WHAT DIDN'T HE KNOW AND WHEN DIDN'T HE KNOW IT?

What didn't Trump know and when didn't he know it?

Concerning Trump in general and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, the simple answer is that he knows nothing, always. Despite being "a very stable genius," perennial ignorance is his stock in trade. It lets him avoid responsibility across the board. Unlike President Truman, the buck never stops at Trump's desk (or if it does, like Macavity, Trump wasn't there. He never got the memo.)

Harry Truman, 1959--the buck stops here

Credit: Levan Ramishvili/flickr

Unfortunately for America, sometimes ignorance, especially arrogantly willful ignorance, has costs, real-world impacts that can't be erased by shifting blame to someone else (right now WHO's on first), smearing someone with a smarmy nickname, or filing a lawsuit.

MACAVITY'S NOT THERE

Credit: Pixabay

As I write this, 565,835 Americans have been sickened by the coronovirus, and 22,850 have died. That's more cases than the next three worst-hit countries combined, and more deaths than any other country. So much for MAGA and "we're number one."

Tragically, neither those deaths nor those yet to come will make a difference to Trump's core supporters; his approval ratings have ranged from 41 to 49 percent as the pandemic has raged.  Still, for those of us who at least try to live in the real world, it might be interesting to figure out what Trump could have known, and ought to have known, and when he chose to ignore it and go with his--also brilliant--gut.

We now know that multiple agencies were trying to alert Trump to the approaching tsunami starting in January. These included the National Security Council, Health and Human Services, the CDC, Homeland Security, the VA and the Pentagon--at least 10 high-level warnings between January 18 and February 25. Clearly enough of these early warnings got through to him to stimulate him to do what comes naturally to him--closing borders. On January 31 he banned most travelers coming from China. 

Domestically, however, Trump presented a very different face to the U.S. public. From January 20th through mid-March, Trump blatantly downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic. His consistent message was "no worries," "under control," and "it will disappear." Finally, in mid-March, and some six weeks too late, he began to take the pandemic seriously in terms of what should be done within the U.S.

What he could have known if he were capable of and willing to listen to experts, was that viruses like SARS-CoV-2 have the capacity to go viral--duh--for the number of people sickened or killed to increase exponentially.  If he had digested that bit of information, his native genius could have led him to the conclusion that days count. In a country the size of the US, putting effective control measures into place a week or two sooner could mean the difference between a few thousand deaths and a few hundred thousand deaths .

We can see this clearly if we compare New York and California. New York dithered while California took quick and serious steps to slow the spread of the virus.  As of 4/13/20, New York has registered 195,031 cases and suffered 10,056 deaths. California has just one-eighth as many cases, 23,428 and one-fifteenth as many deaths, 675. The contrast becomes even starker when you consider that California has twice the population of New York. So, per population, California has just one-sixteenth the number of cases and one-thirtieth he number of deaths. If California had failed to act as quickly and decisively as it did, 20,000 more people might have died.

What the experts tried to get across to Trump starting in January is that when you're dealing with the potentially exponential explosion of a fatal disease, there isn't room for half measures nor time for delay. Trump only heard what he wanted to hear, and reality steamrolled over all his magical thinking, political positioning and base-soothing blather to remind us that ignorance can be fatal. That makes Trump even more dangerous than we thought just a few months ago.

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REA

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6/28/20:  Just to add one more data point to the ongoing drama of what Trump didn't know and when didn't he know it, we now have the scandal of Russian intelligence paying a bounty to the Taliban for the murder of US soldiers. As usual, Trump missed the briefing, and the next briefing, and the one after that . . .