The Tragedy of Incomprehensibly Pathetic Leadership

The COVID-19 pandemic is raging across the world.  The graphs show clearly that the number of daily new cases is continuing to rise as the virus spreads to many areas of the globe that were previously untouched.  And sadly, even areas that had the opportunity to get the pandemic under control are now losing the battle.  In this group the USA is number one!

The number of daily deaths is also increasing, though at a slower rate than early in the pandemic, and it has not yet reached the peaks of the first couple of months.  This demonstrates that the medical world has learned to combat the disease with better effect, and also that the more vulnerable are taking precautions to avoid getting sick.

The number of hospitalizations continues to be very high even with the fatality rate slowing, and there is evidence that longer term consequences of the virus may be quite significant, even in non-critical cases.

There are some success stories.  Germany is perhaps the best example.  There, a group of research institutions came up with recommendations for how to contain the pandemic with massive testing and contact tracing and then slowly open the economy.  The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, a scientist herself, embraced these recommendations and led the sixteen partly independent states in the effort to implement them.  

To date, Germany, with one quarter the population of the USA and a much higher population density (which, should actually make the task more difficult), has had about 9000 fatalities and is now trending at about ten fatalities a day and a few hundred new cases, compared to the USA with 130,000 total fatalities, resurgent peaks of 60,000 cases each day and close to 1000 daily fatalities.

Other EU nations have followed similar paths after the initial catastrophic surges and have slightly higher, though still very manageable, new cases and fatalities.

The big difference between Germany and the USA is leadership.  Donald Trump resisted acknowledging the severity of the pandemic from the beginning for fear of its impact on ‘his’ economy and stock market.  He scorned or ignored scientific evidence or advice.  He took no responsibility for national leadership or guidance.  He encouraged rapid re-opening long before the level of virus was at a controllable level.  He never focused adequate resources on the basic tasks necessary to minimize the pandemic – testing and contact tracing.  He failed in every possible measure of leadership.

The U.S., with its massive wealth, military and healthcare resources, should have been an example to the world on how to deal with this crisis.  Instead, it is a pathetic example of political and social failure, spawned by the hubris of its so-called President.

Why were the military and national guard not deployed across the country to staff testing and contact tracing positions?  Why wasn’t there a national recruitment campaign to employ out-of-work men and women to monitor and limit the pandemic?  What more important presidential task in the recent history of this country was there than responding to this cataclysmic event? 

History will condemn Donald Trump for many things, but his failure in leadership and outright insane refusal to protect the nation and its people from this scourge will be at the very top of the list.