The descent:
- Catastrophically fumble the response to a pandemic.
- Exacerbate with delay and denial.
- Chaotically shut down travel, creating a petri dish of thousands of last-minute traveller.
- Withhold medical help to regions whose leaders criticize him.
- Threaten to disable those regions, above all other equal targets, with a quarantine.
- Spread the disease even further by hinting at a quarantine and prompting people to flee.
The more detailed assessments:
@blakesmustache 7:26 AM, 30 Mar 2020 | Thread: A Timeline Showing Trump’s Disastrous Handling of the Coronavirus Pandemic (Thread reader aggregation)
A thorough, 30 or 40 tweet thread with linked references, that starts on 11 Jan 2017 with a warning by Fauci of the certainty of a pandemic, to 30 Mar 2020 when Trump feigns ignorance of states’ needs for tests and supplies.
Leadership.
11 to 100,000: What went wrong with coronavirus testing in the U.S. from Washington Post, 30 Mar 2020
A key first step is testing (know where the virus is and isn’t). However:
On Jan. 31, Azar declared a “public health emergency,” [which] triggered emergency testing protocols, which increased restrictions on which labs could make a coronavirus test.
Lack of testing meant ignorance of severity, and Trump pushing a rosy outlook (and general avoidance of the issue) meant no pressure to determine the severity.
[By 16 Feb, the US performed] roughly 2.4 tests per million people in the United States. In contrast, South Korea, which found its first case on the same day as the United States, had tested nearly 8,000 people, or 154.7 tests per million.
HHS Secretary Azar was handcuffed by being forced to work with soon-to-be-fired Mulvaney. An unstable, ever-revolving cabinet meant no continuity of leadership. Poor coordination between agencies assured no cohesive plan (even if Trump would have shown any leadership with a cohesive plan).
24 Feb – Still no widespread testing, Trump declared “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” Then “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” Not wrong, but a useless bromide.
5 Mar – 3,099 tests, 9.5 tests per million. South Korea at 3,682 tests per million. Again, they were working within the same timeline.
Trip to CVS today was irritating. People alone in every isle–which is good separation, but impossible to navigate–but also store and sidewalk people who just don’t care. As Lisa says: every day out is a reset of the 14 days.
Sad stories of the poor getting poorer, more unemployed, and just hopeless. Bots and MAGA idiots heavy on Twitter denying that there’s an issue by taking pictures of hospitals that aren’t overloaded. Ignoring the obvious. Central Park is a triage hospital; video from The Bronx of the dead being forklifted into refrigerated trucks; another hospital, wisely, backing the semi up to the loading dock, hiding the transport of bodies to storage.
A few days back I started a new orchestral work.
