Trump's failure to protect this country from the worst impact of the pandemic is just his second worst failure. His worst failure is his lack of leadership in trying to mitigate the damage that his initial failure caused. We could face a disaster that will make the Great Depression look like the best of times and Trump continues to pretend it will all be over by the Fall. The nature of the economic disaster facing the United States is unprecedented.
And yet the imagination of our country’s leaders hardly seems up to the task. The president himself appears incapable of empathy, is skipping as many as nine out of 10 of his task force’s briefings and remains wedded to magical thinking — recommending cures ranging from the simply unproven to the outright deadly. His executive branch, after a three-year assault on institutional norms, is hobbled by vacancies, revolving doors and a plague of temporary acting officials that’s only going to get worse as the president’s term winds down...
Having failed to prepare for the epidemic as it loomed overseas, the United States now finds itself in the position of mounting the worst response in the developed world. Months into the crisis, we’re not even getting the basics right; other countries are running circles around us when it comes to testing and contact tracing, which all public health experts agree are key to addressing the short-term challenges.
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