All the President's Men

President Trump has always tried to protect himself politically by downplaying, suppressing or even denying bad news.  He has discredited the Mueller Report, banned Executive Branch officials from testifying before Congress, and fired federal employees (including three Inspectors General within the past six weeks) in retaliation for telling the truth.  These actions have been harmful enough to the country.  His early trivializing and denial of the danger of the pandemic, however, delayed the US response and undoubtedly led to the deaths of thousands of Americans.  Recently, the President has upped the ante by beginning to silence his medical experts and deny objective data in order to “open the economy.”  From the Washington Post’s Toluse Olorunnipa:

[Trump’s] administration has sidelined or replaced officials not seen as loyal, rebuffed congressional requests for testimony, dismissed jarring statistics and models, praised states for reopening without meeting White House guidelines and, briefly, pushed to disband a task force created to combat the virus and communicate about the public health crisis.

It would be hard to overemphasize the significance of his changed behavior.  The President is not only dismissing the importance of the highest-level health advice, not only intentionally withholding information that is crucial to the country’s life and death decisions, not only punishing those who tell the truth, but he is also perverting the undeniably accurate information by lying about it.

A primary concern has been his denial that large-scale testing for the virus is essential.  “Testing isn’t necessary,” said the President, despite the consensus among experts that wide-scale testing is absolutely essential before an area should be opened up.  Trump’s response to his critics has been that “In a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”  

The Administration has also attempted to sideline the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) by replacing its regular press conferences with almost-nightly broadcasts dominated by President Trump.  These have also in turn been interrupted after the President’s remarks about treatment with bleach.  CDC repeatedly requested restarting its own press conferences but has not been allowed to do so.

The CDC released and then called back extensive guidelines to replace much more general advice released earlier.  The stricter guidelines call, for instance, for massive testing that is not now available.  It also suggests a decline in cases over a two-week period before relaxing social distancing measures.  These guidelines were only released after media reporting of their existence.  Of the thirty-five states that are now opening with Trumps encouragement, none “currently meets the safety criteria for reopening.”  The President and his supporters point to the gradual decline of the number of COVID cases in the United States, but that decline disappears when you exclude New York City, one of the earliest hotspots. 

The President’s advice is being followed by many governors in opening their states.  Also from the Post:

In Arizona, where Gov.  Doug Ducey (R) is pushing businesses to reopen, the state health department abruptly halted the work of a team of experts who predicted the outbreak’s peak was still about two weeks away.  The department reversed the decision amid an outcry after it became public.  …

Governors in Georgia, Texas, Iowa and elsewhere have been praised by Trump as they ignored recommendations from doctors and health officials in their states to begin phased re-openings.  States such as Florida have limited or redacted public information about their Coronavirus deaths.

Trump’s about-face on states’ shelter-in-place rules (he had previously supported them) is designed, he says now, to bring the economy back to normal, presumably before the autumn presidential election.  If the opinions of health experts, who predict large numbers of future cases and deaths as a result of opening too early, is correct,** then the President’s political agenda will likely kill thousands of Americans.  This is a desperate move and unlikely to increase his popularity. 

To be clear: Trade-offs between economics and health are inevitable.  While pandemics certainly suppress the economy, treatment protocols that may delay economic opening, surprisingly, do not.  At some point, however, we must open the economy: Economic collapse will lead to deaths, too.  Whenever we relax shutdown restrictions, people will continue to contract the disease and die.  Health vs economics is an overly simplistic choice.  The question is the trade-off.  When do we begin to open our economy?  When do we open the restaurants?  When do we stop social distancing?  When do we stop wearing masks?

Making those decisions will be complicated and painful.  Groups of technocrats — medical experts, economists, even psychologists — must consider all the realities and give their best advice.  Ultimately, yes, the politicians, representatives of the citizens’ will, must consider that advice and make the final decisions. 

The President, however, is making his own uninformed decisions, ignoring both the medical professionals and the best economists.  Certainly, the President does have the responsibility to balance the health impacts of both opening the economy and keeping restrictions in place and then acting on his best judgment.  But he must not be allowed to make that judgment if he intentionally remains ignorant of the expert medical and economic advice.  Ignoring, even shutting down, sources of accurate health information, will put more people in mortal danger. 

Politics come after the technocratic expertise and must not ignore the information that experts provide. 

To make matters worse, the President is attempting to subvert and deny the objective evidence (for instance, the importance of broad testing), which leaves the people even more uninformed and unable to evaluate Trump’s recommendations.  This makes the decisions completely political, almost certainly part of his re-election campaign, ignoring the human cost.   More people will die. 

Trump is attempting to convince the country that it is safe to open broadly.  Given the near-unanimous expert opinion that the President is wrong, his advice is, for practical purposes, no different from a lie.

President Trump continues to subvert the truth to protect his political future.  This is the stuff of demagogues.  Once again, democracy is on the line.
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**A recent study suggests that one factor in the spread of COVID-19 is summer heat and humidity, which may slow but certainly not halt it.