Thread by @ErrataRob

The President deserves neither the credit nor the blame you heap on him for how he's handling the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/securitybrew/status/1254246017836474369

We don't live in an autocracy that vests a single person with all the power of government. Yet, people still credit/blame the president as if they were running everything, particularly the economy.

Presidents don't create/destroy jobs, yet all the cable news channels can talk about every election is the president's plan to create job, and past president's job creation numbers. Presidents just don't have that influence.

The same is true of the pandemic. Almost the entirety of infection numbers depends upon individual choices to wear masks, distance themselves from others, avoid congrations, and so forth. The national leader has very little influence.

What government influence matters comes at a state and local level. Lockdown orders are imposed/lifted by governors, counties, and cities.

What decisions the president does make, like closing borders, aren't made unilaterally, but at the behest from some government department that makes the decision and which asks for the leader's signature on it.

Looking at raw numbers of cases, the U.S. is about average compared to other large countries. This is especially true given that the uncertainty is extremely high, since every country counts things a bit differently.
worldometers.info/coronavirus/#c…

Testing is a thing many are concerned with, but the raw data puts the U.S. testing again in the middle of the pack of large countries.
ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…

But again, these are the doings of the leaders of the country so much a the country's as a whole, what individuals do, what local governments do, what the civil service has done to plan for things, and other national characters.

Few of people's criticisms of the president are based upon objective measures. They can't be, because the amount of uncertainty is so high. Instead, people use hindsight, insisting that the situation was as clear in February as it is today. It wasn't.

There are some objective criticisms we can make. The president's promotion of miracle cures and pseudo-science like hydroxychloroquine is definitely a bad thing that he does.

But note how objective science works differently than subjective politics. Hydroxychloroquine may be found to work, as we do more study. That's fine, in science we change our opinion to fit the available evidence. It's not a cure now, but it could be found to be a cure later.

So the president's opponents can't criticize him now on the hydroxychloroquine issue, even though his statements now are poor leadership. Instead, they'll have to wait for the evidence to arrive months from now, and then in hindsight criticize the president (if studies fail).

Now I agree Trump is unfit for the office of the President, even if he weren't corrupt. I'm not saying he's not a horribad incompitard. I'm just saying as far as pandemic response, he's done a few good things, a few bad things, but largely, is not responsible for the response.

In any case, back to the start of this thread: do corners and edges first when solving jigsaw puzzles.