Firm Leadership… in the Wrong Direction

"It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator… I mean, how inefficient. And then, FEMA gets involved! And FEMA starts bidding! And now FEMA is bidding on top of the 50 [states]. So FEMA is driving up the price. What sense does this make?" NY Governor Cuomo, March 31^st on Trump’s leaving pricing for vital medical supplies and equipment to the “free” market.

When national policy, the leader of the nation, declares a rapidly emerging outbreak of an uncurable and highly contagious virus to be a “hoax,” bad news spread by his Democratic rivals, contradicts his medical experts, uses the Defense Production Act to force ventilator construction solely as a personal vendetta against an outspoken critic (General Motors’ CEO, Mary Barra) but not otherwise, cuts off supplies to states with governors who criticize him (Michigan and Washington), projects absurdly optimistic “back to normal” end dates (moving targets), openly states that the damage to the economy is worse than few people dying, blames everybody but himself for the outbreak explosion here in the United States and shoves principal responsibility back to governors for the main solution – as the entire planet (including the United States) is experiencing the worst pandemic since the 1918-20 Spanish Flu that killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people – requires the biggest workaround against Donald Trump’s failed leadership. That he is boasting about the ratings of his CV-19 press briefings with glee is completely inappropriate. Trump’s brain and mouth are the problem. Meanwhile, facts pour out:

“The White House coronavirus response coordinator said Monday [3/30] that she is ‘very worried about every city in the United States’ and projects 100,000 to 200,000 American deaths as a best case scenario… In an interview on ‘TODAY,’ Dr. Deborah Birx painted a grim message about the expected fatalities, echoing that without doing any measures they could hit as high as 2.2 million, as coronavirus cases continue to climb throughout the U.S.

“‘I think everyone understands now that you can go from five to 50 to 500 to 5000 cases very quickly,’ Birx said… ‘I think in some of the metro areas we were late in getting people to follow the 15-day guidelines’ she added.

“Birx said the projections by Dr. Anthony Fauci that U.S. deaths could range from 1.6 million to 2.2 million deaths is a worst case scenario if the country did ‘nothing’ to contain the outbreak, but said even ‘if we do things almost perfectly,’ she still predicts up to 200,000 U.S. deaths.” NBCNews, March 30th. Yup, those damned blue cities, but in time, CV-19 will leak into every other community, small towns and rural stretches (where our vital farms reside!) and share its malevolence with those targets as well. Areas where doctors and medical facilities are scarce.

Trump’s concern, shared by most Republican leaders in Congress, is that if the economy remains bad – and this recession will definitely continue well past the election no matter what they may want – the election could heavily favor the Democrats. He’s enjoying his virtual headline monopoly – his over-televised CV-19 daily press briefings while his Democratic opponents are gasping for any coverage – and his rising approval ratings. But he is likely to face massive casualties that are going to be much worse because of his failure to fund preparedness (he actually cut programs), his delays in taking action and his underplaying the seriousness of the pandemic causing many people to fail to take even the most basic precautions (or to take them too late). And a much worse economy than if he had been more transparent and effective from the get-go.

Let’s look at this perspective, in the March 24th Washington Post, from Lawrence Summers, an economics professor at and past president of Harvard University. He was treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Barack Obama from 2009 through 2010: “I am appalled by President Trump’s invocation of economic arguments as a basis for overriding the judgments of public health experts about battling the coronavirus pandemic.

“In fact, as a matter of pure economics — even leaving aside moral considerations that should be taken into account — the president’s arguments are flatly wrong. When Trump tweets and says things like ‘we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself ’ or ‘you can destroy a country by closing it down’ and raises the prospect of reversing measures taken to promote social distancing, he misunderstands the fundamental economic problem posed by the pandemic, as well as the most rational, economically sensible way to address it. In the end, economic growth and well-being would be harmed, not helped, by the course he is advocating…

“[Does] anyone believe that ordinary life will continue if millions of Americans have the virus and our hospitals are overflowing?... Prematurely abandoning or relaxing social distancing will be disastrous on both economic and health grounds. If restrictions are lifted prematurely, the result will be a follow-on pandemic surge. More people will die. What will the policy choice be then? If it is a return to restriction, starting from a much less favorable point and much more disease spread, then the cumulative economic loss will be greatly magnified. The costs we have already borne will have been totally in vain.

“Indeed, as a matter of logic, overly temporary social distancing represents the worst of all policy alternatives. In the view of almost all experts, it would be a grave mistake to accept the full and rapid spread of coronavirus as inevitable. But if this is to be our strategy, there is no reason not to get on with it, rather than suffer the additional burden of temporary distancing.

“Ending restrictions too soon and allowing a further disease spike carry a range of collateral risks and costs. When it is safe to take up old habits, will the public trust the advice of authorities who misled them? What extra uncertainty cost will be baked into all financial markets when it becomes clear that the federal government has offered false assurances on safety? Will other countries be willing to buy our goods when the United States has turned itself unnecessarily and against the advice of experts into an exporter of products?

“The president has compared the challenge of pandemic to the challenge of war. But Americans do not fight wars for our freedom saying we can only keep going for another few weeks and then we will give up. Elevating temporary economic expedience over the long run health of the citizenry is a dangerous strategy. And we deserve better from our business community than demands to go back to selling when disease counts are still rising.”

But who has done it better? Isn’t Trump at least grappling with the pandemic the way he should? Finally? Why then do some nations, including Taiwan, Korea and Germany, seem to be controlling the pandemic better than others? Let’s look at Germany, which is closer to the American experience although it does have universal healthcare. “The startling numbers are something of an enigma. Some have hailed the country for breaking the spell of catastrophe; others have been far more guarded. What is going on here? And what can we learn from it?... Though not in full lockdown, schools, shops, restaurants and theaters are closed; gatherings of more than two people are banned. The economy will shrink and jobs will be lost. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel self-quarantined after learning that her doctor was infected. (She tested negative.) Germany, it seems, is not immune to the ravages of the pandemic.

“Except in one way: Very few people seem to be dying. As of Saturday, of the 56,202 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, just 403 patients have died. That’s a fatality rate of 0.72 percent. By contrast, the current rate in Italy — where over 10,000 people have died — is 10.8 percent. In Spain, it’s 8 percent. Over twice as many people have died in Britain, where there are around three times fewer cases, than in Germany.

“The startling numbers are something of an enigma. Some have hailed the country for breaking the spell of catastrophe; others have been far more guarded. What is going on here? And what can we learn from it?

“First and foremost: Early and persistent testing helps. And so does tracking people.

“Take the country’s first recorded case. On Jan. 28, a man in Bavaria who works for a car parts company that has two plants in Wuhan, China, was confirmed to have the virus. Within two days, the authorities identified the person who had infected the patient, tracked his contacts and quarantined them. The company stopped travel to China and shut down its plant in Bavaria. The outbreak — several other employees tested positive — was effectively contained. Across the country, the pattern was repeated. Local health departments and federal authorities worked together to test, track and quarantine exposed citizens.

“Germany has also been better at protecting its older residents, who are at much greater risk. States banned visits to the elderly, and policymakers issued urgent warnings to limit contact with older people. Many seem to have quarantined themselves. The results are clear: Patients over the age of 80 make up around 3 percent of the infected, though they account for 7 percent of the population. The median age for those infected is estimated to be 46; in Italy, it’s 63… And many more young people in Germany have tested positive for the virus than in other countries. In part, that’s attributable to the country’s more extensive testing.” New York Times, March 28th. Older people in Germany do seem to be looked after far better than here in the United States, Medicare notwithstanding.

The South Korean response provides ever more astounding success, but because of a 2015 MERS outbreak there, they were overprepared. Testing was almost immediately available, infected people were dealt with instantly, with those testing positive legally required to load an identifying app on to their smart phones. Hospital beds, ventilators and triage were more than enough. Distancing, lockdowns and self-isolation produced numbers that should make our government blush.

So, Trump may have the approval poll support – for now – and his TV ratings and domination of every form of medium are staggering, but he clearly is a big part of the problem, in every way. There are vastly better approaches. Locking down, vastly more testing than is even currently contemplated and a war-time effort to get equipment, experts and supplies where they are needed – without insisting on Trump’s mantra of “let the market set the price” – and basically following the German or South Korean models would be a start. Taking the financial onus off Americans with no or limited healthcare coverage would also take some of the fear away.

We are so far behind as the virus explodes. New York is horrible, but there will be many more New Yorks coming up. If you are confused and more than a little terrified, let me suggest that you watch this video by Dr. David Price of the Weill Cornell Medical Center in NYC: https://vimeo.com/399733860?ref=em-share. It’s worth the time.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the best approach, what I call the Andrew Cuomo (pictured above) method, is to ignore the President and everything he says as much as possible and focus on those who know what they are talking about like Dr. Anthony Fauci.