In virtual secrecy, however, during March and early April, Jared Kushner and some business associates teamed up with some diagnostic experts to work on what appeared to be a comprehensive national testing plan to confront the virus.
As Katherine Eban writes, in her splendid article in Vanity Fair, "Rather than have states fight each other for scarce diagnostic tests and limited lab capacity, the plan would have set up a system of national oversight and coordination to surge supplies, allocate test kits, lift regulatory and contractual roadblocks, and establish a widespread virus surveillance system by the fall, to help pinpoint subsequent outbreaks." One of the participants thought the plan would be briefed to Trump in early April. (Katherine Eban, "How Jared Kushner's Secret Testing Plan 'Went Poof into Thin Air,'" Vanity Fair, July 30, 2020)
Ms. Eban notes, "The plan called for the federal government to coordinate distribution of test kits, so they could be surged to heavily affected areas, and oversee a national contact-tracing infrastructure. It also proposed lifting contract restrictions on where doctors and hospitals send tests, allowing any laboratory with capacity to test any sample. It proposed a massive scale-up of antibody testing to facilitate a return to work. It called for mandating that all COVID-19 test results from any kind of testing, taken anywhere, be reported to a national repository as well as to state and local health departments.
And it proposed establishing 'a national Sentinel Surveillance System' with 'real-time intelligence capabilities to understand leading indicators where hot spots are arising and where the risks are high vs. where people can get back to work'" (Ibid.).
On March 13th Trump finally was compelled to declare a national emergency.
On March 16th, "President Donald Trump and his coronavirus task force"issued new, stricter guidelines to stop the spread of the disease, including that states with evidence of community transmission should close bars, restaurants and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate.
The new nationwide guidelines also call on Americans to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people; avoid eating and drinking in bars, restaurants, and public food courts; and encouraging schooling from home across the country" (Ben Gittleson and Jordyn Phelps, ABC News, March 16, 2020).
On March 19th -- having taken his cue from Fox News -- Trump spouted nonsense about a magical cure, hydroxychloroquine; perhaps to change the subject from the ominous national shutdown. Changing the subject from his disastrous mishandling to the virus would become his modus operandi.
As Jim Tankersley, of the New York Times, wrote on March 22nd, "With confirmed cases of the coronavirus escalating rapidly, government officials have almost overnight switched off activity in large sectors of the United States. They want as few people as possible in close contact with one another in order to slow the pandemic, which may be even more widespread than official statistics suggest."
Nevertheless, Trump's irresponsible dithering before the two-week shutdown cost thousands of American lives. As Ben Gittleson reported for ABC News on May 21st, "researchers at Columbia University this week estimated about 36,000 lives in the United States could have been saved from the novel coronavirus had social distancing and other restrictions been put in place a week earlier in March." Restrictions imposed two weeks earlier would have saved "about 53,990 deaths and 960,937 cases"nationwide."
Thus, because he did little but engage in happy talk after his "China ban," Trump already had the blood of Americans on his hands and owned primary responsibility for much of America's physical, emotional and economic suffering. The "Wuhan virus" had become the "Trump virus."
As Mary Trump notes, "People who have hated or criticized him would have forgiven or overlooked his endless stream of appalling actions if he'd simply had somebody take the pandemic preparedness manual down from the shelf where it was put after the Obama administration gave it to him. If he'd alerted the appropriate agencies and state governments at the first evidence the virus was highly contagious. If he'd invoked the Defense Production Act of 1950 to begin the production of PPE [Personal Protection Equipment], ventilators, and other necessary equipment to prepare the country to deal with the worst-case scenario. It he'd allowed medical and scientific experts to give daily press conferences during which facts were presented clearly and honestly. It he ensured that there was a systematic, top-down approach and coordination among all the necessary agencies."
Unfortunately, even worse was to come.
On April 1, 2020, CBS News's reported that more than 68,500 people had tested positive for the virus, and over 1,000 had died of the disease. (In early August, more than 1,000 would die every day!) On April 24th, Trump used the Coronavirus Task Force news conference to shock the nation with his gibberish about the possibility of injecting strong light or disinfectant into the body to kill the virus. It was more magical thinking as a substitute for abdicated leadership.
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