What happened
President Trump appeared to under-
mine federal efforts to contain the new
coronavirus this week, insisting that the
pandemic will “go away” even as cases
of the respiratory illness skyrocketed
across the U.S., spooking markets and
sparking fears of a recession. By the
middle of the week, health officials had
reported more than 1,000 cases of the
coronavirus in 38 states and the District
of Columbia, and at least 30 deaths. To
stem the spread of the virus, known as
Covid-19, universities across the country
scrapped in-person classes; major events
such as the South by Southwest festival
were canceled; and companies began mandating that employees
work from home. (See Making Money.) New York Gov. Andrew
Cuomo ordered the closure of schools and gathering places in New
Rochelle—a New York City suburb that has seen dozens of cases—
and sent in the National Guard to sanitize a 1-mile-wide “contain-
ment zone.” The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 2,000-plus
points in one day, the worst daily showing since the 2008 financial
crisis. Globally, officials reported more than 125,000 cases and at
least 4,600 deaths.
With multiple states declaring emergencies, Trump tweeted that
37,000 Americans die from the flu each year and “nothing is shut
down, life & the economy go on.” Influenza typically kills 0.1 per-
cent of the people it infects every year; the World Health Organiza-
tion estimates that Covid-19 has a mortality rate of up to 3.4 per-
cent. Trump dismissed WHO’s fatality figure as “a false number”
and during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
boasted about his “natural” scientific ability. He attributed this to
his “super-genius uncle,” who had once worked at MIT.
The Trump administration’s top public health officials were grilled
in Congress over the sluggish rollout of
Covid-19 testing kits. By the beginning
of the week, about 4,300 people had
been tested since the start of the out-
break; South Korea has been conducting
up to 10,000 tests a day. “There’s not
enough equipment,” CDC Director Rob-
ert Redfield said of public labs’ capabili-
ties. “There’s not enough people.” Brian
Monahan, Congress’ in-house doctor,
told Capitol Hill staffers in a closed-door
meeting that 70 million to 150 million
Americans will likely contract the virus.
What the editorials said
Trump’s Pollyannaish predictions and
outright falsehoods “will cost lives,”
said The Washington Post. To boost the
stock market and his re-election chances,
the president is contradicting the advice
offered by his own health-care experts.
They have urged people to practice
social distancing; he has told them to
live life as usual. In China, a viral catas-
trophe ensued when the authoritarian
Communist Party emphasized its image
at the expense of the nation’s health.
Now we’re seeing the same here.“So far in this crisis, Trump himself has
obviously failed to rise to the chal-
lenge of leadership,” said the National
Review. He delayed making the virus
a priority for as long as possible—
“refusing briefings, downplaying the
problem, and wasting precious time.”
He failed to empower subordinates,
and rather than trust the information
they handed him, recycled favorable
figures he heard on cable TV. This
behavior is familiar; it’s how Trump
has handled scandals and fiascos for three years. But those were
largely self-created crises. The coronavirus “demands a new level of
seriousness from the president.”What the columnists said
Trump views the coronavirus case total as if it were an approval
poll, said Dan Diamond in Politico.com. He left some 2,500 pas-
sengers aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship “marooned off
the coast of California” for days, even as “coronavirus infections
rapidly multiplied.” Why not evacuate and isolate the cruise-
goers? “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one
ship that wasn’t our fault,” the president explained. This disaster
is fast turning into “Trump’s Chernobyl,” said Brian Klaas in The
Washington Post. Just like Soviet authorities in the wake of the
1986 nuclear plant explosion, our president is trying “to construct
a reality that simply does not exist. Those lies will kill.”America has succumbed to “pure hysteria,” said Michael Fumento
in the New York Post. It’s probable that the disease will soon peak
and start to die down, just as it has in China, where new cases have
dropped from 4,000 a day to 200. And the reported mortality rate
of 3.4 percent is highly misleading,
given that most infected people “have
symptoms so mild—if any—that
they don’t seek medical attention and
don’t get counted in the caseload.”This kind of uninformed opining
is “wantonly irresponsible,” said
Yascha Mounk in TheAtlantic
.com. We know this disease spreads
like lightning: Italy had 62 identi-
fied cases on Feb. 22, 888 cases by
Feb. 29, and 4,636 by March 6. The
case rate here will soar in coming
days and if even the mortality rate is
only 1 percent, that will mean “the
coronavirus is 10 times as deadly as
the flu.” China finally arrested the
virus’ exponential spread by cancel-
ing all public gatherings, asking most
citizens to self-quarantine, and sealing
off the epicenter in Wuhan province.
We should follow that example and
“cancel everything.” It’s the only way
to stop this killer. Reuter
sTrump at the CDC: A ‘natural’ scientistTHE WEEK March 20, 2020
4 NEWS The main stories...
Coronavirus cases and deaths spike across U.S.
Illustration by Howard McWilliam.
Cover photos from AP, Shutterstock (2)What next?
America’s health-care system could be in for “a
reckoning,” said Dan Goldberg and Rachel Roubein
in Politico.com. So far, there’s no sign of hospitals
“cracking under pressure.” But the industry has
undergone “long-term consolidation” and “years
of cutbacks” as it emphasized short-patient stays in
an effort to arrest runaway health-care spending.
That’s left the system vulnerable and means that
administrators might have to ration equipment,
beds, protective gear, and even oxygen as patients
flood ERs. “There is still a chance that state and
local efforts to contain the virus can succeed,”
said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. But
if the current trajectory of infection rates holds,
we will see “rising death rates and overwhelmed
hospitals, shuttered schools, and empty stadiums.”
Combine the economic consequences of such a
scenario “with the optics of the president’s blun-
dering and solipsistic response, and the coronavi-
rus seems very likely to doom Trump’s re-election
effort, no matter where he casts the blame.”