Opinion - America and The Coronavirus - A Colossal Failure of Leadership' - The New York Times

10/23/2020 Opinion | America and the Coronavirus: ‘A Colossal Failure of Leadership’ - The New York Times
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Opinion lockleong93
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America and the Virus: ‘A Colossal Failure of Ranjit Kaur

ranjitkaurlives@gmail.com
Leadership’ 6 more accounts
In its destruction of American lives, treasure and well-being, this pandemic marks the
greatest failure of U.S. governance since Vietnam.
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
Oct. 22, 2020
One of the most lethal leadership failures in modern times unfolded in South Africa in the
early 2000s as AIDS spread there under President Thabo Mbeki.
Mbeki scorned science, embraced conspiracy theories, dithered as the disease spread
and rejected lifesaving treatments. His denialism cost about 330,000 lives, a Harvard
study found.
None of us who wrote scathingly about that debacle ever dreamed that something similar
might unfold in the United States. But today, health experts regularly cite President
Trump as an American Mbeki.
“We’re unfortunately in the same place,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at U.C.L.A.
“Mbeki surrounded himself with sycophants and cost his country hundreds of thousands
of lives by ignoring science, and we’re suffering the same fate.”
One role of journalism is to establish accountability, and that’s particularly important

before an election. Trump says he deserves an A-plus for his “phenomenal job” handling
the coronavirus, but the judgment of history is likely to be far harsher.
“I see it as a colossal failure of leadership,” said Larry Brilliant, a veteran epidemiologist

who helped eliminate smallpox in the 1970s. “Of the more than 200,000 people who have
died as of today, I don’t think that 50,000 would have died if it hadn’t been for the
incompetence.”
There’s plenty of blame to go around, involving Democrats as well as Republicans, but

Trump in particular “recklessly squandered lives,” in the words of an unusual editorial
this month in the New England Journal of Medicine. Death certificates may record the
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/opinion/coronavirus-united-states.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage 1/7
coronavirus as the cause of death, but in a larger sense vast numbers of Americans died
because their government was incompetent. Sign in to nytimes.com with Google
As many Americans are dying every 10 days of Covid-19

lockleong93 as U.S. troops died during 19
years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the economists David Cutler and Lawrence
Summers estimate that the economic cost of the pandemic in the United States will be $16
Ranjit Kaur
trillion, or about $125,000 per American household — far more than the median family’s
net worth. Then there’s an immeasurable cost in soft power as the United States is
humbled before the world. 6 more accounts
“It’s really sad to see the U.S. presidency fall from being the champion of global health to
being the laughingstock of the world,” said Devi Sridhar, an American who is a professor
of global health at the University of Edinburgh. “It was a tragedy of history that Donald
Trump was president when this hit.”
The United States has made other terrible mistakes over the decades, including the Iraq
War and the War on Drugs. But in terms of destruction of American lives, treasure and
wellbeing, this pandemic may be the greatest failure of governance in the United States
since the Vietnam War.
NICHOLAS KRISTOFʼS NEWSLETTER: Get a behind-the-scenes look at

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Nick’s gritty journalism as he travels around the United States and
the world.
America Was the Leader in Pandemic Preparedness.
The paradox is that a year ago, the United States seemed particularly well positioned to
handle this kind of crisis. A 324-page study by Johns Hopkins found last October that the
United States was the country best prepared for a pandemic.
Credit for that goes to President George W. Bush, who in the summer of 2005 read an
advance copy of “The Great Influenza,” a history of the 1918 flu pandemic. Shaken, Bush
pushed aides to develop a strategy to prepare for another great contagion, and the result
was an excellent 396-page playbook for managing such a health crisis.
The Obama administration updated this playbook and in the presidential transition in
2016, Obama aides cautioned the Trump administration that one of the big risks to
national security was a contagion. Private experts repeated similar warnings. “Of all the
things that could kill 10 million people or more, by far the most likely is an epidemic,” Bill
Gates warned in 2015.
Trump has accused the Obama administration of depleting stockpiles of medical supplies
so that “the cupboard was bare.” It’s true that the Obama administration did not do
enough to refill the national stockpile with N95 masks, but Republicans in Congress
wouldn’t provide even the modest sums that Obama lockleong93
requested for replenishment. And
the Trump administration itself did nothing in its first three years to rebuild stockpiles.
Ranjit Kaur
We in the media also blew it: We didn’t do enoughranjitkaurlives@gmail.com
to warn about the risks of pandemics.
Trump argues that no one could have anticipated the pandemic, but it’s what Bush
6 more accounts
warned about, what Obama aides tried to tell their successors about, and what Joe Biden
referred to in a blunt tweet in October 2019 lamenting Trump’s cuts to health security
programs and adding: “We are not prepared for a pandemic.”
The First Alarm Bells From Wuhan
When the health commission of Wuhan, China, announced on Dec. 31 that it had identified
27 cases of a puzzling pneumonia, Taiwan acted with lightning speed. Concerned that this
might be an outbreak of SARS, Taiwan dispatched health inspectors to board flights
arriving from Wuhan and screen passengers before allowing them to disembark. Anyone
showing signs of ill health was quarantined.
If either China or the rest of the world had shown the same urgency, the pandemic might
never have happened.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control issued a notice about the Wuhan
outbreak on Jan. 1, but not much else happened for a time. In China, President Xi Jinping
issued orders on Jan. 7 for handling the coronavirus, but they were inadequate. If, at that
time or soon after, Xi had ordered a more modest version of the Wuhan lockdown that
was to come, it is possible that the virus could have been stifled before it spread around
the globe.
Instead, Wuhan held a banquet for 40,000 people on Jan. 18, and by the time the lockdown
was ordered on Jan. 23, some 5 million people had already left Wuhan for the Chinese
New Year. In hindsight, two points seem clear: First, China initially covered up the scale
of the outbreak. Second, even so, the United States and other countries had enough
information to act as Taiwan did. The first two countries to impose travel restrictions on
China were North Korea and the Marshall Islands, neither of which had inside
information.
That first half of January represents a huge missed opportunity for the world. If the
United States, the World Health Organization and the world media had raised enough
questions and pressed China, then perhaps the Chinese central government would have
intervened in Wuhan earlier. And if Wuhan had been locked down just two weeks earlier,
it’s conceivable that this entire global catastrophe could have been averted.
The Defiance of Science

Perhaps the original sin of America’s response to the coronavirus came with the bungling
of testing.
Without testing, health officials fight an opponentlockleong93

while blindfolded. They don’t know
where the virus lurks, and they can’t isolate those infected or trace their contacts.
But the C.D.C. devised a faulty test, and turf warsRanjit

in the federal government prevented
Kaur
the use of other tests. South Korea, Germany andranjitkaurlives@gmail.com
other countries quickly developed tests
that did work, and these were distributed around the world. 6Sierra Leone in West Africa
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had effective tests before the United States did.
Trump supporters note, correctly, that within the United States, the states with the
highest mortality rates have been Democrat-led: New Jersey has had the most deaths
per capita, followed by New York. It’s true that local politicians, Democrats and
Republicans alike, made disastrous decisions, as when Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York
City urged people in March to “get out on the town despite coronavirus.” But local
officials erred in part because of the failure of testing: Without tests, they didn’t know
what they faced.
It’s unfair to blame the testing catastrophe entirely on Trump, for the failures unfolded
several paygrades below him. Partly that’s because Trump appointees, like Robert
Redfield, director of the C.D.C., simply aren’t the A team.
In any case, presidents set priorities for lower officials. If Trump had pushed aides as
hard to get accurate tests as he pushed to repel refugees and migrants, then America
almost certainly would have had an effective test by the beginning of February and tens
of thousands of lives would have been saved.
Still, testing isn’t essential if a country gets backup steps right. Japan is a densely
populated country that did not test much and yet has only 2 percent as many deaths per
capita as the United States. One reason is that Japanese have long embraced face masks,
which Dr. Redfield has noted can be at least as effective as a vaccine in fighting the
pandemic. A country doesn’t have to do everything, if it does some things right.
Yet in retrospect, Trump did almost everything wrong. He discouraged mask wearing.
The administration never rolled out contact tracing, missed opportunities to isolate the
infected and exposed, didn’t adequately protect nursing homes, issued advice that
confused the issues more than clarified them, and handed responsibilities to states and
localities that were unprepared to act. Trump did do a good job of accelerating a vaccine,
but that won’t help significantly until next year.
Trump’s missteps arose in part because he channeled an anti-intellectual current that

runs deep in the United States, as he sidelined scientific experts and responded to the
virus with a sunny optimism apparently meant to bolster the financial markets.
“It’s going to disappear,” Trump said on Feb. 27. “One day — it’s like a miracle — it will
disappear.”
The false reassurances and dithering were deadly. One study found that if the United
lockleong93
States had simply imposed the same lockdowns just two weeks earlier, 83 percent of the
deaths in the early months could have been prevented.

Ranjit Kaur
A basic principle of public health is the primacy ofranjitkaurlives@gmail.com
accurate communications based on the
best science. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who holds a doctorate in physics, is
6 more accounts
the global champion of that approach. Trump was the opposite, sowing confusion and
conspiracy theories; a Cornell study found that “the President of the United States was
likely the largest driver of the Covid-19 misinformation.”
Instead of listening to top government scientists, Trump marginalized and derided them,
while elevating charlatans: One senior health department official, Michael Caputo, who
had no background in health, was ousted only after he denounced government scientists
for “sedition” and advised Trump supporters, “If you carry guns, buy ammunition.”
Trump recruited as a Covid-19 adviser a regular guest on Fox News, Dr. Scott Atlas, who
is not a specialist on infectious diseases but a radiologist who is an expert on magnetic
resonance imaging. You wouldn’t want an epidemiologist reviewing your MRI scans, and
it’s equally odd to have a radiologist managing a pandemic.
A conservative commentariat echoed Trump in downplaying the virus and deriding

efforts to stay safe. Brit Hume of Fox News mocked Joe Biden for wearing a large mask,
and the right-wing website RedState denounced “the public health Gestapo” and called
Dr. Anthony Fauci a “mask Nazi.” A University of Chicago study found that watching the
Sean Hannity program correlated to less social distancing, so watching Fox News may
well have been lethal to some of its fans.
Echoes of the Soviet Union
Americans have often pointed to the Soviet Union as a place where ideology trumped
science, with disastrous results. Stalin backed Trofim Lysenko, an agricultural
pseudoscientist who was an ardent Communist but scorned genetics — and whose
zealous incompetence helped cause famines in the Soviet Union. Later, in the 1980s,
Soviet leaders were troubled by data showing falling life expectancy — so they banned
publication of mortality statistics. It was in the same spirit that Trump opposed testing
for the coronavirus in the hope of holding down the number of reported cases.
Of course, science sometimes gets it wrong. Many experts opposed closing borders, while
Trump’s move to limit travel from China now appears sound — although 45 countries
imposed such travel restrictions before the United States. Likewise, Fauci said on March
9: “If you’re a healthy, young person, if you want to go on a cruise ship, go on a cruise
ship.”
Inevitably, science errs, then self-corrects. But Trump was not self-correcting.
Most striking, Trump still has never developed a comprehensive plan to fight Covid-19.
His “strategy” was to downplay the virus and resist business closures, in an effort to
lockleong93
keep the economy roaring — his best argument for re-election.
This failed. The best way to protect the economy Ranjit

was to Kaurcontrol the virus, not to ignore it,
and the spread of Covid-19 caused economic dislocations that devastated even homes
where no one was infected. Eight million Americans have slipped into poverty since May,
6 more accounts
a Columbia University study found, and about one in seven households with children
have reported to the census that they didn’t have enough food to eat in the last seven
days. More than 40 percent of adults reported in June that they were struggling with
mental health, and 13 percent have begun or increased substance abuse, a C.D.C. study
found. More than one-quarter of young adults said they have seriously contemplated
suicide. Diane Reynolds, who runs an excellent addiction program called Provoking
Hope, estimates that relapses have increased 50 percent during the pandemic.
So in what is arguably the richest country in the history of the world, political malpractice
has resulted in a pandemic of infectious disease followed by pandemics of poverty, mental
illness, addiction and hunger.
The rejection of science has also exacerbated polarization and tribalism. As I write this
I’m on our family farm in rural Oregon. Trump is popular in this area, and his contempt
for science has contributed to a dangerous unraveling, even talk of civil war. An old
school friend shared this conspiracy theory on Facebook:
Create a VIRUS to scare people. Place them in quarantine. Count the number of dead every
second of every day in every news headline. Close all businesses …. Mask people.
Dehumanize them. Close temples and churches …. Empty the prisons because of the virus
and fill the streets with criminals. Send in Antifa to vandalize property as if they are
freedom fighters. Undermine the law. Loot …. And, in an election year, have Democrats
blame all of it on the President. If you love America, our Constitution, and the Rule of Law,
get ready to fight for them.
Mismanagement of the virus has not only sickened millions of Americans but has also
poisoned our body politic.
Taking a Threat Seriously
A pandemic is a huge challenge for any country. Spain and Brazil have both had more
deaths per capita than the United States, and Europe now has slightly more new
infections per capita than the United States.
Still, it’s not reassuring for the country that a year ago was considered best prepared for
a pandemic to hear: We’re not quite as bad as Brazil!
During World War II, American soldiers died at a rate of 9,200 a month, less than one-
third the pace of deaths from this pandemic, butSign
the in to nytimes.com with Google
United States responded with a
massive mobilization. By 1945, a Ford assembly line was turning out one new B-24
lockleong93
bomber every hour. Yet today we can’t even churn out enough face masks; a poll of
nurses in late July and early August found that one-third lacked enough N95 masks.
Ranjit Kaur
Trump and his allies have even argued against mobilization. “Don’t be afraid of Covid,”
Trump tweeted this month. “Don’t let it dominate your life.” Attorney General William
Barr compared stay-at-home orders to slavery. 6 more accounts
Instead of leading a war against the virus, Trump organized a surrender. He even held a
super-spreader event at the White House, for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and that’s why
the White House recently had more new cases of Covid-19 than New Zealand, Taiwan and
Vietnam combined.
It didn’t have to be this way. If the U.S. had worked harder and held the per capita
mortality rate down to the level of, say, Germany, we could have saved more than 170,000
lives. And if the U.S. had responded urgently and deftly enough to achieve Taiwan’s death
rate, fewer than 100 Americans would have died from the virus.
“It is a slaughter,” Dr. William Foege, a legendary epidemiologist who once ran the C.D.C.,
wrote to Dr. Redfield. Dr. Foege predicted that public health textbooks would study
America’s response to Covid-19 not as a model of A-plus work but as an example of what
not to do.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Weʼd like to hear what you think about this
or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And hereʼs our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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10/23/2020 Opinion | America and the Coronavirus: ‘A Colossal Failure of Leadership’ - The New York Times

America and the Virus: ‘A Colossal Failure of Ranjit Kaur

Leadership’ 6 more accounts

Oct. 22, 2020

One role of journalism is to establish accountability, and that’s particularly important

“I see it as a colossal failure of leadership,” said Larry Brilliant, a veteran epidemiologist

There’s plenty of blame to go around, involving Democrats as well as Republicans, but

As many Americans are dying every 10 days of Covid-19

NICHOLAS KRISTOFʼS NEWSLETTER: Get a behind-the-scenes look at

America Was the Leader in Pandemic Preparedness.

The First Alarm Bells From Wuhan

The Defiance of Science

Without testing, health ofﬁcials ﬁght an opponentlockleong93

But the C.D.C. devised a faulty test, and turf warsRanjit

Trump’s missteps arose in part because he channeled an anti-intellectual current that

deaths in the early months could have been prevented.

A conservative commentariat echoed Trump in downplaying the virus and deriding

Echoes of the Soviet Union

This failed. The best way to protect the economy Ranjit

Taking a Threat Seriously

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