How Trump Faced a Deadly Crisis and Looked Away

Philip Bump: “If the plan, however dubious, was to allow the virus to spread while offsetting the worst effects, when can we expect that offsetting to take place? The situation now is akin to a fire chief assuring people that the best approach to fires breaking out in an apartment complex is to let the fires burn themselves out while he provides them with fire extinguishers. And then not providing the fire extinguishers. And then spending most of his time tweeting about how he actually won the vote for best fire chief.”

“It’s a grim, grim moment, which is poised to get worse over the short term. Even if the number of deaths is kept down during the winter — a big if — there are long-term health risks posed by even nonfatal infections. ICUs choked with coronavirus patients also mean ICUs unable to handle other serious illnesses or injuries. What’s more, the idea that allowing the virus to spread to build immunity depends on an unproven assumption that reinfections can’t occur over a relatively short period of time.”

“The most remarkable part of all of this is that a vaccine does appear to be close. It’s a moment, then, when we might soon achieve herd immunity the safe way, by inoculating people against the virus without their becoming sick. It’s a moment in which the president and his team could ask for a bit more patience and constraint with light glimmering at the end of the tunnel. Instead, we’re being told to keep our foot on the accelerator and try to live our lives as normal, as though that’s really possible anyway.”