Trump’s supposed economic progress (if it wasn’t just an extension of Obama’s run up) came at the cost of gutting the institutions that were designed to protect us from difficulties like COVID. He created an extremely fragile economic situation … I flew coast-to-coast in late January, and about 10% of people on the flight were masked up. There was enough public concern about COVID about a month and a half before it exploded to warrant a government reaction.
How about if the CDC had done its job in Jan-Feb? Ramped up production of tests, recommended masks for everyone, ramped up mask production, backstopped the hospital system with temporary hospitals, recommended milder (but still effective) physical distancing measures and work-from-home for those who could, paid for quarantine for people coming from abroad.
The plans were written in case of a 1918-type flu epidemic, so we did have plans in place for a contagious airborne virus. We just chose to ignore it on the Federal level (Trump didn’t want a “scary” situation on his hands) and not even provide guidance to states.
Working class idol? The jobs worst hit by the COVID epidemic were working-class jobs that couldn’t be “remoted out.”
