The two infectious disease experts on today's program respectively made statements that transcend. Jeffrey Shaman from Columbia University said that even though the Administration dropped the ball (our term) early on in proactive against the virus, we have to "pick up from where we are now," While Dr. Michael Osterholm said that we have to "learn to live with it."
However, without a national plan coming from a decisive Administration in the White House, pick up and and learning to live it become ever more difficult. Maybe it's just the thoughts of this column, but it's impossible to reconcile the president saying his administration is doing a great job when the country is staring 100,000 deaths in the face. And when the president this week nonchalantly says that over 22 million job losses were to be expected, it's downright depressing to think about where the president's head is at. Obviously, it's not on the millions of Americans who are suffering at this moment.
And in the midst of this pandemic, the Trump Administration is still backing the lawsuit to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, which would leave 20 million Americans without access to health insurance. When Mr. Todd asked Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) about this, Mr. Alexander said that when the individual mandate penalty was lowered to $0, no senator thought that this invalidated the entire law as the suit claims.
This is all in light of the fact that White House staffers in close contact with the president and vice-president tested positive for the virus this week. As Kristen Welker reported, White House staff has been shaken by this, even as they are instituting ramped up testing and contact tracing. However, ramping up these measures for the entire country is out of the question.
Chuck Todd's thread throughout the program was "Where's the plan?" which is a legitimate question but he drilled down on as if there would be an answer (a plan) coming. However, the reality is that there won't be a national plan. The president has left the states to make their own decisions without any federal coordination so that the country as a whole can emerge from this crisis. The president has called Americans 'warriors' in fighting this invisible enemy, but pragmatically what he is really saying is that many more Americans are going to die and that's just the way it has to be to get the economy moving again. The president has said that the economy will come back in the summer despite economists saying that it will take years to recover all the job losses. Given the unemployment rates for the different population segments, it's unlikely that the administration will focus on those hardest hit.
Robert F. Smith, CEO of Vista Equity Partners, explained that this is an opportunity for the United States to restructure the banking system because 94% of minority owned businesses are under-banked or are not affiliated with any bank at all. It would be wise to follow this course, but again it's difficult to see it actually happening given that corporate allies of the administration will do their best to exploit the crisis instead of correctly the economy inequality that this crisis has laid bear.
Richard Haas said that many countries aren't seeing the United States that they thought we knew, and because of this they will increasingly go their own way, which will only increase instability. We can not speak for other countries' perceptions, but this isn't even the America that Americans once knew.
Panel: Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal; Kristen Welker, NBC News; Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations
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