Over at Vox, Sean Illing interviews Lawrence Wright, author of a long and detailed piece in the New Yorker about our response to the coronavirus pandemic. Wright says we did a terrible job and points in particular to three big mistakes. Here they are:
- The CDC fails to get cooperation from the Chinese, thus delaying our knowledge that the virus could be transmitted asymptomatically.
- CDC bungles the testing.
- CDC spends a couple of months telling people not to wear masks.
The first of these is basically the fault of China. The other two are the fault of the CDC. None of them are the fault of Donald Trump.
Now, Trump clearly deserves a share of blame on the mask debacle, since he failed to support mask wearing after the CDC finally came around. In fact, it's worse than that. He didn't just fail to do anything, he actively turned masks into a stupid partisan issue:
You can look at the various states and how they reacted to the virus and how the outcomes were different. And you can compare similar states; Kentucky and Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, Vermont and South Dakota. In many respects, these were similar states with similar demographics. In one case, the governor imposes strict lockdowns, mask wearing, and so on. In another case, the tap is open. One public health official said, “If the country had behaved like the state of Vermont, we would have 200,000 fewer deaths.” Well, that’s almost half of what we’re talking about. More responsible leadership could have made an immense difference in the suffering and the death that America has endured.
Keep in mind, however, that the decision to lock down a state isn't a federal one. It's inherently a state issue. And the idea that the entire country might have equaled the performance of its single best state is silly. Trump may have bollixed the mask issue and then spent months doing and saying stupid things, but California spent that entire time basically doing everything right and it didn't matter. We did well at first, but our death rate from the coronavirus is currently one of the highest in the nation.
So how many deaths is Donald Trump responsible for? It's certainly not 200,000. Even 100,000 is probably a huge overestimate. If I had to guess based on what Wright says, I'd say that (a) Trump acted like a buffoon the whole time, (b) he made things worse by spewing stupid theories constantly, (c) he failed to support mask wearing, and (d) in concrete terms, maybe this increased the death rate 5-10%.
Obviously this is speculative. No one can put a firm number to any of it. But for as much as Trump's public performance was insane, the evidence really doesn't suggest that it was responsible for a massive increase in the COVID-19 mortality rate. That blame mostly goes elsewhere.
Kevin, You forget that the CDC used to have personnel in China. President Trump pulled them back. So #1 is on the President. Also the CDC head was appointed by the President, and clearly followed his direction.
Badabing badaboom.
Yes, both of these points are absolutely vital. As a practical matter, before Donald Trump because president the US didn't need that much cooperation from China because it prudently had its own people on the ground in one of the exact places where every expert predicted the next pandemic would likely originate. So we would have been capable of learning about the virus without much cooperation from the Chinese.
Also, not only was the CDC head appointed by Trump, the administration completely politicized the CDC and turned it into an instrument for Trumpist propaganda.
And it isn't just that Trump's CDC initially bungled the mask issue. Trump personally turned it and achieving "herd immunity" via infection into an extraordinary culture war issue which is what guided so many Republican governors into the idiotic strategy of keeping things open and accepting that the hospital system would crash and people would did needlessly.
As much as I fear an American fascist state in 2025 under Josh Hawley & Tulsi Gabbard, I think a Kristi Noem-Marjorie Taylor-Greene dictatorship of the holetariat is more likely.
We secretly replaced Kevin Drum with KKKlayTravis.
Let's see if anyone notices.
CA is #32 in deaths/million, 1,139, vs. US average of 1.452. It was really hit hard during the last surge--but still doing better than TX, 1,381. The top contenders are still the north eastern states hit during the first outbreak: NJ, NY, MA, MS, RI, CT, SD, AZ. LA, ND.
I'm not sure what death rate for California you're talking about, Kevin. There obviously have been a huge number of deaths in California in the last 2 months. But the total number of deaths per million in California has run well below the national totals, and that difference is magnified if you exclude California from national data to the tune of about 25% less. I do agree that most of the deaths are not Trump's responsibility. But his abject failures in the response to this pandemic (especially the failure to embrace masking) makes every death worse. We're all guessing about what Trump's impact on deaths were. But you cannot exclude future deaths. The position we have been in for the last few months will vault the total to 600K. The groundwork for all of these was laid by Trump and his incompetent administration.
I see now you're talking about the last 7 days of deaths. I think that isn't a fair wa
Sorry - that's not a a fair way to look at a year of incompetence.
It’s the kind of statistical cherry picking Keven usually decries.
Kevin is still an Orange County Republican at heart.
If Hillary Clinton were president and 200,000 Americans had died (instead of 480,000 and counting), Republicans would be blaming her mishandling of the crisis for most of the deaths. Kevin would be pushing back against that claim with an argument that no one should realistically hold her to account for more than 1/3 of them.
I have no doubt a Hillary Clinton administration would have been significantly more effective than Trump's was at fighting the pandemic (the latter really didn't fight at all).
But I've long suspected HRC would have run into the same type of ignorance and intransigence we saw on display in states with Democratic governors (Michigan being the most prominent example).
My guess is the best kind of political flavor for a US White House during a health crisis of this nature would be Romney-style GOP centrism. In other words, largely science-based, but the "R" next to the president's name might aid in undercutting some of the more right wing craziness.
@Jasper_in_Boston
(There seems to be a limit to replies in a thread, so I'll put this here.)
I agree Clinton would have been more effective than Trump in general and also run into compliance issues across a highly polarized partisan divide.
Which is why I think Trump was in a position (though not personally equipped) to lead the most effective response to the pandemic, even more than a Romney or other R. Only Trump could have said in Feb or Mar last year, OK, let's all wear masks, and have people comply. Rs would have followed their leader, Ds would not have objected. But that scenario was not in realm of possible outcomes.
One more point: Which is one reason why I think KD's estimate of Trump's responsibility of deaths at 5% to 10% to be ridiculous.
You're ready to estimate the impact of masks, and other nonsense spewed by Trump, at 5-10%? Take a look at the differential between mortality rates in red and blue states since the summer (set aside the first wave in the spring when nobody knew anything...admittedly impacting blue states much more than red). About 40% higher in red states, or more than 60,000 dead people. Can that be attributed to anything other than policy/attitude about masks and distancing? Without Trump leading the charge, these never would have become partisan issues.
Another way to look at it is: what should Trump have done after Jan 20 when we learned for certain there was human to human transmission? The answer is obvious: shut down all flights, quarantine anyone (at full pay) who might have been exposed, invent a test fast and distribute it, produce masks and send them to everyone in the US, hand the mic to Fauci, go on a world goodwill tour handing out masks and tests to other countries. Trump did none of those.
Trump is obviously responsible for every death up to Jan 20, 2021 at least and for another month or two after I’d say. Let’s call it 450,000 killed by the mail order meat salesman.
I think you're underselling the Trump Effect™. It's not that California did everything right. California may have tried to do everything right, but 40% of Californians were guided by Trump and didn't play along. Likewise, Kentucky may have followed Trump's lead and not tried to do anything right, but 40% of Kentuckians did the right thing anyway. If Trump had strongly advocated shutdowns and mask wearing as the patriotic thing to do, both California and Kentucky would have seen reductions in deaths.
This is exactly right.
Amen. Trump told the cult what was up. It's just like the Capitol. He could have told them to stop but he didn't even try. There's ample evidence in both cases that he did what he thought would benefit him personally.
Feel free to call him an accessory before and during the fact. But imagine a world where we just hunkered down until the vaccines. He controlled to what degree we would live in that world or not. Bad hand or not, we know how he played it.
I agree. It may be a state thing to impose lockdowns, but it's an individual thing to comply or not, and that's largely about political alignment. Last year it was especially about how attuned one was to Trump's thinking, and that contributed to carelessness all over the country.
Kevin, weren't you the one saying nobody was really following the no party rules in CA?
The point of course is not just having rules in place, but it is about getting people to follow them. If one major party gives people an excuse not to follow them, then compliance will be way down--until there is a massive local outbreak. Quanta magazine has an interesting article on modeling the outbreak:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-hard-lessons-of-modeling-the-coronavirus-pandemic-20210128/
The major flaw is some of them? They didn't account for diagnosed people to actively disregard the rules. It doesn't take that many people to ruin it for everyone.
My earlier post used data from Worldomenter--I tried posting a link in reply to that post, but it just gets disappeared. Not moderated, no message at all--just gone.
Any given 7-day snapshot not all that informative. Now turn that chart into a movie over the course of the pandemic, then you might have something. (no, I'm not going to try that)
"But for as much as Trump's public performance was insane, the evidence really doesn't suggest that it was responsible for a massive increase in the COVID-19 mortality rate. That blame mostly goes elsewhere."
It's the office of the US presidency we are talking about here, not a potted plant. That office has awesome hard emergency powers and soft powers of persuasion. Instead of exercising any of that, Trump misled and obfuscated and plotted to steal the next election. Compare the death rates in the US and Canada to get an idea of how many deaths he should be blamed for.
Yes.
How soon we forget the chaos of March-April-May, when states were struggling to get PPE, ventilators, and other lifesaving supplies only to have the federal government snatch them away before they could be delivered. Anyone remember how governor of Maryland had supplies brought in secretly to avoid the feds commandeering them? How different our response could have been had the federal government been the "shipping clerk" for the country and organizing PPE and medical devices for the states instead of making the states compete for the supplies among themselves. How different the response could have been if politicos in CDC and other agencies didn't change the reporting from those agencies. This is not "benign neglect," it is "malign action."
Maybe the "shipping clerk" was Jared Kushner ,, & he & his chums shipped the missing PPE & vaccine to places of their choosing.
And Hogan's initiative failed; his first supply from Korea wasn't used, as I recall.
Don't forget the dismantling of the pandemic response unit in the NSC back in 2018 -- here's a pre-COVID link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/
How different would things have been if they had still been around as a unit in 2020? Hard to say, but unlikely that it would have been worse than it was...
That, of course, is the elephant in the room. Why didn't we have awful mortality rates in the other major contagions of the past quarter century? Because WE WERE PREPARED!
We had a team of outstanding experts working on contingency plans. We had the plans written, reviewed, and distributed before we knew we needed them. So when we did know, it took one bugle call from the boss for the action to begin full speed ahead.
What did Trump do? He disbanded the team, dismissing their importance with his famous wave of the hand: "Don't worry. If they're needed, I can call them back together."
Massive testing and contact tracing, Kevin? Trump actively fought those for political reasons. The best way to fight the virus is to know who has it.
3 Counterfactuals for a 2016-2021 world:
1) Hyper-competent president: using the Obama pandemic plan and early warnings from staff on the ground in China, jumps on the pandemic early, coordinates international and state efforts reducing travel, emphasizing early testing, instituting lock-downs, etc. Blunts early wave substantially, and keeps large swathes of the country (and maybe even a number of international countries) from ever seeing cases. Unlikely, but not impossible. Keeps total US deaths in the tens of thousands.
2) Decently competent president: the first wave hits pretty much just like it did. Lots of local failures (see Cuomo & nursing homes). But when CDC has problems with testing kits, works with international labs to use alternate testing methods. Ramps up test & trace substantially. Encourages stricter spring lockdowns nationally and supports Congress to put into place a more substantial COVID legislation to pay bars and restaurants to stay in take-out only mode. As soon as it becomes evident that masks are a good idea, ramp up domestic production, use the presidential platform to encourage universal adoption, uses the Post Office to send quality masks to every home. Concentrate on keeping numbers low enough after summer to open schools. I think the president avoids much of the 2nd wave, keeps deaths around 100-200k rather than 500k.
3) Minimally competent president: doesn't advocate against masks. Improved mask wearing nationally can still keep deaths to 300-400k rather than 500k, as even a small reduction in R0 can make a big difference.
4) Hillary. Who would have been worse.
No one with any objective sense of reality could believe such a thing. Check your bias, it seems to be unzipped.
As I always do, I point to the Asia/Pacific nations. I presume they have no better information from China than we did. They had better tests, much greater supplies of masks, and well-prepared plans and playbooks for combating pandemic illness. These preparations were the product of their experience with the deadly SARS-Cov-1 virus. The Americas and Europe had not been appreciably impacted by SARS, and failed to learn from the experience of others. The US response to the 2009 ‘swine flu’ was problematic, in part because the change of administrations left important Federal health and emergency appointments unfilled. Nevertheless, that event, and the Ebola outbreak in Africa which resulted in a couple of US cases, led the Obama administration to develop a pandemic-response plan. The follow-through was inadequate, and fell through completely during the Trump administration. The failure to ensure an adequate supply of masks for a nation of 330 million was the cause of the CDC’s misguided advice. Even at that, the messaging about masks should have been better, and would have been, had there been better testing - as there should have been for the test kits.
Eight died at Benghazi &/or from Ebola, & we never impeached Obama.
Only six (6 < 8) died on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol, yet we are impeaching El Jefe (after he's left office).
The degree to which Trump inspired the baboon colony to aggressively, ludicrously act out and actually try to go around breathing on people is a crime against humanity by itself.
In a serious world it would be the first count in the articles of impeachment.
Yes, reckless endangerment being the lowest possible charge.
I would say there's no reason why the US performance should not be similar to Canada. So that's half of the deaths attributable to Trump.
Lock down may be a state issue, but the ("LIBERATE MICHIGAN") pressure on the states to not lock down came from the top. If Trump advocates for sensible measures and lock downs, would Kristi Noem lead the nation in death per capita?
While there is no good way to assign how many of the 500,000 Americans who will have been killed by COVID by the end of this month were caused by Trump’s poor response, I think it is safe to say it was a majority, for many of the reasons other commentators have listed. Even throwing out Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, our death rate is far more than double that of a non-isolated country such as Germany. We shouldn’t be proud of beating the UK....we should only be satisfied to be among if not at the front.
Further, I’d go farther and say Trump is at least partially responsible for some of the other 1.5 million deaths in the rest of the world, especially those in Europe and South America. Why?
- Rightly or wrongly, the U.S. and the President is (or at least was) the entity that can best coordinate an international response to such a crisis in Europe, the Americas and parts of Asia. Trump not only didn’t do that, but he pushed an every-country-for-itself mentality and thus there has been precious little global coordination. If we don’t do it, no one can or will.
Yes, the original sin in the whole COVID mess was caused by China. No doubt. But, the President is the person who can most influence reactions, not just in the U.S., but globally. His dishonesty, callousness and general ineptitude has caused more death than any other President has caused in history.
*****Yes, the original sin in the whole COVID mess was caused by China. No doubt.*****
Actually, there is considerable doubt about whether or not "sin" is involved in creating the "mess." Is the DRC responsible for the HIV/Aids epidemic, or Ebola? Zoonotic diseases have plagued humans since we've been around. The search for scary, foreign scapegoats has a long and shameful pedigree in America.
I think it's *likely* ineptitude on the part of China's Communist regime caused a delay in the recognition of and the response to what humanity was up against. But it's far from clear how long this delay was (ten days? three weeks?) or what, exactly, an optimal response would have looked like. Maybe in another couple of years, after careful analysis and reporting, we'll have a better idea of how to apportion blame. But it's very early at this point. Also, no government gets everything right all the time. Most reports indicate the US government, for instance, possessed actionable intelligence in early January.
China's bad luck in being the country where the covid virus first infected humanity (if that's even a fact; it's entirely possible the species jump occurred in Myanmar, say, or Laos) is just that: a tough break for them. The fact that the first major outbreak occurred in Hubei Province bought America and other countries precious time. Their hard luck should have helped us save lives. But unlike Australia or Taiwan we were too disorganized and dysfunctional to take advantage.
I would like to upvote quite a number of responses here, were that option available. The responses I would call out particularly are those that fault the Trump administration’s actions and inactions from 2017 through 2019, not just its responses and non-responses in 2020. Across the board, Trump and his appointees combined incompetence, malevolence toward former President Obama, determination to negate any and all of his predecessor’s policies, and the disposition to always choose ‘looking good’ over the public good, public relations over the public’s welfare.
If Donald Trump had simply worn a mask when the CDC started to recommend it, and did nothing else differently, then idiot governors like Kristi Noem would also have behaved differently and many thousands more would be alive today. I'm not in a position to quantify how many but as Teddy Roosevelt observed, the Presidency is a bully pulpit.
Just look at the curves for other major countries and it is obvious that the number is at least 150,000. After getting slammed hard very early when knowledge was scarce, they all succeeded in driving the infection rate and the death rate down very low very quickly. The U.S., mostly via state action, capped the growth rate fairly quickly, came down a little bit, but never even got close to the low rates the European countries achieved before the latest surge everywhere. I would not attribute January to March death rates to Trump's mismanagement as such -- other than the China office closure, testing fiasco, etc., which any administration could have screwed up -- but when we had enough information to drive down rates to less than one per million per day, we continued for a long time at between 2.5 and 4 times that rate. Those excess deaths coincided perfectly with Trump's ridicule and other deliberate forms of mismanagement. In most of the Republican-led states, off the international travel track and spared early ,where cases exploded in the fall, pro-Trump governors obviously felt political pressure to follow his lead until they simply couldn't any longer. It's not a perfect comparison, but Canada's death rate is about 1/3 ours -- and theirs was probably somewhat worse because of proximity to the U.S.
The early mask directive was not a mistake. It was seen as necessary because there were not enough for healthcare workers. When the volume increased and evidence grew, CDC changed it. Fauci was very explicit about the change.
The directive was a mistake because N99 masks were conflated with cowboy kerchiefs. The messaging should have been worked out ahead of time, and should have taken into account unknowns:
"There's a shortage of surgical grade masks, and those masks should be reserved for hospital staff. We don't know whether or not lower-grade masks will help with this particular virus, but they certainly won't hurt, and they do help with many viruses. And we recommend wearing the following kinds of masks..."
The asian countries had no problems advocating for basic mask usage. Only the Americans with their Murican Freedom got confused.
*****It's not a perfect comparison, but Canada's death rate is about 1/3 ours -- and theirs was probably somewhat worse because of proximity to the U.S.*****
There is zero doubt of the relevance of this "proximity" issue. Imagine if the US were bordered by a country with a population of 2.5 billion that was suffering a covid death three times our own. The Canadians quite rightly closed their southern border. But nothing is perfect, and exceptions and loopholes have existed since the getgo.
> The other two are the fault of the CDC. None of them are the fault of Donald Trump.
If leadership doesn't matter, why do we have leaders?
When you elect leaders who appoint leaders who believe government is the problem and is incapable of functioning, you get failed government. See Katrina and the FEMA response to it.
California is two, two states in one. Yes we have populous blue counties. But we also have a bunch of red counties. And even an orange county. Because of Donald's "leadership", the people in the red counties in california behaved badly and spread covid throughout their metro areas.
The CDC worked for Donald Trump. Since when do we somehow act like the president is not responsible for the actions of government agencies? Good grief.
Big Ronald Reagan Iran-Contra testimony energy.
I'd say more Big Johnson/Secretary Stanton energy, if I were to put a finer point on it.
I agree on CDC but I think you're underrating the *chaos* Trump created.
If you read Wright's piece, it's clear the states were expecting the feds to step in and quarterback, as with a natural disaster, and Trump actively abdicated.
My kid's school response was a mess -- principal said they were waiting on guidance from the superintendent, who said he was waiting on the mayor, who was waiting on governor, who waiting on the White House.
Chaos at the top created chaos everywhere.
The only Total Chaos I approve is the early 80s SoCal hardcore band.
Who used the word 'total?'Specificity is key...
The real stupidity of the kind of people who vote for conservatives doesn't get the attention it deserves.
The CDC early mask use was coached as way to save them for healthcare workers. It was foolish and anybody with half a brain knew it was nonsense, little did they know their nuance position would be politicized.
I’m going to have to call Kevin out on this one. The special team of experts charged with pandemic response was disbanded in 2018 and some of the top members let go. It is impossible to know how this changed the number of deaths. Maybe it only decreased it a little, but I’ve heard that there were lots of questions in the first few months concerning who was in charge of what. I suspect almost everything would have been different if that team had remained in place.
About those 3 main points:
1.) Others on here reminded me that we had teams in China before Trump got rid of them. Maybe they would have been able to find out much more much earlier about how the disease spreads. I’d also point out that the intelligence agencies had information about the outbreak weeks earlier. We aren’t sure exactly when they found out about this, but a different President would have been briefed and the Chinese questioned much earlier.
2.) CDC bungles testing: Maybe the original people who were let go by Trump would have handled this much better. Maybe they would have had back up plans or fixed the problem much earlier. Maybe not, but again I’d mention that Trump’s team had to iron out the “who’s in charge” question and there is some evidence they never really did iron it out.
3.) I bet we would have had some of the same problems with masks, but you (and everyone else including me) forgot that the original plan called for everyone to have access to N95 respirators. If Trump had not been President we would have had a huge ramp up of N95 masks starting before March and by April we would have enough to start distributing them to ordinary people. Most people still don’t have access to N95 masks after a full year. In fact, after a full year most first responders and medical personnel still have to reuse N95 masks multiple times before replacing them. Only Trump could have handled this aspect this badly.
There are many other aspects that would have saved 10s or even 100s of thousands of lives. Having such a limited plan to produce and distribute the vaccine will cost us months. I honestly thought that they were ramping up production of the vaccines. There was some ramp up, but there could have been a lot more and it would have cost an extra $10 or $20 billion at most.
We could have had enough tests to stop outbreaks. The meat packing plants should have been flooded with tests and people who tested positive paid to stay home. We could have easily done that.
Other people have mentioned many other things that went wrong (Contract Tracing, coordination of supplies). As a comparison, Canada has well under half the death rate we do, aye.
Your scheme assumes that Trump bears no personal responsibility for the failings of the CDC. This is incorrect.
The CDC reports to him, through a director that he chose. The CDC leadership that failed are his reports. He's responsible for their performance
It's worth mentioning that a president typically names a new CDC director at some time during their first term. It's unusual for a president to name a second.
Trump named four
From the outside it's hard to know how much damage Trump did by so frequently replacing the CDC director, but in my own long career I've seen the organizational chaos that results from rapid turnover in leadership posts. It's likely that the damage was substantial.
It also indicates that, at least three times, Trump saddled the CDC with a chief who couldn't even measure up to Trump's shabby standards.
I think this estimate undervalues the power of the bully pulpit in such situation. If Trump had been trusted by the nation (he was not and this is also his fault) and if he had tailored his utterances about Covid to motivate people to cooperate on the necessary measure he could have had a bigger impact than 5 or 10%. Many of the premature "openings" occurred because he pressured governors into them. Trump also failed to set up adequate tracking and quarantining procedures and to make money available to hire staff and run the program.
So I think the 5-10% figure lets him off way too easy.
BTW: California obviously did not do everything right, otherwise this recent wave would have been smaller. My guess is that the perennially under-addressed homeless crisis is part of what went wrong (Vermont put the homeless in Motel rooms for the duration and they believe this is what explains their success).