Did Trump Botch Covid?

So there is a media narrative out there that Trump botched the response to Covid. But we might ask, botched it compared to whom?

What the data says?

Now very few people in the US are saying that Europe (with its socialized medical care) botched the covid response. So, let's look at our major western European allies and how they have faired compared to us.

Interestingly, the US stacks up just a bit above average when compared with our European neighbors. This should not be shocking either considering the extensive ties the US has with the world when compared to nations like Ireland or Finland. Even more is revealed when we look state by state.

(Correction: Maryland is a blue state with a Republican Governor)

Out of the worst 15 performers on Covid, 13 were run by DEMOCRAT governors. Many of the same Governors who, during the peak of the crisis, thanked President Trump and spoke highly of his ability to get them what they needed. So why am I using governors above? Many don't realize that under our federalist system, it is THE GOVERNORS primary mission to handle emergencies and the President role is to act as a resource for the state governors. Trump mobilized both private and public resources to respond in record time. No governors have been short of the things they needed with the possible exception of PPE for healthcare workers. But we have almost not instances of death to healthcare workers caused by lack of PPE. Looking at these numbers you find that Democrat run states have average nearly 2X the death rate when compared to Republican run states.

It is a scandal that Andrew Cuomo is being put forth as some kind of model leader in the Covid crisis. It was his state that acted as the epicenter of the outbreak that lead to our top 4 hardest hit states. The deaths per million in the states around NYC nearly doubled the highest rates seen in Europe. This all while Cuomo himself admitted that President Trump gave them what they needed as they prevented hospital overwhelm while Andrew Cuomo was sending old folks with Covid back to their nursing homes resulting in an estimated 11,000 people dying in nursing homes in NY. This does not mean I believe that Democrats are the primary driver of our death numbers in the US (the virus is likely spreading relatively independent of policies), but what is does mean is that Democrats cannot blame Republicans and Trump. If they want to play politics with this they will find that the data is NOT on their side. These bad results for Democrat run states also reinforces the narrative that stricter lockdowns (which blue states are more known for) do not correlate with better outcomes.

Hindsight is 20/20

Some will argue that Trump should have done more BEFORE the pandemic hit and if we had acted earlier we might have stopped it. First, it should be recognized that hindsight is always 20/20 and the US faces a myriad of risks and we have to make decisions about which of these risks national resources will be dedicated to mitigating. Also, it's no surprise that we can find things from Fauci and others in the past warning of the danger of pandemics. Experts always clamor for more funding and hype up the risks they are tracking as this is how they get more funding. Many will claim Trump "should have known" while totally ignoring the fact that the President is faced with assessing many risks and only can put focus on the most pressing. I find it funny that people expect for Trump to have known this was coming while they themselves were not clamoring about pandemics in 2019. The reality is no one saw this coming and the proof is in the data.

Essentially, the whole world was caught off guard by this (with the exception of some asian countries who have dealt with pandemics before). What exactly would Jo Biden have done to stop this when we was the one who called Trumps early ban on Chinese Travel Xenophobic? This whole situation is a mess but placing the blame on Trump says less about a persons objective analysis of the data and more about their political leanings and perhaps the human need to find someone to blame when things get ugly. However, the reality is that the whole world (including Democrat governors and world leaders) have done their best with this crisis. Yes mistakes have been made and some could have done better. But when you examine the data the US is not some outlier in the world for its outcomes and there is nothing in the data to suggest that Trump uniquely messed this up.

For a more in depth and factual analysis that examines what Trump did or did not do early in this pandemic see the video below by Congressman Crenshaw. He delivers an excellent timeline of what happened and why we should conclude Trump did the best he could under the circumstances and certainly a better job than would have been done his Democrat opponents.