[chrisk]

Maybe he did – it’s the economy stupid. Which is probably part of the reason he reacted so slowly. In any event I’m done. My point is not the Trump handled this well - he didn’t. My point is that to put all this on Trump is simplistic and absurd. We have a precedent – and that’s Katrina. Where Bush got all the blame heaped upon him. When in fact there again was plenty of blame to go around Federal state local media etc.

If you've read what I've posted on here long enough, you will know that I didn't think much of Cuomo's response, and I thought Di Blasio was downright awful.  I've praised Republicans like Mike DeWine (and Democrats) that have responded well, and blasted Democrats that have responded poorly (along with a fair share of Republicans).  I have evaluated the response on the basis of its relative competence or lack thereof.  Trump gets mentioned most of all, because the buck ostensibly stops there.  While public health response is by definition a state and local one in our federal system, the tone is set at the top.  And the tone set at the top of this country was one at indifference at the coming crisis.

Now, maybe it wouldn't have made a damned bit of difference, but imagine a world in which a President John Kasich warns all Americans in late January about how dangerous this virus could be, breaks through the bureaucracy and silos that exist between the FDA and CDC to prioritize widespread testing, stresses the importance of taking measures to protect the American public, coordinates the purchase of PPE, ventilators, and other supplies at a federal level so that states aren't competing with one another, sets up a task force to come up with guidelines for how and when states should impose measures of social distancing, browbeats governors who dilly dally while cases accumulate, and goes to congress to get money appropriated for an emergent pandemic response that uses a Manhattan project-like effort to quickly develop widespread testing and hire and train and deploy contact tracers like hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars depended on it. Maybe it doesn't make a damned bit of difference and we are still looking at hundreds of thousands of deaths at this point in time despite our best efforts (I don't think that would have been the case, but I don't know the counterfactual), and maybe the opposition tries to stymie him at every turn and Americans ignore him and the sclerotic bureaucracy can't be whipped into shape.  But at least I would be able to point to his actions and say that he took the pandemic seriously, and did all he could.  Instead, we have a president who has at his best been indifferent to the virus, and at his worst actively undermined efforts to contain the pandemic.  So forgive me if I draw a straight line between his actions (or lack thereof) and the toll of the pandemic.  The title of this post contrasted the US response to that of South Korea, Australia, Germany, and Singapore.  Goose has pointed out that we didn't have the built capacity of those other countries ready to deploy.  Fair enough.  But what kills me is that by and large we didn't even try.

BC

Great response. Just want to add that many Americans have become less trusting of government over the last 50 years, which leads to not follow suggestions, pleas, mandates, or laws of the government. This is despite the fact that government plays a smaller role in life in the US than in other developed countries. Americans made tremendous sacrifices in WWII. Would today's populace comply to the same degree? 300-400K Americans died in WWII. It is not inconceivable that this disaster could kill as many Americans in a shorter period of time.

Is fighting for the freedom of other countries more important than taking simple precautions to save American lives?

[chrisk]

Maybe he did – it’s the economy stupid. Which is probably part of the reason he reacted so slowly. In any event I’m done. My point is not the Trump handled this well - he didn’t. My point is that to put all this on Trump is simplistic and absurd. We have a precedent – and that’s Katrina. Where Bush got all the blame heaped upon him. When in fact there again was plenty of blame to go around Federal state local media etc.

If you've read what I've posted on here long enough, you will know that I didn't think much of Cuomo's response, and I thought Di Blasio was downright awful.  I've praised Republicans like Mike DeWine (and Democrats) that have responded well, and blasted Democrats that have responded poorly (along with a fair share of Republicans).  I have evaluated the response on the basis of its relative competence or lack thereof.  Trump gets mentioned most of all, because the buck ostensibly stops there.  While public health response is by definition a state and local one in our federal system, the tone is set at the top.  And the tone set at the top of this country was one at indifference at the coming crisis.

Now, maybe it wouldn't have made a damned bit of difference, but imagine a world in which a President John Kasich warns all Americans in late January about how dangerous this virus could be, breaks through the bureaucracy and silos that exist between the FDA and CDC to prioritize widespread testing, stresses the importance of taking measures to protect the American public, coordinates the purchase of PPE, ventilators, and other supplies at a federal level so that states aren't competing with one another, sets up a task force to come up with guidelines for how and when states should impose measures of social distancing, browbeats governors who dilly dally while cases accumulate, and goes to congress to get money appropriated for an emergent pandemic response that uses a Manhattan project-like effort to quickly develop widespread testing and hire and train and deploy contact tracers like hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars depended on it. Maybe it doesn't make a damned bit of difference and we are still looking at hundreds of thousands of deaths at this point in time despite our best efforts (I don't think that would have been the case, but I don't know the counterfactual), and maybe the opposition tries to stymie him at every turn and Americans ignore him and the sclerotic bureaucracy can't be whipped into shape.  But at least I would be able to point to his actions and say that he took the pandemic seriously, and did all he could.  Instead, we have a president who has at his best been indifferent to the virus, and at his worst actively undermined efforts to contain the pandemic.  So forgive me if I draw a straight line between his actions (or lack thereof) and the toll of the pandemic.  The title of this post contrasted the US response to that of South Korea, Australia, Germany, and Singapore.  Goose has pointed out that we didn't have the built capacity of those other countries ready to deploy.  Fair enough.  But what kills me is that by and large we didn't even try.

BC

Great response. Just want to add that many Americans have become less trusting of government over the last 50 years, which leads to not follow suggestions, pleas, mandates, or laws of the government. This is despite the fact that government plays a smaller role in life in the US than in other developed countries. Americans made tremendous sacrifices in WWII. Would today's populace comply to the same degree? 300-400K Americans died in WWII. It is not inconceivable that this disaster could kill as many Americans in a shorter period of time.

Is fighting for the freedom of other countries more important than taking simple precautions to save American lives?