The smartest thing Trump ever did was NOT create an overarching “national strategy” for Coronavirus, media caterwauling notwithstanding. 1) There’s no constitutional basis to do so. /1
2) Creating national protocols to counter a virus we still don’t completely understand would've frozen in time our developing understanding of the virus, as every state would be testing the same variables. /2
3) Only through dynamism have we been able to compare and contrast policies' effectiveness, their respective unintended impacts, and thus perform basic risk/reward analyses. /3
4) The only thing that might conceivably make sense on a national level — e.g., beefing up supplies, cutting red tape, restricting travel — were done. /4
5) Nationalizing policies based on current knowledge would have had tragic consequences. Had Trump done so, he at first might have followed the WHO's lead and assured Americans Covid was no big deal as there was "no clear evidence" it spreads among humans. /5
Then he could have followed other "experts'" guidance and urged attending heavily populated events like Chinese New Year celebrations. And then perhaps he might have followed the words of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Sanjay Gupta and urged against wearing masks. /6
Just imagine if Trump had nationalized New York's Covid protocols, who knows how many hundreds of thousands of seniors would have died? /7
Mistakes made on a national level are more consequential than those on a local level, and also far harder to undo. /8
Today the same experts who projected 2.2 million American deaths last March are now trying to have it both ways, claiming the reason they were off by more than 90 percent is thanks to the measures taken to counter Covid — while also claiming … /9
… the only reason any Americans died at all is because Trump failed to institute a national strategy. It's a fun rhetorical game in which they win no matter what. /10
But let's be real: Anyone who at this point claims Trump's central Covid failure was his lack of a "national strategy" is automatically exposing themselves as a partisan and not someone we should be taking seriously. /fin
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