Trump said the coronavirus was like the flu before later saying it wasn't like the flu. He said the Chinese were doing a good job at containment before he said they weren't. He said the Chinese were being transparent before he said they were hiding information.
On Feb. 26 Trump said the number of infections in the U.S. was 15 and would soon be zero. It is now approaching 1.4 million.
That was the day after the CDC's Deborah Messonnier had warned that community spread was likely and that the country needed to prepare. Trump was furious at the effect Dr. Messonnier's warning had on the stock market, and sought to quash it with his own dismissive spin the following day.
A few days after the press conference in which he said cases would
soon be zero, Trump said the disease would disappear "like a miracle."
Trump refused for a while to let a cruise ship off California with infected passengers dock because he liked "the numbers" in the U.S. where they were, which demonstrates that for Trump it's all about PR and appearances. "I like the numbers where they are," Trump said. "I don't need to have the
numbers double because of one ship."
Trump said that coronavirus testing was "going smoothly" at a time when it was hardly going at all. He said anybody who needed a test could get one, when that was definitively not the case. The U.S. response to the virus has been marked by disappointing levels of testing throughout, and even now testing is a good bit below where it needs to be.
In the early going Trump said that Google had almost two thousand engineers working on an application to screen for symptoms and match
individuals to nearby testing sites nation wide, and that it would soon
be available. Google was doing no such thing. Google said it had never had the 1,700 engineers Trump claimed working on such a project. Google's parent company
had been working on a pilot project covering several California counties in
the Silicon Valley area, but not much became of it.
Trump heralded federal agreements with major retailers such as Wal Mart, Walgreens, CVS, and Target to have drive-through testing sites in their parking lots. A month later, NPR found there were a total of eight such sites nation wide. Target's CEO spoke of this initiative in the White House Rose Garden, but no such site was opened at Target.
Trump said he would waive license requirements so doctors could practice
in states with the greatest need, but that's not something he has authority
to do. Medical licensing is a state matter. As we shall see, the president's
misunderstanding of his power, which he frequently suggests is absolute, has
been a recurring theme.
Trump said of the strategic stockpile containing ventilators and PPE that the "cupboard was bare" when the crisis hit, even though he had been in charge of the cupboard for three years.
During that time the government he headed had issued a number of preparedness warnings, which somehow escaped his notice. A simulation by Trump's own HHS conducted last summer found there would be serious shortages of ventilators and PPE, but that finding went unnoticed. So did an extensive Pentagon report on pandemic preparedness which warned of the very same shortages. Here's what Trump did do regarding the cupboard: He allowed the contract for stockpile ventilator maintenance to lapse, resulting in some of them not being operational when they were needed.
Trump said that coronavirus reporting was a "hoax" perpetrated by the media and by Democrats. He routinely picked fights with various governors. He said Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington is "a snake," and referred to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan as "the woman." He said that governors needed to be sufficiently appreciative of the job he was doing.
On March 24 Trump said he hoped the country would open by Easter, and that the churches would be full on that day. No public health expert had indicated that was possible, and it was abundantly clear from the rate of increase of infections and deaths that it wasn't. When Easter arrived daily deaths were over 2,000 and increasing. Almost 30,000 new cases were being confirmed every day.
In an early round-table with drug company executives at the White House, Trump, who misunderstood what was being communicated, continually returned to the boneheaded notion that a vaccine might be available in 2 months, while his expert advisers kept trying to tell him it would be at least 12 to 18 months. Later Trump said he "totally gets" vaccines, that genius runs in his family, and that he should have been a scientist.
Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, warned ominously that the simultaneous occurrence of two epidemics—coronavirus and influenza—in the fall could place a severe strain on the country's health care system. The country's top infectious disease official, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said he was certain the coronavirus would still be with us in the fall. Concurrently, Trump said "just so you understand" the virus might not be "coming back" in the fall.
During the early going when Trump's pandemic task force projected U.S. deaths (over an unspecified time frame) of between 100,000 and 240,000, Trump said that represented success, because Imperial College of London had projected over 2 million deaths if the U.S. took no action at all.
Later Trump said U.S. deaths might hit 50,000 to 60,000 when they were very close to that level already, and climbing steadily. "Now, we’re going toward 50, I’m hearing, or 60,000 people," Trump said on April 20. As of this writing there have been 82,000 deaths.
Back when Trump was still reveling in his low "numbers," he took a gratuitous dig at Barack Obama by pointing out an estimated 12,000 Americans died in
the swine flu pandemic of 2009.
Shortly after seeing a presentation on the effects of substances such as alcohol and bleach on the virus, Trump wondered aloud in a public press briefing if it would be useful to get disinfectants or strong ultraviolet light into the body. Trump pointed to his head and said he has a "good you-know-what," and urged officials to look into his ideas.
Trump repeatedly hyped the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine despite constant push-back from his expert advisers, who objected that the drug had not been proven safe or effective in controlled trials. Trump nevertheless opined that the drug should be used widely. "What do you have to lose?" he repeatedly said. Maybe a lot. Subsequent tests of the drug have not been encouraging, and the FDA warned that it carries significant cardiac risks.
Trump demoted and reassigned the country's top official for vaccine development, Rick Bright, because Dr. Bright had insisted on science-based approaches to treatment and the allocation of resources, and because he objected to the unsound promotion of the unproven hydroxychloroquine. The aforementioned Deborah Messonnier at the CDC has not been heard from since her Feb. 25 warning which so displeased the president. Trump fired HHS's inspector general, who had released a report on the insufficiency of personal protective equipment supplies. Trump reassigned the pandemic response directorate of the National Security Council in 2018. He cut pandemic disease research cooperation with China shortly before the Wuhan outbreak.
Trump canceled a grant to an organization doing coronavirus research because it was working with a virus research lab in Wuhan, and Trump wrongly believed the money was a grant to the Chinese lab. In the midst of the pandemic Trump withheld U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, which he wanted to make a scapegoat for his own slow response, and which is crucially involved in the worldwide pandemic response—a move which Bill Gates said is "as dangerous as it sounds." Trump said the WHO withheld crucial information even though more than a dozen U.S. health officials held high, decision-making posts in the organization and reported back to the administration about what was happening.
Trump falsely said he had "absolute" authority over the closing and reopening of the nation's economy, whereas under the Constitution such determinations are made by the states. Shortly thereafter he said he was allowing governors to make those decisions. Then, while telling governors "you are going to call your own shots," Trump simultaneously encouraged protestors (some of them armed) who descended on state capitols and complained that their economies must be re-opened immediately. Trump egged them on. "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!" Trump tweeted. "LIBERATE WISCONSIN!" "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!"
After endorsing his administration's guidance (released in conjunction with the CDC) on benchmarks the states should hit before reopening, Trump almost immediately abandoned that guidance and said the states should reopen rapidly. As the states have rushed to do so, one oft-cited model doubled its projection of deaths to occur by August 4, and its projections have continued to rise. The current estimate is 147,000. The administration suppressed more recent CDC guidance on safe reopening, saying it was "too prescriptive."
It thus appears that Trump has now abandoned any pretense of holding down the death rate, and has instead turned his attention fully to re-opening the economy, come what may, in a desperate attempt to salvage his November electoral prospects. But it's hard to imagine how economic activity will resume as outbreaks flare up and the death rate soars. A frightened country might just refuse to cooperate. Ultimately, public health and economic health are inextricably joined, but Trump either doesn't understand that or doesn't know what to do about it.
I'll end not with what "Trump said," but with what Andy Slavitt said. Slavitt was former Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Obama administration. He recently wrote that "Donald Trump is abandoning his own Covid-19 strategy because it got hard and he's a quitter."
True enough, but maybe quitting is just an expected consequence of incompetence in such trying circumstances. If anything is clear from looking at what Trump said, it's that through all of this he has had no idea what he's doing.
Copyright (C) 2020 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved
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