There are three primary failings of Trump’s response: failure to be prepared, failure to communicate effectively, and failure to respond to facets of the problem that the federal government was best suited to handle.
Failure to be prepared
In 2014, based on its experience with pandemics and flu-like diseases, the obama administration created overlapping workgroups at DHS and NSC to monitor threats and assist in response to contagious diseases. The groups were intended to be permanent, but in 2018, Trump repositioned these groups to a posture that emphasized chemical weapons rather than contagious diseases.
He also did not seek to renew the Predict program, another public health/infectious disease research program dealing with respiratory illnesses and it was eliminated in fall 2019.
These administrative moves and the administration’s general lack of emphasis on scientific expertise in government contributed to a brain drain, leading to the departure of talent like Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb. These two in particular were some of the first experts publicly calling for many of the policies listed below as well as the policies that we ultimately adopted too late. These two were writing as early as January 28 that we should allow private test development and production to assist with contact tracing. Many other countries implemented the policies advocated by Borio and Gottlieb on a national level and did so sooner than we did, which is why they have had a more effective response.
Furthermore, the elimination of or reprioritization of these groups turned off a lot of the safeguards that might have clued us in for the need to prepare a response prior to 12.31 when China notified the WHO about the spread of a Novel Coronavirus.
These groups also could have outlined the response and begin developing decision making guidelines for governors with minimal oversight, once the need became obvious. Certainly, Gottlieb and Borio were sounding the alarm before Fauci.
The outgoing Obama Admin and DHS both war gamed pandemic responses with the Trump Admin. So, clearly, the potential threat posed by respiratory diseases in the US was known prior to 2019.
However, reports are that the administration did not take the first exercise seriously. Whether or not you believe that, the DHS exercise was memorialized in a report, which showed poor communication was a failing of the response. This compounds the magnitude of the administration’s failure to communicate during the actual Trump Virus outbreak. They had a chance to learn from their mistake and they did not.
Had the administration placed due emphasis on pandemic preparedness, we might have had a heads up before the WHO was notified on December 31. We certainly would have had a more effective task force staffed with more and better medical experts in addition to Fauci. The response would have been more timely because there would have been a collaborative team working on the response while Trump was ignoring warnings.
The untimeliness of the response is a chief complaint that we should all have. More action in January and February to implement effective border screenings, procure PPE, develop accurate tests, develop a strategy for their distribution and administration, and develop guidelines for targeted stay-at-home orders would have paid dividends down the road by slowing the spread of the virus, increasing public faith that the administration had it under control, reducing onset of panic, and facilitating a more measured and controlled response.
Instead, even as late as mid-late January, Trump was ignoring warnings from people like Peter Navarro and Tom Cotton. He finally stopped some travel from China, but still had no apparent plan for how to execute the federal response and maybe not even a plan of what that response would be.
Failure to Communicate
Trump has routinely failed to use consistent verbiage when discussing the virus with the Public. Throughout March, he compared the Trump Virus to the flu and has routinely downplayed its seriousness, likely contributing to the partisan split over whether to take it seriously.
His discussion of plans have been haphazard and unsupported by any type of science or evidence based reasoning. (See e.g. “I don’t see why we can’t be open by Easter.”)
He has undermined CDC guidance at every turn.
He failed to use federal experts to develop and disseminate decision making metrics or guidelines. This was particularly necessary once it became clear that other nations were using stay-at-home quarantines. Trump doesn’t have the authority to order such a quarantine, but he does have the best resources to provide guidance to governors on how to do it well. As a result of his failure, Governors treated places like Anderson County the same as Davidson County, when it came to stay at home orders. We diminished rural America’s capacity to self-isolate without any meaningful impact on the virus in those locations. That’s partly a failing of the federal government and the Trump administration because that infrastructure was set up under their authority for the express purpose of avoiding the type of piecemeal response we have had.
He nationalized the issue of reopening and put political leverage on governors to reopen nonessential businesses. This was in contradiction of his own government experts and has led to the ongoing increase in cases and deaths.
He also failed communicate effectively with state leaders about the nature of the federal government’s planned response. The federal government is the largest government with the most funding and thus had the most well-developed apparatus for understanding and combatting Trump Virus. States looked to the federal government on issues like testing. Trump’s confusing, self-serving, and self-aggrandizing rhetoric left many states in the lurch.
He apparently failed to communicate the methods by which the federal government would distribute from its stockpile of resources and dispensed some of those resources based on patronage rather than need.
Failure of the Federal Response
He failed to effectively lobby China to get our researchers on the ground to get more info as early as possible.
He failed to put leverage on the WHO to do the same, before they flubbed it. He’s used them as a scapegoat, but he failed to staff American positions at the WHO, which might have maintained a greater degree of US, as opposed to Chinese influence on the organization.
He failed to remove restrictions that prevented private test development, which would have mitigated the CDC’s mistake.
Once a successful test was developed, it should have been mass produced and used it for contact tracing. This should have been done early before things got out of control. This is what Fauci, Gottlieb, and Borio were all advocating for in February and early March. This is a process for which the resources of the federal government are best suited. It was not accomplished until maybe May, when the number of cases was beyond effective contact tracing.
When the CDC test failed, he failed to effectively collaborate with friendly foreign governments to expedite development of a new test.
He did not centralize PPE procurement and competent distribution beginning in January so that the states weren’t bidding against each other and the federal government and then having their resources taken by the federal government when they did manage to procure some. Again, to avoid lack of confusion, bidding wars among states, and to take advantage of economies of scale, this is a federal issue.
He failed to implement effective border screening or quarantine travelers originating from areas with high likelihood of exposure. CBP would have been perfectly suited to this task.
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Time was of the essence in a response to a disease that spreads as rapidly as this one was known to spread. The failure to be prepared and failure to communicate delayed responses, if they ever occurred. It killed our ability to stop Trump Virus before it became too widespread, and forced us to this posture of a controlled burn. With that controlled burn comes a heightened need for everyone to row in the same direction with respect to social distancing etc. Instead, President’s rhetoric has downplayed the seriousness and has suggested that it will just magically disappear.
He’s failed relative to most other presidents’ responses to contagious diseases and he has failed compared to other world leaders’ effectiveness at combatting this virus. There is no metric that I’m aware of by which we are doing well relative to the rest of the world. The variable that best explains that failure is the anemic response from our centralized government of which Donald Trump is now almost solely in charge.
I’m sure there’s more, but typing it all out was a chore without looking for more. Happy to provide links, just please clearly identify the factual assertion you’d like to see proof of.
