National disgrace

The American response to the Covid-19 is a well-documented national disgrace. Warned early, President Trump and his Administration minimized the risks, delayed acting, and failed to mount the effort to produce protective equipment and testing required to get the country safely back to work. Encouraged by the President, states that have never taken sufficient social distancing measures are now “opening up,” which will guarantee new infections and delay further a return to normality. In addition, the President has been encouraging people to try unproven and dangerous remedies, including internal use of intense light and disinfectant.

Incompetence at this level is hard to come by, but the Administration is not so dumb when it comes to something it cares about. Republicans have quietly ensured that the legislation intended to help the country meet the Covid-19 economic challenge includes massive tax breaks for the very rich, even as they worry loudly about how $600 per week in unemployment payments might discourage the poor from working. It will take months to discover all the gimmicks they’ve written into the tax code.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is coping fairly well. Even Italy and Spain, which had big early outbreaks, are seeing their curves flatten and turn downwards. Some countries like Greece, Turkey, and Sweden are seeing a resurgence, but most seem to have things under reasonably good control. In much of the Middle East and Africa, we’ll likely never know the number of cases and deaths because of lack of ability to trace and count them. What we’ll see is an uptick in mortality due to unknown causes.

Even in the US, there is reason to believe that we are undercounting. The total will likely fall in the 70-100,000 range, a death count that should make Americans ashamed. The information, the science, and the know-how were all available in January, February, and March, when the President dithered and tried to minimize the epidemic. The result is a shocking rise in the death toll to over 2000 per day:

The economic toll is likely to be just as devastating. Conference Board scenarios include losses of between 3.6 and 7.4% for the year:

That would make the downturn sharper, though perhaps shorter, than 2008. Even so, the economy would not be back to its third quarter 2019 level before the end of this year.

The political implications are not good for Donald Trump. He has been weakening in key battleground states. The states that followed the President’s push for reopening will suffer second waves of infection, possibly just before the US election. We can hope a recovery will be in progress by November, but the economic losses will still be all too evident. The losses of life will also still be hurting: more than half a million people will by the time of the election likely have a family member who has died of Covid-19.

Donald Trump has made himself the personification of government reaction to the epidemic, by appearing almost every day on TV to misinform the public. Apparently convinced that his mendacious performance was a mistake, he is now abandoning the habit. But he should still be held accountable for the damage and disgrace he has brought on the country. It’s not WHO, it’s not the Chinese, it’s not the Democrats: Donald Trump and no one else is to blame for the failure of the US to confront Covid-19 with the many tools at its disposal. This disaster is his, and his alone.