Nicholas Kristof: "The Virus Is Winning" - Trump's Bungled, Benighted, Malevolent (?) Response

President Trump insisting last month that coronavirus testing was states’ job. Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

By Nicholas Kristof Opinion Columnist

Back on March 6, President Trump announced: “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.” It wasn’t true then and it’s still not true two months later. To me that’s a reflection of how badly the Trump administration has flubbed the coronavirus response.

About half of states are now easing restrictions and reopening, and I understand that impulse: People are impatient, and many families are desperate to earn an income. A new study finds that young children in one in six households do not have enough to eat. Imagine that you’re a day laborer with hungry kids, and the government checks haven’t arrived: What are you going to do? Depending on the part of the country, it may make sense to ease some restrictions, particularly in areas of the country with few cases and particularly involving the outdoors. Epidemiologists tell me that the risks of allowing people outside to parks and beaches are small and probably worth it. But the problem is that to ease up safely, we need testing and contact tracing — and we still don’t have it.

My column today argues that we continue to bungle the coronavirus response — we’ve just spent five weeks floundering, with new cases hovering between 25,000 and 30,000 a day, although partly that’s a function of increased testing — and I’m afraid that May will be a lost month as well. One new study cited in my column foresees a rebound in deaths late this month in response to the easing of restrictions.

In two months, we’ve already lost more Americans to the coronavirus than died in the Vietnam, Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and this is just the beginning. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, told me that we’re in the second inning, and we could have a second wave in the fall that swamps anything so far. Osterholm, by the way, heard the other day that the White House was “ramping up” the Covid-19 task force, and he was elated. Finally, we were going to tackle the issue more seriously. Then he realized that he had misheard, and the task force was “wrapping up,” not “ramping up.” “I was shocked,” he told me. President Trump today said that he wasn’t closing down the task force after all, but the episode underscored the disarray of America’s coronavirus response. I’m afraid that for now the virus is winning. Here’s my column.