[ED NOTE: Some months ago, bewildered by the amount of oncoming data and information - and its misapplications - I started putting together a coronavirus database. That can be found here. Much of the information in this piece is taken from there.]
POSTMORTEM: Too Early?
Part IV
by Domingo Soto
Action Plan
By early March it appeared that the Administration team was in full attack mode. HHS announced its intention to purchase 500 million N95 masks and plans to distribute them over the next 18 months. CDC would get $35 million to help state and local communities. The FDA granted the CDC’s request for emergency use authorization (EUA) so as to allow health care personnel to use certain unregulated (but NIOSH-approved) respirators.
The FDA granted Roche AG an emergency approval for automated coronavirus testing kits and issued an emergency approval to Thermo Fisher for a coronavirus test within 24 hours of receiving the request. HHS announced funding for the development of two new rapid diagnostic tests, which would be able to detect coronavirus in approximately 1 hour.
Agriculture announced a partnership between USDA, Baylor University, McLane Global, and Pepsi Co. to provide one million meals per week to rural children in response to widespread school closures. Treasury contributed ten billion dollars through the economic stabilization fund to the Federal Reserve’s commercial paper funding facility. DOD announced it would make available to HHS up to five million respirator masks and 2,000 ventilators. The administration sought out public-private partnerships to develop drive-through testing collection sites.
By mid-March, the President had declared a national emergency and in the process accessed $42 billion in existing funds. He issued safety orders and signaled his intention to invoke the Defense Production Act, which he did two weeks later.
"My administration is recommending that all Americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from home when possible. Avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people. Avoid discretionary travel. And avoid eating and drinking at bars, restaurants and public food courts. If everyone makes this change or these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus. And we're going to have a big celebration all together. With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly."
Plan, What Plan?
That statement, now six months later, is emblematic of how we went from an all-out (if somewhat belatedly) assault to capitulation and a hollow declaration of victory. It bears parsing out. It shows that while he was on the right track and knew what he had to do, his assessment of the strength of the problem and the duration of a campaign was, at best, naive and in the end, insufficient.
Nor, did he have the resolve, or perhaps the ability, to follow a definitive and concrete action plan, to stay the course. Almost contemporaneously with his statement and the actions that signaled that he was leading the charge, the President was mixing his message. He appeared to balk at the chore before him. He immediately shifted responsibility to the state governors. On March 19, he suggested that obtaining medical equipment should be up to individual governors because “we’re not a shipping clerk.”
This would soon devolve into finger pointing between the governors and the President, mostly around the availability of testing and PPE and the question about who bore the responsibility for obtaining them. By mid-April, a full-on range war had developed, involving even governors from his own party. Trump called them complainers. The critiques, first enunciated in pre-pandemic assessments concerning the confusion about intergovernmental and agency roles would soon prove much too true.
This rift, as well as the one that would develop between the political and the medical operatives, would exacerbate what was already an overboiling pot. In early April, an exasperated Dr. Fauci cautioned states to stop allowing any exemptions to social-distancing guidelines. Forcing people to stay home is the “only thing we have”, he said. Later that month, though, the White House would issue guidelines on reopening and the President would declare that state governors should make their own decisions about when to restart.
The Role Model
While the medical and organizational mechanics of fighting the pandemic were crucial, the problem of optics, of confidence in the process and the players was constantly on life support, prey to what appeared to be an ad hoc, often contradictory and always quirky approach which no one could rationally call a game plan or, for that matter, a rational manner of governance. In the end, it was not just a matter of being rudderless. There was an untrained and irresponsible pilot at the wheel.
Trump continued to criticize governors for ‘unreasonable’ lock downs and engaged in what are, by now all-too-familiar fantastical declarations minimizing the potential of this disease. By the end of April, even though he was now having to admit the earlier death projections were wrong and might reach as high as 60,000 to 70,000, he was claiming that "the worst days" were over. Now rejecting his earlier warnings, he suggested that perhaps blanket testing was not necessary. "You'll see some astonishing numbers -- I don't know that all of that's even necessary." For all of his rosy cheerleading, Trump, a multi-front confrontationalist, found time to not only paint expansive day-glo pictures of optimism, he would scattershot blame and did so almost immediately.
At a time unity was needed, he plowed division, abetted by media friends like Ingraham and Hannity who claimed the virus was overblown and a Democratic Party gimmick meant to undermine his election. “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”“LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”, the roiler President would tweet in mid-April. And, while attacks on the opposing party in the middle of an election campaign might pass as appropriate, he did so in such an equal opportunity and far ranging manner, that he damaged more than just confidence in the process.
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