In one day, The New Yorker has published two superb articles on COVID-19. The first was Robin Wright's brilliant report on Iran. Here's the second one: The Coronavirus and How Political Spin Has Worsened Epidemics. Excerpt (but read the whole thing):
When the coronavirus reached the United States in earnest, this month, it became entangled, almost instantly, in political posturing and manipulation. On Monday, Rush Limbaugh, on whom President Trump recently bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, told his audience, “It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. . . . The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”
On Tuesday, as stock markets collapsed around the world, Larry Kudlow, the White House National Economic Council director, told CNBC, “We have contained this. I won’t say airtight, but it’s pretty close to airtight.”
Investors were not reassured; stock markets continued to fall, especially after Kudlow’s optimism was undercut by comments from Nancy Messonnier, the head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who warned Americans to prepare for a period of working remotely, teleschooling, and other measures to prevent the spread of the disease.
By midweek, the Administration was straining to rebut warnings from public-health experts. Trump tweeted, “Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus [sic] look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape!”
But the concern was coming not only from Democrats. On Tuesday, when Chad Wolf, the acting Homeland Security Secretary, testified at a Senate budget hearing, he described the death rate from the coronavirus as similar to that of the flu, although, in fact, the coronavirus appears to be more lethal.
Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, rebuked him. “You’re supposed to keep us safe, and the American people deserve some straight answers on the coronavirus, and I’m not getting them from you,” Kennedy said. Facing bipartisan criticism, the Administration asked Congress for an emergency $2.5 billion to fight the coronavirus.
The Administration is also under pressure to fill vacancies that it had created in the government institutions capable of handling such an emergency. During the past two years, it cut the federal ranks of experts involved with infectious-disease emergencies. In February of 2018, the C.D.C. announced plans to stop epidemic-prevention work in thirty-nine out of forty-nine countries that it was monitoring and supporting, leaving ten “priority countries.” China was not one of them. In May, 2018, John Bolton, then the national-security adviser, disbanded the global-health-security team at the National Security Council. Top officials left, and the posts were never refilled.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, called on Trump to appoint a “czar” for the federal response—“an independent, non-partisan, global-health expert, with real expertise.” Instead, on Wednesday, Trump appointed the Vice-President, Mike Pence, to oversee the effort. One of Pence’s first moves, according to the Times, was to “tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists, directing them to coordinate all statements and public appearances” with his office. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has advised six Presidents, told associates that the White House “had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance,” the Times said. (A spokesperson for the Institute denied that report.)
In 2017, approaching the hundredth anniversary of the Spanish-flu pandemic, John M. Barry wrote that “the most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth. Though that idea is incorporated into every preparedness plan I know of, its actual implementation will depend on the character and leadership of the people in charge when a crisis erupts.”
By the end of February, as the virus reached farther into the United States, Trump was squaring off against an unfamiliar kind of problem, one that is largely immune to the willful disregard for the facts. A germ is insensitive to the powers of spin. It is a problem that can’t be fudged by scribbling with a Sharpie on a map.
How the Administration performs is likely to be a historic test of not only its capacity to function but also of the government’s resilience after three years of Trump’s leadership. Regardless of political orientation, every American should be rooting for the Trump Administration to get this right.
