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Following the Money

From this morning’s Washington Post:

“President Trump, under growing pressure to rescue an economy in free fall, said Monday that he may soon loosen federal guidelines for social distancing and encourage shuttered businesses to reopen — defying public health experts, who have warned that doing so risks accelerating the spread of the novel coronavirus or even allowing it to rebound.”

Trump has obviously become impatient with his role as leader of a nation in crisis. While he has described himself as a “wartime” President, he has neither the decisive mindset nor the compassion required to deal with a spreading pandemic and a pending healthcare disaster. Instead, he is fixated on the collapsing stock market and the negative impact the crisis is having on his re-election campaign.

According to press reports, he misses his campaign rallies, events proscribed by the current social distancing regime. He has commandeered the daily White House briefings meant to keep the public informed on government progress in battling the spread of the virus, sidelining the healthcare professionals and using the occasion to deliver a confusing mix of personal grievance, campaign rhetoric, and unsubstantiated claims on the Administration’s progress.

Some in the White House, including head of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow, and outside acquaintances from the business community, have urged Trump to loosen the guidelines, citing both the threat to the economy and the effect on his campaign. More telling, though, may be his refusal to rule out the possibility that some of the stimulus money which will become available when Congress passes the stimulus bill will end up in the coffers of his businesses. 

It’s good to be the king… Or, at least, the President.

❖

While Trump frets about being in (for him) the uncomfortable position of not being able to bully the virus or lie about its impact, the reality of its exponential spread remains undeniable. According to this morning’s New York Times, the number of persons who have tested positive nationwide is almost 43,500; three weeks ago, less than 100 positive tests had been reported. 

It appears Larry Kudlow, who less than a month ago proclaimed that the coronavirus was “contained”, is not very good at prognostication. (He has been wrong before in very public ways, as in his prediction the country was not entering a recession in 2008.) It seems likely that the rate of infection has not yet spiked.

On March 6th, Liz Specht, associate director of science and technology at The Good Food Institute, posted a thread on Twitter laying out the case for exponential growth in the number of infected cases. (You can read it here in an article she posted at statnews.com.) Her rough calculations, which she now admits were “too conservative”, predict the number of infected persons will be in the millions by mid-May. The point of her argument is that, in terms of available hospital beds and required equipment such as ventilators and protective masks, the healthcare system will be overwhelmed.

We are in the midst of both a public health crisis and an economic crisis. Ameliorating the economic issues will not solve the public health problems. On the other hand, the more rapidly the virus is contained, the more quickly the economy can begin to be re-energized. That, of course, would require compassionate and decisive leadership.

Let me know if you come across that anywhere in Washington.