It's almost like the United States has no President - we are a rudderless ship heading for a major disaster. Good luck everyone!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2014
David Frum, The Atlantic, March 11, 2020:
The Worst Outcome
At every turn, President Trump's policy regarding coronavirus has unfolded as if guided by one rule: How can I make this crisis worse?
Presidents are not all-powerful, especially not in the case of pandemic disease. There are limits to what they can do, for good or ill. But within those limits, at every juncture, Trump's actions have ensured the worst possible outcomes. The worst outcome for public health. The worst outcome for the American economy. The worst outcome for American global leadership.
Trump's Oval Office speech of March 11 was the worst action yet in a string of bad actions.
Here are the things the president did not do in that speech.
He offered no guidance or policy on how to prevent the spread of the disease inside the United States. Should your town cancel its St. Patrick's Day parade? What about theatrical productions and sporting events? Classes at schools and colleges? Nothing.
He offered no explanation of what went wrong with the U.S. testing system, nor any assurance of when testing would become more widely available. His own previous promises of testing for anyone who needs it have been exploded as false. So what is true? Nothing.
Layoffs are coming, probably on a very large scale, as travel collapses and people hunker down at home. Any word for those about to lose their jobs? Only the vaguest indication that something might be announced sometime soon.
It's good to hear that there will be no co-pays on the tests nobody seems able to get. What about other health-care coverage? Any word on that? Nothing.
The financial markets have plunged into a 2008-style crash, auguring a recession, perhaps a severe one. The Trump administration has had almost two months to think about this crisis. It has trial-ballooned some ideas. But, of course, fiscal policy would require assent from the House of Representatives. Trump is still pouting at Speaker Nancy Pelosi. So—aside from some preposterously unconvincing happy talk about the economy—again: nothing.
There was one something in the speech: a ban on travel from Europe, but not the United Kingdom. It's a classic Trump formulation. It seeks to protect America by erecting a wall against the world, without thinking very hard how or whether the wall can work. The disease is already here. The numbers only look low because of our prior failure to provide adequate testing. They will not look low even four days from now. And those infected with the virus can travel from other countries and on other routes. Trump himself has already met some.
The travel ban is an act of panic. Financial futures began crashing even as Trump was talking, perhaps shocked by his lack of an economic plan, perhaps aghast at his latest attack on world trade. ... Among other things, the ban represents one more refutation by Trump of any idea of collective security against collective threats. While China offers medical assistance to Italy, he wants to sever ties to former friends—isolating America and abandoning the world.
This crisis is not of Trump's making. What he is responsible for is his failure to respond promptly, and then his perverse and counterproductive choice of how to respond when action could be avoided no longer. Trump, in his speech, pleaded for an end to finger-pointing. It's a strange thing for this president of all presidents to say. No American president, and precious few American politicians, have ever pointed so many fingers or hurled so much abuse as Donald Trump. What he means, of course, is: Don't hold me to account for the things I did.
But he did do them, and he owns responsibility for those things. He cannot escape it, and he will not escape it.
More people will get sick because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. More people will suffer the financial hardship of sickness because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. The medical crisis will arrive faster and last longer than if somebody else were in charge. So, too, the economic crisis. More people will lose their jobs than if somebody else were in charge. More businesses will be pushed into bankruptcy than if somebody else were in charge. More savers will lose more savings than if somebody else were in charge. The damage to America's global leadership will be greater than if somebody else were in charge.
There is always something malign in Trump's incompetence. He has no care or concern for others; he cannot absorb the trouble and suffering of others as real. He monotones his way through words of love and compassion, but those words plainly have no content or meaning for him. The only thing that is real is his squalid vanity. This virus threatens to pierce that vanity, so he denied it as long as he could. What he refuses to acknowledge cannot be real, can it?
And even now that he has acknowledged the crisis, he still cannot act, because he does not know what to do. His only goal now is to shove blame onto others. Americans have to face the fact that in the grip of this pandemic, the Oval Office is for all practical purposes as empty as the glazed eyes of the man who spoke from that office tonight.
Fun fact about that selective travel ban:
Trump's new European travel restrictions have a convenient side effect: They exempt nations where three Trump-owned golf resorts are located.Trump was asked why the UK is exempt from the ban:
It's got the border. It's got very strong borders. And they're doing a very good job. They don't have much infection at this point.Actually, the UK has among the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases in region - and its Health Minister has tested positive for the coronavirus.
Turning to
The president's gotten the country healthy, healthy enough of course to withstand this, and even to lead the way in overcoming it.CNN: "Trump has littered his public remarks on the life-and-death subject with false, misleading and dubious claims. And he has been joined, on occasion, by senior members of his administration. We've counted 28 different ways the President and his team have been inaccurate."
February 10: Trump says without evidence that the coronavirus "dies with the hotter weather"
Facts First: Experts were not saying this. They were saying, rather, that it was too soon to know how the coronavirus would respond to changing weather. ...
February 24: Trump baselessly claims the situation is "under control"
Facts First: [B]y any reasonable definition, the coronavirus was not under control in the US -- and there was no way for the government to fully understand how dire the problem was given how few Americans were being tested. There were 53 confirmed cases and no deaths on the day of Trump's tweet; as of March 11, there were more than 1,000 cases and 31 deaths.
February 25 (and March 6 and 7): A senior White House official falsely claims the virus has been "contained"
Facts First: Experts said the US has not come close to containing the coronavirus. They also said the small number of tests conducted in the United States had prevented the government from getting an accurate picture of how widespread the virus truly is. "In the US it is the opposite of contained," said Harvard University epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch, director of Harvard's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. "It is spreading so efficiently in so many places that it may be difficult to stop."
February 25-26: Trump falsely claims Ebola mortality was "a virtual 100%"
Facts First: While the Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016 certainly had a much higher death rate than the coronavirus, the Ebola rate was never "virtually 100%"; for the entire epidemic, it was about 40% overall in the three African countries at the center of the situation. It was higher in the early stages of the outbreak, but it was never true that every infected person "disintegrated." ... As of mid-September 2014, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers reported that there was an estimated fatality rate of 70.8%. ... Julie Fischer, associate research professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Georgetown University and director of the Elizabeth R. Griffin Program: "It was never 100%. That is just patently untrue."
February 25: Trump falsely claims "nobody had ever even heard of Ebola" in 2014
Facts First: Ebola was discovered in 1976. It had been the subject of considerable media coverage in the next three decades, not to mention scientific study.
February 26: Trump wrongly says the coronavirus "is a flu"
Facts First: [E]xperts have emphasized that the coronavirus is, simply, not the flu. They are different viruses with different characteristics, though they share symptoms, and the coronavirus has a higher mortality rate. ... [T]he coronavirus "causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza". ... [T]he behavior of the flu over the course of a year is pretty well-understood, while the behavior of the coronavirus over time is not yet known. And while there are flu vaccines available, there is no vaccine available for the coronavirus (and no proven treatment).
February 26: Trump baselessly predicts the number of US cases is "going very substantially down" to "close to zero"
Facts First: Clearly, the number of US cases and deaths was going up, not down. ... Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat said at the same press conference that they expected "more cases." There were 60 total cases in the US on the day Trump spoke here.
February 26: Trump wrongly says the flu death rate is "much higher" than Dr. Sanjay Gupta said
Facts First: Gupta was right, Trump was wrong. Even if Trump meant that the flu has a "much higher" fatality rate than 0.1% -- rather than meaning that the flu's mortality rate is "much higher" than that of the novel coronavirus -- he was wrong, according to Fauci, other experts and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
February 27: Trump baselessly hints at a "miracle"
Facts First: There was no apparent basis for Trump's claim that the virus will miraculously "disappear." (He did immediately soften the claim by saying "nobody really knows," but still.)
February 28: Trump baselessly hints at an immigration link to the virus
Facts First: Prominent Democrats do not support "open borders," literally unrestricted migration. Aside from that, though, there was no evidence from the coronavirus situation that Democrats' preferred immigration policies would be harmful to Americans' health. There was no known US case in which someone brought the virus to the US while immigrating or making an asylum claim.
February 29: Trump exaggerates Tim Cook's comments about Apple and China
Facts First: Trump was overstating what Cook told Fox Business. Cook had not said Apple's production in China was "back to normal" or that plants in China were in "full operation." Rather, he said that plants in China were "getting back to normal."
March 1: Azar wrongly says 3,600 people have been tested
Facts First: Politico reported: "Two days later, CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat told the Senate health committee that her agency had tested more than 3,000 specimens taken from roughly 500 people — a fraction of what Azar claimed."
March 2: Trump falsely claims "nobody knew" the number of US flu deaths
Facts First: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes annual estimates on its website. The CDC estimates that between 12,000 and 61,000 people have died in the US in each flu season between 2010-2011 and 2018-2019; its preliminary figure for 2018-2019 is 34,157 deaths.
March 2: Trump says a vaccine is coming "relatively soon"
Facts First: Trump did not mention that Fauci had told him earlier that day that a vaccine was "a year to a year and a half" away.
March 4: Trump falsely claims Obama impeded testing
Facts First: There is no Obama-era decision or rule that impeded coronavirus testing. The Obama administration did put forward a draft proposal related to lab testing, but it was never implemented.
March 4: Trump wrongly says as many as 100,000 people died of the flu in 1990
Facts First: While the 1989-1990 flu season was considered bad at the time -- the CDC declared that it was an epidemic -- Trump greatly overstated the number of deaths. A CDC analysis in 2010 estimated that there were 26,582 deaths from the seasonal flu in 1989-1990.
March 4: Trump says "the borders are automatically shut down"
Facts First: Trump did not explain what he meant by "the borders are automatically shut down." Trump's travel restrictions on China do not constitute a complete border closure even on China in particular.
Trump's China policy prohibits entry into the US by non-Americans who have been in China within 14 days -- but it makes exceptions for immediate family members of American citizens and permanent residents. And American citizens themselves are free to go back and forth.
March 4: Trump says he believes there was a coronavirus death in New York, though there hadn't been one
Facts First: There had not been any New York deaths attributed to the coronavirus at the time. (There still had not been any as of the morning of March 11, seven days later.)
March 4: Trump falsely claims the Obama administration "didn't do anything" about H1N1
Facts First: On April 26, 2009, less than two weeks after the first US cases of H1N1 were confirmed, the Obama administration declared a public health emergency. Two days later, the Obama administration made an initial $1.5 billion funding request to Congress. (Congress ultimately allocated $7.7 billion). In October 2009, Obama declared a national emergency to allow hospitals more flexibility for a possible flood of H1N1 patients.
March 5: Trump misleadingly describes a Gallup poll
Facts First: The Gallup poll was positive for Trump ... But it was not a poll about how the administration had handled the situation: the poll asked about confidence in the federal government's future acts, not about its actual work to date.
March 5: Trump wrongly claims the virus only hit the US "three weeks ago"
Facts First: The US had its first confirmed case of the coronavirus on January 21, more than six weeks before Trump spoke here.
March 6: Azar wrongly claims there is no test shortage
Facts First: Vice President Mike Pence had said the day prior: "We don't have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward." Doctors, health authorities and elected officials in various locations around the country indeed said they did not have enough tests.
March 6: As the number of cases and deaths in Italy rises, Trump says the number is "getting much better"
Facts First: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in Italy was continuing to increase at the time Trump made this comment. As of Saturday, March 7, the day after Trump spoke here, Italy had 5,883 confirmed cases and 233 deaths; as of Monday, March 9, there were 9,172 cases and 463 deaths. (The Italian government announced a national lockdown on Monday.)
March 6: Trump falsely claims anybody can get tested if they want
Facts First: That wasn't true. There were an insufficient number of tests available, as Pence said the day prior, and Americans could not get tested simply because they wanted to get tested. "You may not get a test unless a doctor or public health official prescribes a test," Azar said the day after Trump's remark.
March 6: Trump exaggerates the number of people on the Grand Princess cruise ship
Facts First: Trump was overstating the numbers. There were 3,533 people aboard the Grand Princess: 2,422 guests and 1,111 crew members.
March 6: Trump falsely says US coronavirus numbers "are lower than just about anybody"
Facts First: Trump was exaggerating. The US did have fewer confirmed coronavirus cases than some countries, including China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, France and Germany. But it had more confirmed cases than big-population countries like India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Russia and Nigeria, plus neighbors Mexico and Canada, plus many other high-income countries. In addition, the number of confirmed cases is dependent on how many people are tested. The US was conducting fewer tests than some countries with much smaller populations.
March 6: Trump baselessly muses that "maybe" the coronavirus improved US jobs numbers
Facts First: We can't definitively call this false, but there's no evidence to back it up.
March 9: Pence says Trump's "priority" was getting Americans off the ship
Facts First: Trump said three days prior to this Pence claim that he wanted passengers to stay on the ship so that "the numbers" of US coronavirus cases would stay low.
That moment C-SPAN didn’t realize they were broadcasting still.... pic.twitter.com/eoO2pgzCQt— Burt Macklin (@knoweyedentity) March 12, 2020
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