In case you were still on the fence in the presidential race


The amazing incompetence and sheer cruelty of this administration continue to take my breath away, and there’s no better evidence than this article from today’s Times. The article describes how Nobel Prize-winning economist Dr. Paul Romer recently emailed Trump’s current go-to echo chamber for his views on coronavirus policy, Dr. Scott Atlas – who is a radiologist with no experience at all in epidemiology, and evidently not the slightest bit of curiosity about that subject – to point out that there needs to be a massive increase in testing for the coronavirus, even though we’re now testing at a rate of close to 1 million tests a day.

Dr. Romer has been advocating massive testing for a long time, and he knew that just making his standard arguments about why it would be beneficial wouldn’t get him anywhere in the White House. So he put an interesting twist in his email to Dr. Atlas (which he deliberately sent to his personal email account): Because there are now tests that can be administered at home, anybody who tests positive that way wouldn’t have to report that result to anybody. Whoever sends out the tests would just urge the person to self-isolate if they test positive.

That way, Trump’s reason for opposing increased testing – that it would make him look bad and hurt the stock market and his re-election prospects (even though the stock market seems to be impervious to bad news nowadays, and Trump’s likelihood of re-election is somewhere between zero and negative 50%) – goes away. He should certainly support this proposal, right? After all, the result would be that a lot of the people who don’t have symptoms, or who do have symptoms but still have to work because they don’t have paid sick leave, wouldn’t go to work, where they could spread the virus to their co-workers. Hospital overcrowding (see Wisconsin, state of) and deaths would at least slow their inexorable rates of increase, heading into what could be a huge second wave of deaths in the fall. Surely, even Trump would want this, right?

Of course, you know the answer to that: No, Trump doesn’t want this result. Not only that, but testing is now the main issue holding up the massive new recovery bill that Nancy Pelosi and Steve Mnuchin are negotiating. It seems the economic details are agreed upon, but Pelosi – who is almost without a doubt the most clear-thinking and consequential government figure since say Ronald Reagan or even John Kennedy – is holding firm on having the administration finally (215,000 deaths into the pandemic) develop and implement a national testing strategy. And she wants teeth in it, to prevent Trump from putting people in charge of the program who don’t believe in it at all, as has of course happened on all sorts of issues in this administration: protecting the environment, workplace safety, coordination with foreign allies against foreign enemies, etc.

I happen to think that Pelosi will prevail, and the bill that she and Mnuchin worked out will become law, although most Republicans in the Senate will oppose it. It certainly won’t be enough to save Trump’s presidency, but it will be enough to keep the economy from going into a hugely destructive phase, in which large numbers of people will become homeless and go hungry (maybe more than the one in four households that have experienced food insecurity this year), and hundreds of thousands of businesses will fail. And it will force Trump to put in place at least some increase in testing, although surely not enough to bring the virus under control and prevent a fall wave (which is already happening, it seems).

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com

 

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