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‘Sadness’ and Disbelief From a World Missing American Leadership
The coronavirus pandemic is shaking bedrock assumptions about U.S. exceptionalism. This is perhaps the first global crisis in more than a century where no one is even looking for Washington to lead.
As images of America’s overwhelmed hospital wards and snaking jobless lines have flickered across the world, people on the European side of the Atlantic are looking at the richest and most powerful nation in the world with disbelief.
“When people see these pictures of New York City they say, ‘How can this happen? How is this possible?’” said Henrik Enderlein, president of the Berlin-based Hertie School, a university focused on public policy. “We are all stunned. Look at the jobless lines. Twenty-two million,” he added.
“I feel a desperate sadness,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European history at Oxford University and a lifelong and ardent Atlanticist.
The pandemic sweeping the globe has done more than take lives and livelihoods from New Delhi to New York. It is shaking fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism — the special role the United States played for decades after World War II as the reach of its values and power made it a global leader and example to the world.
Today it is leading in a different way: More than 840,000 Americans have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and at least 46,784 have died from it, more than anywhere else in the world.
As the calamity unfolds, President Trump and state governors are not only arguing over what to do, but also over who has the authority to do it. Mr. Trump has fomented protests against the safety measures urged by scientific advisers, misrepresented facts about the virus and the government response nearly daily, and this week used the virus to cut off the issuing of green cards to people seeking to emigrate to the United States.
“America has not done badly, it has done exceptionally badly,” said Dominique Moïsi, a political scientist and senior adviser at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne.
The pandemic has exposed the strengths and weaknesses of just about every society, Mr. Moïsi noted. It has demonstrated the strength of, and suppression of information by, an authoritarian Chinese state as it imposed a lockdown in the city of Wuhan. It has shown the value of Germany’s deep well of public trust and collective spirit, even as it has underscored the country’s reluctance to step up forcefully and lead Europe.
And in the United States, it has exposed two great weaknesses that, in the eyes of many Europeans, have compounded one another: the erratic leadership of Mr. Trump, who has devalued expertise and often refused to follow the advice of his scientific advisers, and the absence of a robust public health care system and social safety net.
“America prepared for the wrong kind of war,” Mr. Moïsi said. “It prepared for a new 9/11, but instead a virus came.”
“It raises the question: Has America become the wrong kind of power with the wrong kind of priorities?” he asked.
Ever since Mr. Trump moved into the White House and turned America First into his administration’s guiding mantra, Europeans have had to get used to the president’s casual willingness to risk decades-old alliances and rip up international agreements. Early on, he called NATO “obsolete” and withdrew U.S. support from the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal.
But this is perhaps the first global crisis in more than a century where no one is even looking to the United States for leadership.
In Berlin, Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, has said as much.
China took “very authoritarian measures, while in the U.S., the virus was played down for a long time,” Mr. Maas recently told Der Spiegel magazine.
“These are two extremes, neither of which can be a model for Europe,” Mr. Maas said.
America once told a story of hope, and not just to Americans. West Germans like Mr. Maas, who grew up on the front line of the Cold War, knew that story by heart, and like many others in the world, believed it.
But nearly three decades later, America’s story is in trouble.
The country that helped defeat fascism in Europe 75 years ago next month, and defended democracy on the continent in the decades that followed, is doing a worse job of protecting its own citizens than many autocracies and democracies.
There is a special irony: Germany and South Korea, both products of enlightened postwar American leadership, have become potent examples of best practices in the coronavirus crisis.
But critics now see America failing not only to lead the world’s response, but letting down its own people as well.
“There is not only no global leadership, there is no national and no federal leadership in the United States,” said Ricardo Hausmann, director of the Growth Lab at Harvard’s Center for International Development. “In some sense this is the failure of leadership of the U.S. in the U.S.”
Of course, some countries in Europe have also been overwhelmed by the virus, with the number of dead from Covid-19 much higher as a percentage of the population in Italy, Spain and France than in the United States. But they were struck sooner and had less time to prepare and react.
The contrast between how the United States and Germany responded to the virus is particularly striking.
While Chancellor Angela Merkel has been criticized for not taking a forceful enough leadership role in Europe, Germany is being praised for a near-textbook response to the pandemic, at least by Western standards. That is thanks to a robust public health care system, but also a strategy of mass testing and trusted and effective political leadership.
Ms. Merkel has done what Mr. Trump has not. She has been clear and honest about the risks with voters and swift in her response. She has rallied all 16 state governors behind her. A trained physicist, she has followed scientific advice and learned from best practice elsewhere.
Not long ago, Ms. Merkel was considered a spent force, having announced that this would be her last term. Now her approval ratings are at 80 percent.
“She has the mind of a scientist and the heart of a pastor’s daughter,” Mr. Garton Ash said.
Mr. Trump, in a hurry to restart the economy in an election year, has appointed a panel of business executives to chart a course out of the lockdown.
Ms. Merkel, like everyone, would like to find a way out, too, but this week she warned Germans to remain cautious. She is listening to the advice of a multidisciplinary panel of 26 academics from Germany’s national academy of science. The panel includes not just medical experts and economists but also behavioral psychologists, education experts, sociologists, philosophers and constitutional experts.
“You need a holistic approach to this crisis,” said Gerald Haug, the academy’s president, who chairs the German panel. “Our politicians get that.”
A climatologist, Mr. Haug used to do research at Columbia University in New York.
The United States has some of the world’s best and brightest minds in science, he said. “The difference is, they’re not being listened to.”
“It’s a tragedy,” he added.
Some cautioned that the final history of how countries fare after the pandemic is still a long way from being written.
A pandemic is a very specific kind of stress test for political systems, said Mr. Garton Ash, the history professor. The military balance of power has not shifted at all. The United States remains the world’s largest economy. And it was entirely unclear what global region would be best equipped to kick-start growth after a deep recession.
“All of our economies are going to face a terrible test,” he said. “No one knows who will come out stronger at the end.”
Benjamin Haddad, a French researcher at the Atlantic Council, wrote that while the pandemic was testing U.S. leadership, it is “too soon to tell” if it would do long-term damage.
“It is possible that the United States will resort to unexpected resources, and at the same time find a form of national unity in its foreign policy regarding the strategic rivalry with China, which it has been lacking until now,” Mr. Haddad wrote.
There is another wild card in the short term, Mr. Moïsi pointed out. The United States has an election in November. That, and the aftermath of the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s, might also affect the course of history.
The Great Depression gave rise to America’s New Deal. Maybe the coronavirus will lead the United States to embrace a stronger public safety net and develop a national consensus for more accessible health care, Mr. Moïsi suggested.
“Europe’s social democratic systems are not only more human, they leave us better prepared and fit to deal with a crisis like this than the more brutal capitalistic system in the United States,” Mr. Moïsi said.
The current crisis, some fear, could act like an accelerator of history, speeding up a decline in influence of both the United States and Europe.
“Sometime in 2021 we come out of this crisis and we will be in 2030,” said Mr. Moïsi. “There will be more Asia in the world and less West.”
Mr. Garton Ash said that the United States should take an urgent warning from a long line of empires that rose and fell.
“To a historian it’s nothing new, that’s what happens,” said Mr. Garton Ash. “It’s a very familiar story in world history that after a certain amount of time a power declines.”
“You accumulate problems, and because you’re such a strong player, you can carry these dysfunctionalities for a long time,” he said. “Until something happens and you can’t anymore.”
Cartoon – Better Change Our Leadership
Trump, Head of Government, Leans Into Antigovernment Message
With his poll numbers fading after a rally-around-the-leader bump, the president is stoking protests against stay-at-home orders.
First he was the self-described “wartime president.” Then he trumpeted the “total” authority of the federal government. But in the past few days, President Trump has nurtured protests against state-issued stay-at-home orders aimed at curtailing the spread of the coronavirus.
Hurtling from one position to another is consistent with Mr. Trump’s approach to the presidency over the past three years. Even when external pressures and stresses appear to change the dynamics that the country is facing, Mr. Trump remains unbowed, altering his approach for a day or two, only to return to nursing grievances.
Not even the president’s re-election campaign can harness him: His team is often reactive to his moods and whims, trying but not always succeeding in steering him in a particular direction. Now, with Mr. Trump’s poll numbers falling after a rally-around-the-leader bump, he is road-testing a new turn on a familiar theme — veering into messages aimed at appealing to Americans whose lives have been disrupted by the legally enforceable stay-at-home orders.
Whether his latest theme will be effective for him is an open question: In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday, just 36 percent of voters said they generally trusted what Mr. Trump says about the coronavirus.
But the president, who ran as an insurgent in 2016, is most comfortable raging against the machine of government, even when he is the one running the country. And while the coronavirus is in every state in the union, it is heavily affecting minority and low-income communities.
So when Mr. Trump on Friday tweeted “LIBERATE,” his all-capitalized exhortations against strict orders in specific states — including Michigan — were in keeping with how he ran in 2016: saying things that seem contradictory, like pledging to work with governors and then urging people to “liberate” their states, and leaving it to his audiences to hear what they want to hear in his words.
For instance, Mr. Trump did not take the opportunity to more forcefully encourage the protesters when he spoke with reporters on Friday.
“These are people expressing their views,” Mr. Trump said. “They seem to be very responsible people to me.” But he said he thought the protesters had been treated “rough.”
In a webcast with Students for Trump on Friday, a conservative activist and Trump ally, Charlie Kirk, echoed the message, encouraging a “peaceful rebellion against governors” in states like Michigan, according to ABC News.
On Fox News, where many of the opinion hosts are aligned with Mr. Trump and which he watches closely, there have also been discussions of such protests. And Mr. Trump has heard from conservative allies who have said they think he is straying from his base of supporters in recent weeks.
So far, the protests have been relatively small and scattershot, organized by conservative-leaning groups with some organic attendance. It remains to be seen if they will be durable.
But Mr. Trump’s show of affinity for such actions is in keeping with his fomenting of voter anger at the establishment in 2016, a key to his success then — and his fallback position during uncertain moments ever since.
In the case of the state-issued orders, Mr. Trump’s advisers say his criticism of certain places is appropriate.
Stephen Moore, a former adviser to Mr. Trump and an economist with FreedomWorks, an organization that promotes limited government, said he thought protesters ought to be wearing masks and protecting themselves. But, he added, “the people who are doing the protest, for the most part, these are the ‘deplorables,’ they’re largely Trump supporters, but not only Trump supporters.”
On Sunday, Mr. Trump again praised the protesters. “I have never seen so many American flags,” he said.
But Mr. Trump’s advisers are divided about the wisdom of encouraging the protests. At some of them, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, has been compared to Adolf Hitler. At least one protester had a sign featuring a swastika.
One adviser said privately that if someone were to be injured at the protests — or if anyone contracted the coronavirus at large events where people were not wearing masks — there would be potential political risk for the president.
But two other people close to the president, who asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly, said they thought the protests could be politically helpful to Mr. Trump, while acknowledging there might be public health risks.
One of those people said that in much of the country, where the numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths are not as high as in places like New York, New Jersey, California and Washington State, anger is growing over the economic losses that have come with the stringent social-distancing restrictions.
And some states are already preparing to restart their economies. Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, took early actions against the spread of the virus, is planning a staged reopening beginning on May 1.
Still, as Mr. Trump did throughout 2016, as when he said “torture works” and then walked back that statement a short time later, or when he advocated bombing the Middle East while denouncing lengthy foreign engagements, he has long taken various sides of the same issue.
Mobilizing anger and mistrust toward the government was a crucial factor for Mr. Trump in the last presidential election. And for many months he has been looking for ways to contrast himself with former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and a Washington lifer.
The problem? Mr. Trump is now president, and disowning responsibility for his administration’s slow and problem-plagued response to the coronavirus could prove difficult. And protests can be an unpredictable factor, particularly at a moment of economic unrest.
Vice President Mike Pence, asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about the president’s tweets urging people to “liberate” states, demurred.
“The American people know that no one in America wants to reopen this country more than President Donald Trump,” Mr. Pence said, “and on Thursday the president directed us to lay out guidelines for when and how states could responsibly do that.”
“And in the president’s tweets and public statements, I can assure you, he’s going to continue to encourage governors to find ways to safely and responsibly let America go back to work,” he said.
With the political campaign halted, Mr. Trump’s advisers have seen an advantage in the frozen-in-time state of the race. Mr. Biden has struggled to fund-raise or even to get daily attention in the news cycle.
But Mr. Trump himself has seemed at sea, according to people close to him, uncertain of how to proceed. His approval numbers in his campaign polling have settled back to a level consistent with before the coronavirus, according to multiple people familiar with the data.
His campaign polling has shown that focusing on criticizing China, in contrast with Mr. Biden, moves voters toward Mr. Trump, according to a Republican who has seen it.
“Trump finally fired the first shot” with his more aggressive stance toward the Chinese government and its leader, Xi Jinping, said Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist. “Xi is put on notice that the death, economic carnage and agony is his and his alone,” Mr. Bannon said. “Only question now: What is America’s president prepared to do about it?”
Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, has advocated messages that contrast Mr. Trump with Mr. Biden on a number of fronts, including China.
But inside and outside the White House, other advisers to Mr. Trump see an advantage in focusing attention on the presidency.
Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, has argued in West Wing discussions that there is a time to focus on China, but that for now, the president should embrace commander-in-chief moments amid the crisis.
Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and a friend of Mr. Trump’s, said on ABC’s “This Week” that he did not think ads criticizing Mr. Biden on China were the right approach for now.
Ultimately, Mr. Trump’s advisers said, most of his team is aware that it can try to drive down Mr. Biden’s poll numbers, but that no matter what tactics it deploys now, the president’s future will most likely depend on whether the economy is improving in the fall and whether the virus’s spread has been mitigated. Those things will remain unknown for months.
“This is going to be a referendum,” Mr. Christie said, “on whether people think, when we get to October, whether or not he handled this crisis in a way that helped the American people, protected lives and moved us forward.”
Fauci at center of conservative storm
Criticism of Anthony Fauci from the right has picked up in recent days, with some conservatives calling for Trump to dump the infectious disease expert after he made comments about how imposing social distancing rules earlier could have slowed the spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States.
Fauci has become a national name with his regular presence at the daily coronavirus task force briefings and in other media appearances, and poll numbers show he’s trusted by a majority of Americans. It would set off a political storm if Trump were to sideline him in the middle of a pandemic.
Yet the criticism of Fauci by two conservative lawmakers in a Saturday op-ed and Trump’s own retweet of a conservative’s call to “#FireFauci” were unmistakable signs that the public health official is coming under pressure from some on the right to be loyal to the president.
Tensions between Fauci and Trump have been evident at times in recent weeks. The doctor put his head in his hand at one March briefing where the president quipped about the “Deep State Department,” and Trump stepped in at a briefing this month before Fauci could give his opinion on hydroxychloroquine.
The president had publicly praised Fauci as “extraordinary” and dismissed speculation about a rift between the two, joking on Friday that Fauci is so popular he could run against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and “win easily.” For the most part Fauci has seemed to successfully walk the line between contradicting Trump without outright criticizing him.
But Trump’s tweet on Sunday marked a shift and coincided with a fresh groundswell of conservative push-back toward the doctor as Trump comes under intense criticism for his slow response to the virus.
Some of the more pointed criticism of Fauci came after he said on CNN Sunday that more lives could have been saved if stay-at-home measures were implemented earlier than mid-March.
The comments irked Trump allies who viewed them as revisionist history given how Fauci’s own public statements evolved throughout January and February as scientists learned more about the virus and it spread through the U.S.
Jason Miller, a former Trump adviser who now hosts a radio show focused on the pandemic, said Fauci must be careful with how he talks about the crisis, but also described “finger pointing” as media chatter seeking to pull the administration apart.
“This talk of potential removal from the team is unnecessary media chatter trying to draw a divide where one doesn’t exist,” Miller said.
“I think what this is about is about the accuracy with which Dr. Fauci is communicating with both the president and the American people,” he added. “It’s critical as the lead scientist and health expert advising the president on the coronavirus pandemic that he be spot on with his details. I think the recent finger pointing and revisionist history whether intentional or accidental doesn’t help anybody.”
One source close to the administration said, while some inside would like to see Fauci gone, most recognize there is more value to keeping him on.
“I don’t sense there’s a monolithic view,” the person said. “There are some who dislike him and want him out of the [administration] but I think most recognize it’s better for him to be in the tent than outside of it.”
Fauci’s CNN remarks followed a New York Times article detailing how Trump ignored early warnings about the virus and initially resisted recommendations to implement social distancing recommendations, reporting that Trump has dismissed as “fake.”
One of Trump’s many tweets Sunday night defending his response quoted a former GOP congressional candidate who said it was “time to #FireFauci,” citing his Feb. 29 comments that there was not yet a need for Americans to alter their day-to-day lives.
Fauci has been clear that his realm of expertise is public health, and he has suggested at times that social distancing guidelines will be needed for weeks or months to limit the spread of the virus.
Others inside and outside the administration are advocating that it take steps to open up the economy soon, and emphasizing that health experts can’t be the only voices involved in the decision.
“Anthony Fauci should be deferring to the President when answering questions about timing of economic reopening,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham tweeted on Sunday.
Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.) penned an op-ed in the Washington Examiner over the weekend arguing that Fauci should not be a primary voice speaking on the coronavirus outbreak after the public health official late last month described social distancing as an “inconvenient” from societal and economic standpoint.
The criticism of Fauci comes amid a concerted effort among Trump and his supporters to shift blame away from the White House for its handling of the coronavirus, which has infected more than 557,000 people in the U.S. and killed more than 22,000 in the country. The president has at various points blamed governors for failing to prepare for the pandemic, deflected criticism toward the World Health Organization (WHO) and accused Democrats of using impeachment as a distraction.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, has been a ubiquitous presence during the coronavirus outbreak, appearing on political talk shows, sports podcasts and Instagram live chats.
He has emerged as something of a beacon for liberals in particular for his willingness to gently correct Trump on matters like a timetable for a vaccine and the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug the president has touted as a potential treatment for the coronavirus.
But his prominence has made him a target of criticism, so much so that he was given added security at the end of March.
One feature of Trump’s presidency has been his distrust of long-time government officials, particularly those who have served in previous administrations. Another has been Trump’s tendency to tire of aides and advisers who garner more of a spotlight than he does, putting Fauci in a precarious position even at a time when his expertise is most relevant.
Trump would have difficulty firing Fauci, who is not a political appointee, without cause. Attempting to do so would cause a firestorm among even some Republicans who have urged the president to listen to his health experts.
But one former administration official suggested Fauci could see his influence reduced. The official likened it to the way Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar has been diminished after he warned Trump in January and February about the threat of a pandemic but was dismissed as too alarmist.
“What happens when somebody repeatedly tells the president something he doesn’t want to hear?” said the former administration official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “He won’t fire [Fauci], but he’ll just sideline him.”
But doing so could risk damaging public confidence in the administration’s response to the virus.
A Monmouth University poll released last week found that 35 percent of Americans named Fauci when asked who they trust the most among public officials who discuss the outbreak on television, whereas 20 percent named Trump.
“Regardless of the issue, [Trump is] not always his most disciplined messenger,” said GOP strategist Doug Heye. “The more that he’s able to rely on the expertise of scientists, the more credibility that it gives him in this entire process.”
Bill Gates says the world is entering ‘uncharted territory’ because it wasn’t prepared for a pandemic like COVID-19
- Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates said the world was entering into “uncharted territory” because it was not prepared for a pandemic like COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
- Speaking to “BBC Breakfast” by video chat on Sunday, Gates said the world should’ve invested more in mitigating a global health crisis.
- “There is the period where the virus shows up in those first few months,” he said. “Were the tests prepared? Did countries think through getting their ICU and ventilator capacity up?”
- He added that once the crisis is over “very few countries are going to get an A grade” for their handling of the outbreak.
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates said the world was entering into “uncharted territory” because it was not prepared for a pandemic like COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Gates, who has been warning about the risk of a pandemic disease for years and who has poured millions into fighting the new coronavirus outbreak, told “BBC Breakfast” on Sunday that the world should have invested more into mitigating a global health crisis.
“Well, there was a period when I and other health experts were saying that this was the greatest potential downfall the world faced,” he told the BBC in an interview on Sunday, highlighting his previous warnings against the possibility of a deadly pandemic.
“So we definitely will look back and wish we had invested more,” he said, “so that we could quickly have all the diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines. We underinvested,” he said.
The 67-year-old billionaire warned that in the period before COVID-19 became a public-health crisis, countries could have better prepared their testing capabilities and made sure hospitals were stocked with ventilators and other necessary health supplies.
“There is the period where the virus shows up in those first few months,” he said. “Were the tests prepared? Did countries think through getting their ICU and ventilator capacity up?”
He added that once the crisis is over “very few countries are going to get an A grade” for their handling of the outbreak.
“Now, here we are, we didn’t simulate this, we didn’t practice,” he said. “So both in health policies and economic policies, we find ourselves in uncharted territory.”
Gates has become an outspoken advocate for preparing for a global health crisis like COVID-19.
Speaking to the Financial Times earlier this month, Gates said that COVID-19 was the “biggest event that people will experience in their entire lives” and world leaders and global policymakers have “paid many trillions of dollars more than we might have had to if we’d been properly ready.”
He told FT he was confident that lessons learned from this outbreak would encourage people to better prepare for next time but lamented that the cost this time around was too high.
“It shouldn’t have required a many trillions of dollars loss to get there,” he said. “The science is there. Countries will step forward.”
Trump reportedly squandered 3 crucial weeks to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak after a CDC official’s blunt warnings spooked the stock market
- President Donald Trump’s administration wasted three key weeks between February and March that could have been spent enacting mitigatory measures against COVID-19, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
- By the end of February, top officials knew that time was running out to stem the virus spread, and wanted to present Trump with a plan to enact aggressive social distancing and stay-at-home measures.
- But on February 26, a top CDC official issued stark warnings about the virus’ spread right before the stock market plummeted, which angered Trump for being, in his view, too alarmist.
- The Times reported that the entire episode killed off the efforts to persuade Trump to take aggressive, action to mitigate the virus’ spread. In the end, Trump didn’t issue stay-at-home guidance until March 16.
President Donald Trump’s administration stalled three key weeks in February that could have been spent enacting mitigatory measures against COVID-19 after Trump was angered by a public health official issuing a dire warning about the virus, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
On Saturday,The Times published a lengthy investigation of all the instances Trump brushed aside warnings of the severity of the coronavirus crisis, failed to act, and was delayed by significant infighting and mixed messages from the White House over what action to take and when.
The Times wrote: “These final days of February, perhaps more than any other moment during his tenure in the White House, illustrated Mr. Trump’s inability or unwillingness to absorb warnings coming at him.”
The Times conducted dozens of interviews with current and former officials and obtained 80 pages of emails from a number of public health experts both within and outside of the federal government who sounded the alarm about the severity of the crisis on an email chain they called “Red Dawn.”
One of the members of the email group, Health & Human Service disaster preparedness official Dr. Robert Kadlec, became particularly concerned about how rapidly the virus could spread when Dr. Eva Lee, a Georgia Tech researcher, shared a study with the group about a 20-year-old woman in China who spread the virus to five of her family members despite showing no symptoms.
“Eva is this true?! If so we have a huge [hole] on our screening and quarantine effort,” he replied on February 23.
At that point, researchers and top officials in the federal government determined that since it was way too late to try to keep the virus out of the United States, the best course of action was to introduce mitigatory, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like social distancing and prohibiting large gatherings.
As officials sounded the alarm that they didn’t have any time to waste before enacting aggressive measures to contain the virus, top public health officials including Dr. Robert Kadlec concluded that it was time to present Trump with a plan to curb the virus called “Four Steps to Mitigation.”
The plan, according to The Times, included canceling large gatherings, concerts, and sporting events, closing down schools, and both governments and private businesses alike ordering employees to work from home and stay at home as much as possible, in addition to quarantine and isolating the sick.
But their entire plan was derailed by a series of events that ended up delaying the White House’s response by several weeks, wasting precious time in the process.
Trump was on a state visit to India when Dr. Kadlec and other experts wanted to present him with the plan, so they decided to wait until he came back.
But less than a day later, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, publicly sounded the alarm about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in a February 26 press conference, warning that the outbreak would soon become a pandemic.
“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” Messonnier said, bluntly warning that community transmission of the virus would be inevitable.
The Times reported that Trump spent the plane ride stewing in anger both over Messonnier’s comments and the resulting plummet of the stock market they caused, calling Secretary of Health & Human Services Alex Azar “raging that Dr. Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily,” The Times said.
The Times reported that the entire episode effectively killed off any efforts to persuade Trump to take aggressive, decisive action to mitigate the virus’ spread and led to Azar being sidelined, writing, ” With Mr. Pence and his staff in charge, the focus was clear: no more alarmist messages.”
In the end, Dr. Kadlec’s team never made their presentation. Trump did not issue nationwide social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines until March 16, three weeks after Messonnier warned that the US had limited time to mitigate community transmission of the virus, and several weeks after top experts started calling for US officials to implement such measures.
In those nearly three weeks between February 26 and March 16, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rose from just 15 to 4,226, The Times said. As of April 12, there are over half a million confirmed cases in the United States with over 21,000 deaths.
US Navy evacuates over 80% of USS Theodore Roosevelt crew as nearly 600 carrier sailors test positive for coronavirus
- The Navy revealed Sunday that nearly 600 sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for coronavirus.
- In its battle with the virus, the service has evacuated almost 4,000 sailors, more than 80 percent of the crew, airwing and embarked staffs ashore in Guam, where the carrier is in port.
- The carrier’s former captain had pleaded with the Navy to remove the majority of the crew in response to the virus. He was relieved of his command after a letter he wrote leaked to the media.
The US Navy has evacuated the majority of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, aboard which hundreds of sailors have tested positive for the coronavirus.
In an update Sunday, the Navy revealed that 585 sailors have tested positive, and 3,967 sailors have been moved ashore in Guam, where the carrier is in port. Now, over 80 percent of the ship’s roughly 4,800 crew, staff and squadrons are off the ship, which deployed in January. Some of the crew has to stay aboard to guard the ship and to maintain its two nuclear reactors.
Sailors evacuated from the ship are put in isolation for 14 days in local hotels and other available facilities. At least one USS Theodore Roosevelt sailor who tested positive has been hospitalized.
The first three coronavirus cases aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt were announced on March 24.
On April 2, the day he fired the aircraft carrier’s commanding officer, then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said that there were 114 cases on the ship, adding that he expected that number to rise. “I can tell you with great certainty there’s going to be more. It will probably be in the hundreds,” he told reporters at the Pentagon.
His prediction turned out to be accurate.
On March 30, Capt. Brett Crozier, then the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s commanding officer, wrote a letter warning that “the spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating.” In his plea, he called on the Navy to take decisive action and evacuate the overwhelming majority of the crew.
Crozier was relieved of his command after the letter leaked to the media.
Modly, who flew out to the carrier at a cost of $243,000 to taxpayers, bashed the captain to the crew after firing him. He apologized and then later resigned.
Speaking to CNN Friday, Vice Adm. Bill Merz, the commander of 7th Fleet, revealed that some sailors are “upset” and “struggling.”
Having personally visited the USS Theodore Roosevelt, he said that “there was lots of anxiety about the virus,” adding that “as you can imagine, the morale covers the spectrum, considering what they have been through.”
The coronavirus has created a lot of unexpected challenges for not just the Navy, but the military overall.
“What we have to do is we have to figure out how to plan for operations in these kind of COVID environments,” Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten said Thursday. “This’ll be a new way of doing business that we have to focus in on, and we’re adjusting to that new world as we speak today.”
Colin Powell on Leadership
HENRY KOTULA 