The 4 deaths per stoplight problem - preempting harm in a democracy

[Klaralven]

Compared with stop signs, stop lights are an inconvenience. They make drivers wait for a green light, even when there is no traffic, unless the driver is making a right turn.

Hence, the perhaps apocryphal story that a stop light will be proposed for installation only after the fourth fatality at an intersection. Even then it is not a sure thing.

A President, Trump or otherwise, could not have taken actions in early February which would have disrupted the public's convenience, such as test/trace/isolate, mask wearing, forbidding conferences, closing casinos, shutting bars and gyms, etc.

However, a responsible President would have set in motion the preparations for doing so, and then rapidly instituted those measures on a coordinated and nationwide basis as soon as the severity became obvious in mid-March. Had this been done, Covid could have been contained without any general lockdowns, most businesses, including retail, could have continued, and the economic impact lessened. In effect, we should have shifted quickly to the current method of operating following the "wave" in the more affected states.

Trump did not make the right plans and preparations, and when the governors began addressing the by now evident pandemic, he opposed their implementation. This reduced the effectiveness of their containment measures, resulted in the high disease and death toll, and greatly increased the economic impact.

[Dustlawyer]

1. Don't know what it is currently, but it used to (may still be) 2 deaths to get lights and crossing

arms at a RR crossing.

[lagomorph777]

2. Knowing it was deadly and airborne, a non-enemy would have ramped up DPA for masks.

Immediately he would have kicked in the Defense Production Act and ramped up mask production. He also would have immediately reconstituted the Pandemic Task Force he had so idiotically disbanded (likely he also knew the truth at that time, several months earlier).