What we are seeing right now is the collapse of civic authority and public trust at what is only the beginning of what will be a protracted crisis.
Trump is the last man in the world you would want in charge right now, but the problems go much deeper than him.
The CDC has bungled the response from the beginning, and continues to this day to insist on only giving coronavirus tests to those who are dramatically ill, though the main cause in testing is to register those with light cases, so they can be quarantined.
Any efforts we have see to produce social distance and cancel large group events have come from private organizations and individuals—private schools, SXSW, the NBA.
There is no meaningful centralized leadership of any kind, and no reliable source of information or guidance for how to behave as individuals.
Instead there is only a vacuum of authority, and the vague advice that we should wash our hands, suspend nonessential travel, etc.
This is not how a functioning society responds to a crisis.
In small pockets, here and there, there have been demonstrations of some leadership, political and scientific. But almost everywhere you look public anxiety has been met with total silence:l, which is to say, the message: you are on your own.
What kind of society behaves this way, with a complete lack of institutional guidance and coordinated purpose, subjecting the vulnerable and scared to the terrors of pandemic disease? America.
In the richest country the world has ever known, everything is broken and everyone is on their own.
