Despite failures, America can overcome COVID-19

President Donald Trump made clear his COVID-19 strategy at a campaign rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, earlier this week.

It amounts to mass murder. Tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands more Americans will die unnecessarily if Trump wins another term.

He has thrown in the towel, adopting a do-nothing approach pending vaccines that won’t be widely available until well into next year. “We are rounding the turn,” he said (for the umpteenth time). “It’s ending anyway. It’s happening very quickly.”

That is a gross lie. As cases spike nationwide, highly reputable scientific projections predict 160,000 to 275,000 more Americans could die by February or March 2021, if concrete steps aren’t taken. But Team Trump won’t even try: His chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said Sunday, “We aren’t going to control the pandemic.” As if there is nothing to be done.

Yet there is plenty that could be done by a new president who doesn’t play politics with COVID-19.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the country’s foremost experts on COVID-19 policy, laid out what a sane policy could still look like under a President Joe Biden, and what a Trump victory would mean.

Imagine if Franklin D. Roosevelt had been in charge, or almost any GOP or Democratic White House until now. You would have had task forces, with top specialists to resolve bottlenecks on personal protective equipment and produce a quick, cheap test, says Emanuel. “You would have had one clear message.”

“The post office was going to send every household five masks, which would have been an important public health strategy,” he continued. But non-maskwearing Trump officials, aware of their boss’s mask aversion, squashed the idea.

So what advice would Emanuel give a Biden administration?

1. “Start with communications.”

“You need a clear message,” says Emanuel, “with the president embodying the message,” as Biden does with mask-wearing. “It needs to be depoliticized with scientists and public health officials coming forward.”

Even today, some studies project that universal mask use could prevent 130,000 future COVID-19 deaths.

2. “There must be a management strategy, with the locus in the White House.”

That means “appointing specific (competent) task forces” (including for testing, which must be greatly expanded).

“You need to upgrade or even create the technology for testing, contact tracing and vaccinations,” says Emanuel. In Taiwan, which has one of the best records in the world in fighting the virus, and hardly any deaths, the country issues electronic health cards that provide real-time data.

3. “You need funding from Congress.” Emanuel says this is key so the public isn’t tempted to break regulations and can afford to get tested.

4. “Build public trust.” Although Trump has ramped up efforts to produce a vaccine, polls show the bulk of Americans might not take it because they don’t trust it will be safe. Emanuel says the process must be transparent and endorsed by top scientists.

Without trust Trump’s touted vaccine effort will fail.

If the president wins a second term, his strategy is to let things rip until the vaccine mirage solves everything. This “herd immunity” strategy argues lockdowns are too costly, so the vulnerable should be protected, while letting younger people get sick.

Emanuel argues that this concept “is bunk,” because “more than 100 million Americans have some form of comorbidity that puts them at risk.”

You can’t easily separate out vulnerable groups like the elderly and some minority communities. And to achieve herd immunity around two-thirds of the country must get ill, meaning hundreds of thousands more Americans would die.

So voters have a choice. With a Biden management strategy, as Emanuel proposes, much of the country could carefully and gradually reopen, pending a vaccine sometime in 2021.

As for the alternative, “We are doing a great job,” Trump insists. But if you believe that, you may be sentencing someone you love to an untimely death.