Post-Mortes: how many fewer COVID deaths if Trump had shown true leadership at the beginning?

The BBQ Pit
1

I know using the words “true leadership” in the same sentence with “trump” is ludicrous, but I gotta rant about this.

I listened to Fresh Air this morning, and it sent me over the edge–

The U.S. has only four percent of the world’s population — and yet it accounts for 20 percent of all COVID deaths. New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright discusses America’s pandemic year.

[BTW, there is a transcript of the interview at the link-- faster to read. And yeah, he says “you know” a lot. :roll_eyes:]

Every day we are gobsmacked by new and worse COVID headlines, but Terri’s guest took us back to the almost-forgotten early days when trump’s inept handling of the nascent pandemic set the country up for the shitstorm we are experiencing now. This part especially made the top of my head come off:

…
It’s [the federal stockpile of PPE] supposed to be a repository for emergency situations like the pandemic, and it’s supposed to be a place where states can call upon the need for, you know, emergency supplies - ventilators, PPE, that sort of thing. What happened instead in March - you know, every week there is a call between the president and the governors. And, of course, the governors are all, you know, panicked about what’s happening with this virus. And it had spread, you know, irregularly. It was it was in Washington state. It was - you know, it was beginning to show up in New York in frightening amounts.

So they feared an onslaught that they wouldn’t be prepared for. But they expected that the government would step in and provide. You know, FEMA would be on the case, the FDA. You know, there would be - they’d be able to withdraw PPE and ventilators from the storehouse. There were so many expectations that they had about, you know, what was going to happen. And the president assured them that we’re behind you. And then he explained what he meant by that, which was we’ll support you, but, you know, as for PPE and that sort of thing, you should get it yourselves.

And so suddenly, we had - instead of one pandemic, we had 50 state epidemics thrown into the laps of these governors who were totally unprepared. So suddenly, they had to go out on the market and try to find PPE, mainly in China. That’s where, you know, most of it is made. And they were bidding against each other. They would put in a bid for, you know, a million facemasks, say, Michigan. And then suddenly New York would put in - would top that. It was - Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, said it was like being on eBay.
…

It gets worse. Listen to or read it. It will remind you of stuff you haven’t thought about recently because each new day for the last year has brought more bad news on top of bad news.

Of all the dishonest activities, failures, and crimes that trump has committed while president, THIS is the one I want to see him prosecuted for: abdicating leadership in the face of this disaster that has now killed 350,000+ people. He is responsible for many, if not most, of these deaths. What if he had taken the virus seriously from the get-go, listened to the experts instead of ridiculing them, encouraged people to wear masks, modeled mask-wearing, and on and on.

Yeah, COVID would have been a challenge for any president (even Hillary) as we’ve seen in countries around the world that do/did have good leadership. But trump dropped the ball, poured gasoline on the fire, and didn’t even bother to lock the barn door after the horses escaped! And after he caught it and recovered (with drugs that no one else had access to), he still didn’t get serious!

What Terri said: The U.S. has only four percent of the world’s population — and yet it accounts for 20 percent of all COVID deaths.

Last March, in a thread somewhere, @DSeid (a very smart guy), when asked, predicted there might be as many as 50,000 to 100,000 COVID deaths by the end of 2020. Instead there are more than three times the higher of those two numbers and thousands more dying every day. It did not have to be this way and I lay the blame at trump’s tiny feet. :angry:

2

One of Trump’s major failings that you didn’t emphasize was that he wasted the two months of advance warnings he had. Trump was advised of the coming crisis in January. A competent President would have immediately begun preparations; starting a vaccine development program, building up the stockpile of medical supplies, preparing hospitals for the incoming rush of patients. Trump did none of that. So when large groups of people starting contracting in March, we were not ready.

Trump continued this pattern of not planning ahead. At every step, he waited not only until the problem had arrived but until it had become to big for him to deny before he took any action.

3

Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I’m still too mad to think clearly about it. And now that you mention it, there’s this:

4

Of course, it’s easy to see why trump would ignore anything Obama put together, even if it would save lives. :roll_eyes:

5

First thank you for the kind words. And I wish I could say that all of the reason for my being wrong was the criminally horrible job Trump did. Problem is that after having kept deaths flat many other places have caught up to us in deaths per capita. The UK, Spain … heck the EU overall isn’t there yet but they are making a play for it. His gross negligence is part of it but even managed better this bugs course confounded minds much much better than any of ours.

6

I haven’t read or listened to the article posted in the OP, so I don’t know if this was covered, but didn’t Trump also sell off a large chunk of the Federal stockpile to China early on, instead of keeping it in reserve? Not that it would have mattered much if Trump wasn’t inclined to share anyway. I guess as long as you can make a quick buck somewhere.

7

That is not addressed in the Fresh Air interview, but there’s this:

And then when they actually were able to supposedly purchase the PPE - for instance, with the state of Massachusetts, they bought several million masks and a number of ventilators from China - when it came into the port of New York, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Association, seized it and paid a premium to the supplier. So, you know, the next time the governor of Massachusetts made an order for masks, he sent the New England football team team plane to China to pick it up. And then they brought it back to Logan Airport and smuggled it away to hide it from the government. And this was typical. This story is replicated in virtually all of the 50 states - the governor scrambling to try to find a way to buy enough personal protective equipment for the frontline health workers at exorbitant prices because there was no national plan.

8

However, I do want to note that delaying was part of the plan. Taking longer for the numbers to go up is still an improvement, as it would mean more time to prepare to handle it.

And I do wonder how much the American anti-mask protest thing influenced the rest of the world, making the idea seem more viable. I wonder how much of the right wing conspiracy nonsense we had here that Trump actively encouraged was exported internationally.

I’d also wonder how much the new strain stuff factors in.

9

Taking longer for deaths per capita numbers to go up would only be a marginal improvement.

Don’t get me wrong. Trump’s criminal level negligence has resulted in many many thousands of needless deaths. AND the EU overall managing it much better than we have still had more weekly average deaths per capita than we did for all of November into mid-December. Mind you with less poor leadership they’ve been able to get that rate back down (for the EU overall, with the notable exception being the U.K. which may have increased case volume from a more contagious strain to blame).

Small point really. The fair bar to blame on him and his undermining all attempts by the public health sector to impact things, his poisoning the well from even discussing how to re-open rationally, is not the difference between what has occurred and what I … or even any of the expert modelling groups … came up with, but the difference between our roughly 111 deaths/100K to date, and the EU’s (as a comparable mixed bag) roughly 87 deaths/100K to date. We will only be able to know how much worse it was made by his anti-leadership on the other side of winter, but for now the E.U. is pushing their weekly death rate back down overall and we are not, so likely the impact of what he has done will only continue to worsen. Team Biden can’t undo the damage so quick.

10

Canada is the country most like the U.S. Canada has a death rate of 439 per million vs 1130 per million for the U.S. This means that if the U.S. had operated like Canada then instead of the as I write figure of 375,207 deaths it would have 145,753 deaths–a difference of 229,454 fewer deaths. Although considering the vastly more expensive health care system in the U.S. than Canada, the U.S. should be expected to do better than this.

11

Happy to have been that much less wrong guessing what we should have seen if not for Trump, but exactly why do you conclude that Canada is so more similar to the United States in all the demographic and introductions variables than is the EU as a whole?

12

Trump screwed up the purchasing of the vaccine. Pfizer was putting their vaccine in production and the federal government pre-ordered the first one hundred million doses. Pfizer asked the government if they wanted to pre-order the second hundred million doses. The Trump administration said they didn’t want to buy them at this time and would get back to Pfizer at some point in the future if they wanted more.

Pfizer’s a business and Covid’s a global problem. So after offering those hundred million doses of vaccine to the United States government, they put them out on the market where other countries quickly pre-ordered them.

So the first order of a hundred million doses has been delivered and is being used. And the news is full of stories about how we are facing a shortage because a hundred million doses is not enough in a country of over three hundred million people and where two doses are needed per person. So the Trump administration quickly ran back to Pfizer and asked for that second hundred million doses and Pfizer told them they had already been sold and we would have to wait for future production.

I suppose this might have been a deliberate plan. Use the first hundred million doses up inoculating people now and let the vaccine run out early in the Biden administration. But I don’t feel the Trump administration is capable of putting together a coherent plan like that. I tend to believe this is just a monumental fuck-up, which makes it business as usual for the Trump administration.

13

There’s no way actually that the U.S. has as high a percentage of deaths in comparison to the rest of the world as had been previously claimed, I just wanted to add.

Russia lied a

14

Sorry phone or discourse screwed up my post.

But anyway Russia lied and their number of deaths were three times higher than previously thought.

And if you believe the reported number of deaths and infections reported in China, well I’ve got a bridge I’d love to sell you.

15

…the United States and Canada are independent countries. The EU, as you well know, is a political and economic union of member countries. If you want to compare economic unions then compare the EU to the USMCA if you like. Or compare the US to Germany. But Canada is certainly closer to the US than a collective of independent nations.

16

The urban-rural break down is similar. Major Asian connections on their west coasts. The divisions within the countries can’t really put up border controls, unlike the EU did between member state. The social/business cultures are very similar between Canada and the U.S. I don’t know if that makes it a better comparison but it’s a pretty reasonable assumption.

17

Social cultures being the same is probably the biggest factor. Americans might not be aware of exactly how much dominance US TV has in Canada. Probably 90% of what we watch is made in the US.

It will be an interesting study for some budding historian to look at things like attitudes towards and compliance with mask wearing in public. There is certainly a percentage of Canadians who have heard and believe the anti-mask rhetoric from the US, but in general we’re doing much better on that front. How much of that is down to the influence of leadership? Trump and Trudeau are as close to complete opposites in their messaging as could be found. I expect you’d find a lot of the blame to fall on Trump.

18

I appreciate the responses to why Canada might be thought a good comparison. I’ll limit my response, frankly because this is the Pit and we digress into an academic discussion, but my first take on such is to disagree.

To @Banquet_Bear - Federal level of the U.S. in fact has not much more power over what the states do than the E.U. has over its member nations. In times of better leadership there would be some deference to guidance supplied, especially when skillfully backed up by a president using the bully pulpit well, instead of undermining and defunding it, when he could not manipulate it … but the states are still able to make their own choices.

To @FigNorton - my understanding is the nature of urbanicity is very different between the U.S. and Canada (and more similar between the U.S. and the E.U.) - most relevantly in terms of density within urban areas. My WAG (and no citation for this) is that the amount of travel between cities is greater in both the U.S and the E.U. than in Canada as well.

But really this digresses from the very appropriate Pitting of the huge number of deaths that resulted from (and will continue to pile up from) what Trump did instead of lead.

One very real harm in my mind, that is hard to quantify, is that his early vigorous denialism polarized discussion across the world early on, making what should have been reasonable expressions about what was known with what degree of uncertainty into declarations of tribal membership, this side or that one. Good scientists felt the need to present models to make the point about how serious things were and downplayed that the uncertainty in the assumptions made (Imperial College looking at you) and then lost credibility as they flipped their predictions all over the place … Communicating uncertainty is always hard, communicating the importance of action even though there is no certainty of what would happen without it is challenging in every case, even with the best leadership using the bully pulpit most skillfully - but when one knows that leadership is arguing that doing nothing is the certain best choice, and making “confident” predictions that the germ will poof magically disappear, no worries?

I think the harm of that was worldwide making policy positions into tribal membership declarations rather the products of ongoing reasoned debate open to revision as new information was gained. In the U.S. a great example was when the Task Force came up with a very reasoned set of gates and staged openings based on metrics … which was torn apart because Asshole in Chief claimed (incorrectly) that these gates would allow the country to open up within weeks. Thus a huge outcry that the states should decide and ignore the Task Force guidelines … followed by a willynilly hodgepodge of states doing often random things usually with much greater speed (faster than angels would dare to tread) than the gated metrics driven approach the task Force guidelines proposed would have resulted in.

Worldwide this pandemic would have played out very differently if it had occurred while Obama was still in charge, or if Clinton had won, or even in an alt reality that had a Jeb Bush or Romney at the helm.

19

And this should not be downplayed, this is true of much of the rest of the world as well.

We should have been the leaders on this. We should have set the example, the gold standard that other countries would strive to live up to.

Our lack of leadership on this didn’t just hurt us, it hurt the whole world. By not taking it seriously ourselves, it made it harder for other countries, who are used to following our lead, to take it seriously.

So, not only is a comparison to most other countries not favorable to us, in a different timeline where we took it seriously, most of those other countries would be doing better as well.

I don’t know that we can just look at the excess deaths in the US as being because of Trump’s incompetency and malfeasance, but many of the deaths around the world.

20

Except that Canada also has a similar set up in terms of the Federal vs. Provincial governments. In fact, delivery of health care is specifically a Provincial matter, and is jealously guarded against Federal incursions. The Feds provide money to the provinces to promote approximate equality of service between Provinces, but beyond that, the Provinces decide how that money should be spent.