A second historic failure of leadership

That's how Ed Pilkington and Dominic Rushe put it in The Guardian. The first historic failure was of course the six weeks or more of dithering, delay and denial in February and March that left us in this catastrophic situation. Yes, the Resident was not the only politician who spent time in denial but whataboutism doesn't relieve him of blame, especially since he was briefed repeatedly on the urgent danger of the situation and he rejected what experts were telling him out of hand.

The first cases were reported in the U.S. and South Korea on the same day.

One country acted swiftly and aggressively to detect and isolate the virus, and by doing so has largely contained the crisis. The other country dithered and procrastinated, became mired in chaos and confusion, was distracted by the individual whims of its leader, and is now confronted by a health emergency of daunting proportions.
Within a week of its first confirmed case, South Korea’s disease control agency had summoned 20 private companies to the medical equivalent of a war-planning summit and told them to develop a test for the virus at lightning speed. A week after that, the first diagnostic test was approved and went into battle, identifying infected individuals who could then be quarantined to halt the advance of the disease.

The result? As of today the U.S. has reported 37,175 deaths from Coronavirus, that is 112 per million population, which is a substantial undercount. South Korea has reported 232 deaths, 5 per million, which is probably fairly accurate. And they never had to impose the same level of extreme restrictions that we have.

The problem we now face, of how to ease restrictions and move toward more normal social and economic activity, is the same problem but now on a much larger scale. We need the capacity to test millions of people for infection so that we can trace contacts of people who turn up sick and quarantine those who are infected.  We are nowhere near that capacity. As former CDC Director Tom Frieden puts it, “I fear there’s an analogous mistaken belief that sheltering in place will make this virus go away, that we can then choose a date and all come out. It’s not about the date, it’s about data and building a national response at scale.

While the Resident continues to publicly insist that the U.S. has excellent testing capacity, in fact not one of the states is in a position to adequately trace and test contacts. The federal government is doing nothing to increase testing capacity, and forcing the states to compete with each other for what resources exist. Democratic Senators did a conference call with the VP and came away furious at the total abdication of responsibility.

Sen. Angus King, Maine's independent who caucuses with Democrats, reportedly called the administration's response to the crisis, particularly the failure to get testing ramped up, a "dereliction of duty." According to sources on the call, he told Pence, "I have never been so mad about a phone call in my life." After the call, he "was still very angry" when interviewed by Washington Post reporter Seung Min Kim, telling her "I can't discern a national strategy (for testing) ... I can't even discern what the goal is."
"The fundamental problem is a lack of capacity which at this point they can't fix," a Democrat on the call told Politico. "So they are explaining it away. […] Everyone was livid." They still are. "The Trump administration doesn't even have a target for the number of tests we need to be able to manage this health care crisis. It's beyond unbelievable," Sen. Elizabeth Warren told Boston Globe reporter Jess Bidgood.

Instead of exercising leadership and providing the resources needed to address the crisis -- which the administration could do right now using the Defense Procurement Act - the Resident is fomenting insurrection. Since a very large majority of people in the states he is targeting for armed rebellion support their governors' policies, the definition of "liberation" appears to be rule by a small mob of armed thugs.

Yes, there is a legitimate discussion to be had about the costs and benefits of specific measures. How restrictive should we be in a given place and time? We do need to find ways of allowing economic recovery and giving people more freedom. But that has to be a rational discussion based on facts, and by far the best way to get to a more sustainable situation is to develop the necessary tracing and testing capacity. Instead, we have a conservative movement that has gone batshit insane.