Hey indeedy for this headline . . .

 

Two decades of pandemic war games failed to account for Donald Trump. 

 What's interesting about this is that they never realized they needed a way to simulate ineptitude. 

The scenarios foresaw leaky travel bans, a scramble for vaccines and disputes between state and federal leaders, but none could anticipate the current levels of dysfunction in the United States. 

The gist is that public health specialists have been running simulations of pandemics knowing that they will happen and that nations, and the world, need to be prepared. In these simulations, the U.S. was presumed to have the most robust public health capability and to be among the most successful nations at coping effectively. In reality, the U.S. has turned out to be among the most catastrophic failures. Brazil, sure. But the United States?

By late January, [Tom] Inglesby [of Johns Hopkins] was anxious. The coronavirus outbreak was escalating at a frightening pace in China and spreading to other countries, including the United States. These were the kinds of foreboding signs that he had plugged into his simulations. But the Trump administration seemed to view the outbreak as China’s problem, says Inglesby. During the third week of January, Trump posted one reassuring tweet about the coronavirus and around 40 regarding his impeachment hearings, his rallies and defeating the Democrats. The only public action that the government took was to screen travellers coming from China for symptoms at a handful of international airports. 

The piece goes on to recite the by now familiar litany of failures, including sidelining the CDC and other experts, pretending the whole thing wasn't real, the testing debacle, lifting restrictions too early and allowing the epidemic to get out of control, lack of any coordinated national response to allocate supplies, build up public health infrastructure and capacity, and here we are.

Voting for a president is not an appropriate way to "send a message" or vent your frustrations or let your racism flag fly. Presidents have a job to do. They must not be insane idiots.