatever happens, happens,” he said in 1991, declaring himself a “great fatalist” as his business fortunes wobbled.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said of North Korean nuclear diplomacy two years ago, blithely predicting that all would be fine.

“Risk plays a part in everything we do,” he advised in one of his pre-presidential how-to books. “I could get hit by a bus while I am crossing the street. Things happen.”

Yet the things that have happened this time —