How Trump's Self-Interested Delay of Coronavirus Testing Worsened the Crisis and Economy

[TomCADem]

NPR and Politico reported about how the Trump administration did not want to aggressive testing, because the President made clear that lower numbers on the coronavirus would be better for his reelection:

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/12/814881355/white-house-knew-coronavirus-would-be-a-major-threat-but-response-fell-short

But at the same time, Secretary Azar has not always given the president the worst-case scenario of what could happen. My understanding is he did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that's partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear - the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential reelection this fall.

Meanwhile, Seema Verma, since being added to the team, has announced all kinds of actions that could be seen as cracking down on the problem - dispatching a team of investigators to Washington state, where there has been a major outbreak of corona virus, predominantly in local nursing homes. But I've talked to officials who say that Seema Verma, in an effort to show that she's cracking down, may actually be creating more problems by having her investigators demanding paperwork, demanding answers at a moment when these nursing home officials are just trying to provide basic patient care to people who have been infected by coronavirus.

However, by delaying testing, Trump not only has put millions of people in jeopardy, but now the U.S. has to impose broad mass quarantines due to the lack of accurate information, which will put the country on the path to a recession. For example, given easy testing access in South Korea, which was hit by the disease at about the same time at Italy, only a few thousand are quarantined and 67 people died. However, in Italy, millions are locked down and more than 1,000 people have died from the coronavirus.

At this time, Trump has put the U.S. on the path to being just 10 days behind Italy in terms trajectory all because he did not want to see his numbers rise. Heck, Trump has even admitted on TV that his desire to keep numbers artificially low has driven his decision making on the coronavirus:

Link to tweet

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(My experts) would like to have the people come off. I’d rather have the people stay, but I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather—because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.