The Trump corona card: sacrifice a fifth of Americans
classic Donald Trump tweet, at once fallacious and insidious, emerged on Sunday. “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. At the end of the 15-day period, we will make a decision as to which way we go.”
This set in motion excited chatter among the US president’s loyalists about a “choice” between public health and opening up the economy.
The White House released its coronavirus game plan on March 16, so Thursday is day 10 of Trump’s “15 days to slow the
Apandemic”. More than 150million people in the US are now under “shelter-in-place” orders or various states of lockdown.
These measures have in effect shut down the US economy. The hugely overvalued US equities market inevitably reacted to the coronavirus as a way to deflate some large asset bubbles. But panic quickly set in, revealing deeper concerns about the economy and financial system. It quickly became a meltdown.
The Wall Street Journal reported that “stocks are falling faster than they did during the financial crisis [2008], the crash of 1987 or the Great Depression”. The Federal Reserve has scurried to patch up cracks in the bond market. The hospitality, retail, manufacturing and construction industries, which collectively employ 53-million people, have begun massive layoffs. Goldman Sachs suggests that unemployment will rocket to 20% in the second quarter. There will be no rapid return to economic growth, whatever the White House does.
Trump’s re-election campaign was predicated on his mastery of everything in general, and the economy in particular. The novel coronavirus has put paid to that notion. It has hit him where it hurts: in the markets.
Public health officials worldwide emphasise the need for social distancing to “flatten the curve” of infection. Sensing political peril, Trump would overrule them, just as longdelayed large-scale testing is showing a sharp increase in infection rates.
In his daily briefings New York governor Andrew Cuomo said up to 80% of those who contract the virus will recover without hospitalisation and the other 20%, most of whom are elderly or have pre-existing conditions, are in serious danger. But given the disastrous and highly unequal state of health care in the US this means that without social distancing those who become seriously ill could overwhelm the health system.
It appears Trump and his inner circle have decided that the best course of action is to sacrifice the 20% on the altar of the markets. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Fox News that “we’re gonna have to make some difficult trade-offs”. The contours of this bargain were pretty clear to Texas lieutenant-governor Dan Patrick, who expressed it with morbid crispness. He appealed to old folks’ sense of patriotism, suggesting they should sacrifice their lives to save the economy. “Are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America all of America loves for your children and grandchildren?”
A grim choice for many — but not so much for Trump, Kudlow and Patrick, with their wealth and gold-standard health care. Meanwhile, tens of millions of US workers and small business owners whose livelihoods are in jeopardy are unlikely to get the kind of support that can tide them over in the months ahead.
Donald McNeil, science and health reporter at the New York Times, keeps it real on the public health outlook, telling
The Daily podcast: “We’re going to come out of this a different nation, a different people.”
If strict social distancing guidelines are not followed in the next several weeks, he warned, the US risks the incidence of multiple Wuhans, from New York to California to Washington state. It is as well that it is the governors of the various states who get to make the final call.
Morudu is a writer and director of Clarity Global Strategic Communications (Cape Town and Washington DC).