will be fodder for history books. There
were weeks wasted early on stubbornly
clinging to a fantastical belief that the
virus would simply “disappear”; testing
and contact tracing programs were in-
adequate; states were encouraged to re-
open ahead of his own Administration’s
guidelines; and statistics were repeatedly
cherry- picked to make the U.S. situation
look far better than it was, while under-
mining scientists who said otherwise. “I
wanted to always play it down,” Trump
told the journalist Bob Woodward on
March 19 in a newly revealed conversa-
tion. “I still like playing it down, because
I don’t want to create a panic.”
Common-sense solutions like face
masks were undercut or ignored. Re-
search shows that wearing a facial cov-
ering significantly reduces the spread of
COVID-19, and a pre-existing culture of
mask wearing in East Asia is often cited as
one reason countries in that region were
able to control their outbreaks. In theU.S., Trump did not wear a mask in pub-
lic until July 11, more than three months
after the CDC recommended facial cov-
erings, transforming what ought to have
been a scientific issue into a partisan one.
A Pew Research Center survey published
on June 25 found that 63% of Democrats
and Democratic- leaning independents
said masks should always be worn in pub-
lic, compared with 29% of Republicans
and Republican- leaning independents.
By far the government’s most glaring
failure was a lack of adequate testing in-
frastructure from the beginning. Test-
ing is key to a pandemic response—the
more data officials have about an out-
break, the better equipped they are to
respond. Rather than call for more test-
ing, Trump has instead suggested that
maybe the U.S. should be testing less. He
has repeatedly, and incorrectly, blamed
increases in new cases on more testing.
“If we didn’t do testing, we’d have no
cases,” the President said in June, latersuggesting he was being sarcastic. But
less testing only means fewer cases are
detected, not that they don’t exist. In the
U.S. the percentage of tests coming back
positive increased from about 4.5% in
mid-June to about 5.7% as of early Sep-
tember, evidence the virus was spread-
ing regardless of whether we tested for
it. (By comparison, Germany’s overall
daily positivity rate is under 3% and in
Italy it’s about 2%.)
Testing in the U.S. peaked in July, at
about 820,000 new tests administered
per day, according to the COVID Track-
ing Project, but as of this writing has fallen
to about 740,000. Some Americans now
say they are waiting more than two weeks
for their test results, a delay that makes
the outcome all but worthless, as people
can be infected in the window between
when they get tested and when they re-
ceive their results.
Most experts believe that early on,
we did not understand the full scale of
the spread of the virus because we were
testing only those who got sick. But now
we know 30% to 45% of infected people
who contract the virus show no symp-
toms whatsoever and can pass it on. When
there’s a robust and accessible testing sys-
tem, even asymptomatic cases can be dis-
covered and isolated. But as soon as test-
ing becomes inaccessible again, we’re
back to where we were before: probably
missing many cases.Seven monthS after the coronavirus
was found on American soil, we’re still
suffering hundreds, sometimes more than
a thousand, deaths every day. An Ameri-
can Nurses Association survey from late
July and early August found that of 21,000
U.S. nurses polled, 42% reported either
widespread or intermittent shortages in
personal protective equipment (PPE) like
masks, gloves and medical gowns. Schools
and colleges are attempting to open for in-
person learning only to suffer major out-
breaks and send students home; some of
them will likely spread the virus in their
communities. More than 13 million Amer-
icans remain unemployed as of August,
according to Bureau of Labor Statistics
data published Sept. 4.
U.S. leaders have largely eschewed
short- and medium- term unflashy solu-
tions in favor of perceived silver bullets,
JOHN MOORE—GETTY IMAGES like a vaccine —hence the Administra-
SOURCES: CDC; DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS 27