The President Is Trapped, by Peter Wehner for the Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com

The President Is Trapped

Peter Wehner

11 - 13 minutes

Trump is utterly unsuited to deal with this crisis, either intellectually or temperamentally.

Contributing writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at EPPC

March 25, 2020

Donald Trump

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty

For his entire adult life, and for his entire presidency, Donald Trump has created his own alternate reality, complete with his own alternate set of facts. He has shown himself to be erratic, impulsive, narcissistic, vindictive, cruel, mendacious, and devoid of empathy. None of that is new.

But we’re now entering the most dangerous phase of the Trump presidency. The pain and hardship that the United States is only beginning to experience stem from a crisis that the president is utterly unsuited to deal with, either intellectually or temperamentally. When things were going relatively well, the nation could more easily absorb the costs of Trump’s psychological and moral distortions and disfigurements. But those days are behind us. The coronavirus pandemic has created the conditions that can catalyze a destructive set of responses from an individual with Trump’s characterological defects and disordered personality.

Peter Wehner: The Trump presidency is over

We are now in the early phase of a medical and economic tempest unmatched in most of our lifetimes. There’s too much information we don’t have. We don’t know the full severity of the pandemic, or whether a state like New York is a harbinger or an outlier. But we have enough information to know this virus is rapidly transmissible and lethal.

The qualities we most need in a president during this crisis are calmness, wisdom, and reassurance; a command of the facts and the ability to communicate them well; and the capacity to think about the medium and long term while carefully weighing competing options and conflicting needs. We need a leader who can persuade the public to act in ways that are difficult but necessary, who can focus like a laser beam on a problem for a sustained period of time, and who will listen to—and, when necessary, defer to—experts who know far more than he does. We need a president who can draw the nation together rather than drive it apart, who excels at the intricate work of governing, and who works well with elected officials at every level. We need a chief executive whose judgment is not just sound, but exceptional.

There are some 325 million people in America, and it’s hard to think of more than a handful who are more lacking in these qualities than Donald Trump.

But we need to consider something else, which is that the coronavirus pandemic may lead to a rapid and even more worrisome psychological and emotional deterioration in the commander in chief. This is not a certainty, but it’s a possibility we need to be prepared for.

Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal

Here’s how this might play out; to some extent, it already has.

Let’s start with what we know. Someone with Trump’s psychological makeup, when faced with facts and events that are unpleasant, that he perceives as a threat to his self-image and public standing, simply denies them. We saw that repeatedly during the early part of the pandemic, when the president was giving false reassurance and spreading false information one day after another.

After a few days in which he was willing to acknowledge the scope and scale of this crisis—he declared himself a “wartime president”—he has now regressed to type, once again becoming a fountain of misinformation. At a press conference yesterday, he declared that he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” which is less than three weeks away, a goal that top epidemiologists and health professionals believe would be catastrophic.

“I think it’s possible. Why not?” he said with a shrug during a town hall hosted by Fox News later in the day. (Why Easter? He explained, “I just thought it was a beautiful time, a beautiful timeline.”) He said this as New York City’s case count is doubling every three days and the U.S. case count is now setting the pace for the world.

As one person who consults with the Trump White House on the coronavirus response put it to me, “He has chosen to imagine the worst is behind us when the worst is clearly ahead of us.”

David Frum: The worst outcome

After listening to the president’s nearly-two-hour briefing on Monday—in which, among other things, Trump declared, “If it were up to the doctors, they may say … ‘Let’s shut down the entire world.’ … This could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you start off with”—a former White House adviser who has worked on past pandemics told me, “This fool will bring the death of thousands needlessly. We have mobilized as a country to shut things down for a time, despite the difficulty. We can work our way back to a semblance of normality if we hold out and let the health system make it through the worst of it.” He added, “But now our own president is undoing all that work and preaching recklessness. Rather than lead us in taking on a difficult challenge, he is dragging us toward failure and suffering. Beyond belief.”

YES AND NO. The thing to understand about Donald Trump is that putting others before self is not something he can do, even temporarily. His attempts to convey facts that don’t serve his perceived self-interest or to express empathy are forced, scripted, and always short-lived, since such reactions are alien to him.

This president does not have the capacity to listen to, synthesize, and internalize information that does not immediately serve his greatest needs: praise, fealty, adoration. “He finds it intolerable when those things are missing,” a clinical psychologist told me. “Praise, applause, and accolades seem to calm him and boost his confidence. There’s no room for that now, and so he’s growing irritable and needing to create some way to get some positive attention.”

Adam Serwer: Trump is inciting a coronavirus culture war to save himself

She added that the pandemic and its economic fallout “overwhelm Trump’s capacity to understand, are outside of his ability to internalize and process, and [are] beyond his frustration tolerance. He is neither curious nor interested; facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or [when they] contradict his parallel reality, and people are disposable unless they serve him in some way.”

IT’S USEFUL HERE to recall that Trump’s success as a politician has been built on his ability to impose his will and narrative on others, to use his experience on a reality-television show and his skill as a con man to shape public impressions in his favor, even—or perhaps, especially—if those impressions are at odds with reality. He convinced a good chunk of the country that he is a wildly successful businessman and knows more about campaign finance, the Islamic State, the courts, the visa system, trade, taxes, the debt, renewable energy, infrastructure, borders, and drones than anyone else.

Read: How the pandemic will end

But in this instance, Trump isn’t facing a political problem he can easily spin his way out of. He’s facing a lethal virus. It doesn’t give a damn what Donald Trump thinks of it or tweets about it. Spin and lies about COVID-19, including that it will soon magically disappear, as Trump claimed it would, don’t work. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Misinformation will cause the virus to increase its deadly spread.

So as the crisis deepens—as the body count increases, hospitals are overwhelmed, and the economy contracts, perhaps dramatically—it’s reasonable to assume that the president will reach for the tools he has used throughout his life: duplicity and denial. He will not allow facts that are at odds with his narrative to pierce his magnetic field of deception.

But what happens to Trump psychologically and emotionally when things don’t turn around in the time period he wants? What happens if the tricks that have allowed him to walk away from scandal after scandal don’t work quite so well, if the doors of escape are bolted shut, and if it dawns on even some of his supporters—people who will watch family members, friends, and neighbors contract the disease, some number of whom will die—that no matter what Trump says, he can’t alter this epidemiological reality?

All of this would likely enrage him, and feed his paranoia.

As the health-care and economic crises worsen, Trump’s hallmarks will be even more fully on display. The president will create new scapegoats. He’ll blame governors for whatever bad news befalls their states. He’ll berate reporters who ask questions that portray him in a less-than-favorable light. He’ll demand even more cultlike coverage from outlets such as Fox News. Because he doesn’t tolerate relationships that are characterized by disagreement or absence of obeisance, before long we’ll see key people removed or silenced when they try to counter a Trump-centered narrative. He’ll try to find shiny objects to divert our attention from his failures.

All of these things are from a playbook the president has used a thousand times. Perhaps they’ll succeed again. But there’s something distinct about this moment, compared with every other moment in the Trump presidency, that could  prove to be utterly disorienting and unsettling for the president. Hush-money payments won’t make COVID-19 go away. He cannot distract people from the global pandemic. He can’t wait it out until the next news cycle, because the next news cycle will also be about the pandemic. He can’t easily create another narrative, because he is often sharing the stage with scientists who will not lie on his behalf.

The president will try to blame someone else—but in this case the “someone else” is a virus, not a Mexican immigrant or a reporter with a disability, not a Muslim or a Clinton, not a dead war hero or a family of a fallen soldier, not a special counsel or an NFL player who kneels for the national anthem. He will try to use this crisis to pit one party against the other—but the virus will kill both Republicans and Democrats. He will try to create an alternate story to distract people from an inconvenient truth—but in this case, the public is too afraid, the story is too big, and the carnage will be too great to be distracted from it.

America will make it to the other side of this crisis, as it has after every other crisis. But the struggle will be a good deal harder, and the human cost a good deal higher, because we elected as president a man who is so damaged and so broken in so many ways.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Egan visiting professor at Duke University. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump. 

The president is trapped by Peter Wehner

www.theatlantic.com

The President Is Trapped

Peter Wehner

11 - 13 minutes

---

Trump is utterly unsuited to deal with this crisis, either intellectually or temperamentally.

Contributing writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at EPPC

March 25, 2020

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty

For his entire adult life, and for his entire presidency, Donald Trump has created his own alternate reality, complete with his own alternate set of facts. He has shown himself to be erratic, impulsive, narcissistic, vindictive, cruel, mendacious, and devoid of empathy. None of that is new.

But we’re now entering the most dangerous phase of the Trump presidency. The pain and hardship that the United States is only beginning to experience stem from a crisis that the president is utterly unsuited to deal with, either intellectually or temperamentally. When things were going relatively well, the nation could more easily absorb the costs of Trump’s psychological and moral distortions and disfigurements. But those days are behind us. The coronavirus pandemic has created the conditions that can catalyze a destructive set of responses from an individual with Trump’s characterological defects and disordered personality.

Peter Wehner: The Trump presidency is over

We are now in the early phase of a medical and economic tempest unmatched in most of our lifetimes. There’s too much information we don’t have. We don’t know the full severity of the pandemic, or whether a state like New York is a harbinger or an outlier. But we have enough information to know this virus is rapidly transmissible and lethal.

The qualities we most need in a president during this crisis are calmness, wisdom, and reassurance; a command of the facts and the ability to communicate them well; and the capacity to think about the medium and long term while carefully weighing competing options and conflicting needs. We need a leader who can persuade the public to act in ways that are difficult but necessary, who can focus like a laser beam on a problem for a sustained period of time, and who will listen to—and, when necessary, defer to—experts who know far more than he does. We need a president who can draw the nation together rather than drive it apart, who excels at the intricate work of governing, and who works well with elected officials at every level. We need a chief executive whose judgment is not just sound, but exceptional.

There are some 325 million people in America, and it’s hard to think of more than a handful who are more lacking in these qualities than Donald Trump.

But we need to consider something else, which is that the coronavirus pandemic may lead to a rapid and even more worrisome psychological and emotional deterioration in the commander in chief. This is not a certainty, but it’s a possibility we need to be prepared for.

Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal

Here’s how this might play out; to some extent, it already has.

Let’s start with what we know. Someone with Trump’s psychological makeup, when faced with facts and events that are unpleasant, that he perceives as a threat to his self-image and public standing, simply denies them. We saw that repeatedly during the early part of the pandemic, when the president was giving false reassurance and spreading false information one day after another.

After a few days in which he was willing to acknowledge the scope and scale of this crisis—he declared himself a “wartime president”—he has now regressed to type, once again becoming a fountain of misinformation. At a press conference yesterday, he declared that he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” which is less than three weeks away, a goal that top epidemiologists and health professionals believe would be catastrophic.

“I think it’s possible. Why not?” he said with a shrug during a town hall hosted by Fox News later in the day. (Why Easter? He explained, “I just thought it was a beautiful time, a beautiful timeline.”) He said this as New York City’s case count is doubling every three days and the U.S. case count is now setting the pace for the world.

As one person who consults with the Trump White House on the coronavirus response put it to me, “He has chosen to imagine the worst is behind us when the worst is clearly ahead of us.”

David Frum: The worst outcome

After listening to the president’s nearly-two-hour briefing on Monday—in which, among other things, Trump declared, “If it were up to the doctors, they may say … ‘Let’s shut down the entire world.’ … This could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you start off with”—a former White House adviser who has worked on past pandemics told me, “This fool will bring the death of thousands needlessly. We have mobilized as a country to shut things down for a time, despite the difficulty. We can work our way back to a semblance of normality if we hold out and let the health system make it through the worst of it.” He added, “But now our own president is undoing all that work and preaching recklessness. Rather than lead us in taking on a difficult challenge, he is dragging us toward failure and suffering. Beyond belief.”

YES AND NO. The thing to understand about Donald Trump is that putting others before self is not something he can do, even temporarily. His attempts to convey facts that don’t serve his perceived self-interest or to express empathy are forced, scripted, and always short-lived, since such reactions are alien to him.

This president does not have the capacity to listen to, synthesize, and internalize information that does not immediately serve his greatest needs: praise, fealty, adoration. “He finds it intolerable when those things are missing,” a clinical psychologist told me. “Praise, applause, and accolades seem to calm him and boost his confidence. There’s no room for that now, and so he’s growing irritable and needing to create some way to get some positive attention.”

Adam Serwer: Trump is inciting a coronavirus culture war to save himself

She added that the pandemic and its economic fallout “overwhelm Trump’s capacity to understand, are outside of his ability to internalize and process, and [are] beyond his frustration tolerance. He is neither curious nor interested; facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or [when they] contradict his parallel reality, and people are disposable unless they serve him in some way.”

IT’S USEFUL HERE to recall that Trump’s success as a politician has been built on his ability to impose his will and narrative on others, to use his experience on a reality-television show and his skill as a con man to shape public impressions in his favor, even—or perhaps, especially—if those impressions are at odds with reality. He convinced a good chunk of the country that he is a wildly successful businessman and knows more about campaign finance, the Islamic State, the courts, the visa system, trade, taxes, the debt, renewable energy, infrastructure, borders, and drones than anyone else.

Read: How the pandemic will end

But in this instance, Trump isn’t facing a political problem he can easily spin his way out of. He’s facing a lethal virus. It doesn’t give a damn what Donald Trump thinks of it or tweets about it. Spin and lies about COVID-19, including that it will soon magically disappear, as Trump claimed it would, don’t work. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Misinformation will cause the virus to increase its deadly spread.

So as the crisis deepens—as the body count increases, hospitals are overwhelmed, and the economy contracts, perhaps dramatically—it’s reasonable to assume that the president will reach for the tools he has used throughout his life: duplicity and denial. He will not allow facts that are at odds with his narrative to pierce his magnetic field of deception.

But what happens to Trump psychologically and emotionally when things don’t turn around in the time period he wants? What happens if the tricks that have allowed him to walk away from scandal after scandal don’t work quite so well, if the doors of escape are bolted shut, and if it dawns on even some of his supporters—people who will watch family members, friends, and neighbors contract the disease, some number of whom will die—that no matter what Trump says, he can’t alter this epidemiological reality?

All of this would likely enrage him, and feed his paranoia.

As the health-care and economic crises worsen, Trump’s hallmarks will be even more fully on display. The president will create new scapegoats. He’ll blame governors for whatever bad news befalls their states. He’ll berate reporters who ask questions that portray him in a less-than-favorable light. He’ll demand even more cultlike coverage from outlets such as Fox News. Because he doesn’t tolerate relationships that are characterized by disagreement or absence of obeisance, before long we’ll see key people removed or silenced when they try to counter a Trump-centered narrative. He’ll try to find shiny objects to divert our attention from his failures.

All of these things are from a playbook the president has used a thousand times. Perhaps they’ll succeed again. But there’s something distinct about this moment, compared with every other moment in the Trump presidency, that could prove to be utterly disorienting and unsettling for the president. Hush-money payments won’t make COVID-19 go away. He cannot distract people from the global pandemic. He can’t wait it out until the next news cycle, because the next news cycle will also be about the pandemic. He can’t easily create another narrative, because he is often sharing the stage with scientists who will not lie on his behalf.

The president will try to blame someone else—but in this case the “someone else” is a virus, not a Mexican immigrant or a reporter with a disability, not a Muslim or a Clinton, not a dead war hero or a family of a fallen soldier, not a special counsel or an NFL player who kneels for the national anthem. He will try to use this crisis to pit one party against the other—but the virus will kill both Republicans and Democrats. He will try to create an alternate story to distract people from an inconvenient truth—but in this case, the public is too afraid, the story is too big, and the carnage will be too great to be distracted from it.

America will make it to the other side of this crisis, as it has after every other crisis. But the struggle will be a good deal harder, and the human cost a good deal higher, because we elected as president a man who is so damaged and so broken in so many ways.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Egan visiting professor at Duke University. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump. 

Please join me in wearing a mask

Please join me in wearing a mask

We should all be working together to protect ourselves, our communities, and our healthcare professionals: that means covering your mouth and nose, in addition to hand-washing and social distancing.

Janelle Wavell-Jimenez

Mar 21 · 14 min read

The subject of mask wearing in Western countries led to unusually heated arguments over the past few weeks, so here’s a cited piece on why everyone should be wearing a mask, in addition to practicing proper hygiene and social distancing.

In this world of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) misinformation, I have extensively sourced official guidance from other countries or scientific, peer-reviewed papers to enable you to make your own well-informed decisions.

TL;DR: You should be covering your mouth and nose when you go out.

Unless you already have the supplies, leave the N95 and surgical masks for the HCP (Healthcare Providers). Protect your face with a homemade cloth mask, bandanna, or even a scarf. Any face covering is better than nothing, as long as you use it properly. Masks are not a replacement for other quarantine and suppression efforts, they’re additive. Face masks are a tried and true solution that has been used effectively throughout Asia for Coronavirus COVID-19 and SARS before it.

The mask shortage in the United States

First things first: there IS a national shortage on masks for medical professionals, people working in grocery stores, and workers in other critical and essential roles. I am NOT telling you to hoard them. Hoarding medical grade masks will only put you at increased risk if your local HCP becomes ill from not having access to proper protection.

However, the US Surgeon General did us a massive disservice by saying that they were ineffective for the general population. This tweet below will age poorly.

It is absolutely true that “if healthcare providers can’t get them…it puts them and our communities at risk.”

It is extremely misleading to say that “they are NOT effective in preventing the general public from catching #Coronavirus,”

The idea that masks are not effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19 makes little logical sense, and further, the science suggests the opposite. The reality is we have a shortage and HCP must have priority on N95 masks and other PPE (personal protective equipment).

But rather than saying they’re “NOT effective,” we should be taking cues from places like Taiwan and Hong Kong who have reduced the spread within their own borders despite close ties to mainland China. The United States should have been educating everyone on alternative ways to protect their face, IN ADDITION to hand-washing and social distancing.

Wait, so are masks effective?

Yes. If you already know that masks work, feel free to skip to the next section.

“N95 Respirators vs Medical Masks for Preventing Influenza Among Health Care Personnel” JAMA, 2019; 322 (9): 824 DOI:

The comparisons to SARS, H1N1 and the flu are fine analogues because the primary spread is through droplets. Further, since you can be positive for COVID-19 but not show any symptoms, it’s important that “healthy” people wear face coverings as well. Even healthy people cough or sneeze on a daily basis just to clear their throat. Have you ever had someone accidentally spit on you while talking? Now imagine if they had been wearing a mask.

But the US is out of N95 masks! What do we do now?

Use a cloth mask.

With the current lack of masks, doctors in some hospitals are starting to ask the general public for homemade masks. Deaconess Health System, who employs 6,000+ workers in southwest Indiana (shout out to fellow Hoosiers), put out a call to the public for cloth masks because of the N95 mask shortage. The public was very gracious, and they now have more than they need. As they point out,

“Prior to modern disposable masks, washable fabric masks were standard use for hospitals,”

Many of you reading this were probably alive when cloth masks were still used in hospitals. It is still standard in many parts of the developing world.

We should also be looking abroad to see how this crisis is being handled. We aren’t the only country facing a mask shortage.

Look to Asia (Taiwan, specifically).

It is fairly common to wear masks in Asia, both when you’re sick and to protect yourself from getting sick. I lived in Japan for six years and came to love that people wore them on crowded subway trains, but I was also a bit unnerved the first time I saw people wearing masks.

Taiwan

Let’s look at Taiwan, currently being hailed as a success story in handling the COVID-19 crisis. Some context: WHO does not work with Taiwan, so they have to handle health crises independently. After SARS, Taiwan learned quite a few lessons which they’ve applied to the current epidemic.

At the time of writing this, Taiwan had 135 confirmed cases and 2 deaths. This is less than any country in Western Europe despite having much, much closer ties to mainland China.

A few days after Wuhan, China went into quarantine, Reuters reported that Taiwan had banned the export of masks. They quickly ramped up production and are now producing 10 million masks a day. Taiwan has a rationing system for their citizens, who get 3 masks a week. This is not effort that would be expended if masks were “not effective” for the general population.

Source: “Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan: Big Data Analytics, New Technology, and Proactive Testing” JAMA. Published online March 3, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.3151

“ A sign that says that masks are sold in Taiwan.” / Credit: Wikipedia, Andrew20070223 — Own work

Hong Kong

As of writing, Hong Kong has a mere 256 cases and 4 deaths. This is fewer cases than New York City currently has.

According to Kwok Ka-ki, a lawmaker and doctor in Hong Kong, emphasis mine:

“The most important thing is that Hong Kong people have deep memories of the SARS outbreak. Every citizen did their part, including wearing masks and washing their hands and taking necessary precautions, such as avoiding crowded places and gatherings.”

Source: “Why COVID-19 case counts are so low in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan” [Advisory Board]

But let’s look somewhere else. What is being done in countries without the experience or resources that Taiwan and Hong Kong have?

In Thailand, a country without the same level of healthcare as Taiwan, the New York Times reported that N95 masks have been reserved for HCP while the government is encouraging people to make their own.

The notion that governments were encouraging their citizens to make their own masks may seem to contradict recommendations in the US, until recently. Now hospitals and the CDC are also recommending the use of cloth masks.

Are cloth masks even effective?

To be clear, nothing is 100% effective. But the CDC has guidance for HCP in crisis situations (like right now) where no appropriate PPE (personal protective equipment) is available:

HCP might use homemade masks (e.g., bandana, scarf) for care of patients with COVID-19 as a last resort.

Source: Crisis Capacity Strategies [CDC]

A HCP’s last resort is not the same as the general public’s last resort. HCPs spend extended amounts of time around COVID-19 patients every single day. The rest of us are (or should be) practicing social distancing, hand washing, and self-isolating when we’re sick. Masks or other alternatives are additive protections. If they’re good enough in a crisis situation for a nurse caring for COVID-19 patients, they’re good enough for you while you stand 6 feet away from someone in Costco as long as you also practice proper hygiene.

Here are some studies on the topic:

“Simple Respiratory Protection — Evaluation of the Filtration Performance of Cloth Masks and Common Fabric Materials Against 20–1000 nm Size Particles” The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, Volume 54, Issue 7, October 2010, Pages 789–798

“Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic?” Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 7(4):413–418 · August 2013

“Professional and Home-Made Face Masks Reduce Exposure to Respiratory Infections among the General Population” PLoS One. 2008; 3(7): e2618.

A study from City University of Hong Kong found that the efficacy of a mask made at home out of two pieces of paper towel + a tissue “…were proven to have achieved 80 to 90 per cent of the function of regular surgical masks in terms of their filtration of aerosol and droplets.” That’s pretty good for something you can make from home.

Source: “How to make your own mask: Hong Kong scientists reveal temporary solution for those unable to get protective gear because of panic buying and price-gouging” [South China Morning Post]

Additionally, researchers from Cambridge University tested various materials the average person might have at home for efficacy in filtering aerosols of bacteria. From the chart below, some of the options you have are better than others.

Filtration Efficiency and Pressure Drop Across Materials Tested with Aerosols of Bacillus atrophaeus and Bacteriophage MS2 (30 L/min) a

Source: “Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic?” Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness / FirstView Article / July 2013,pp 1-6 DOI: 10.1017/dmp.2013.43

There’s a lot of people on the internet currently trying to figure out the best materials to use. But let’s remember that the primary reason people in Asia wear masks for COVID-19 is to prevent the spread of droplets — not aerosols. Use what you have first. Worry about optimizing for materials later.

It’s also more important to choose a material that will enable proper usage, rather than blocking microns of a particular size. It’s great that a vacuum cleaner bag is nearly as effective as a surgical mask, but if you can’t breathe and keep fiddling with the mask (and touching your face), it will not be effective and will likely be harmful.

Although the use of cloth masks by HCP around the world is still standard, some research shows their use to be potentially dangerous.

Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection

Source: “A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers” BMJ Open 2015;5:e006577. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2014–006577

You cannot reuse cloth masks disinfecting them. You cannot depend on any mask alone to protect you. You must wash your hands before and after removing masks

Proper mask use is critically important

Wearing a face covering is a good practice, but it isn’t “better than nothing” unless used properly. People in Asia are routinely educated on proper mask usage, but in the West we’ve stigmatized face masks and lack common guidance.

Thankfully, WHO has a guide for us: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: When and how to use masks.

You may have noted the WHO says,

“I“If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection,”

Emphasis mine. Let’s remember that the term “healthy” is pretty subjective, especially for an international organization like WHO. In some countries that I lived in, my chronic condition (asthma) means I’m not “healthy.” I may feel “healthy” but I am also in a “high risk” category. I don’t personally know the WHO’s definition of health, but I find it extremely unlikely that a 70 year old with heart disease who has never been tested for COVID-19 counts as “healthy” either.

You may have also seen guidance from WHO — “Advice on the use of masks the community, during home care and in health care settings in the context of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak” — that seems to say masks don’t work.

Please note this is interim guidance from January 29, 2020. That was a mere week after Wuhan was quarantined. Many, many things have changed since then, including official guidance from various countries around the world.

The guidance actually says:

Wearing a medical mask is one of the prevention measures to limit spread of certain respiratory diseases, including 2019- nCoV, in affected areas. However, the use of a mask alone is insufficient to provide the adequate level of protection and other equally relevant measures should be adopted. If masks are to be used, this measure must be combined with hand hygiene and other IPC measures to prevent the human-tohuman transmission of 2019-nCov

Please note the emphasis on alone. A mask alone will not protect you. This bears repeating: A mask alone will not protect you.

Since we don’t have guidance from the US government yet (though I suspect we will shortly), here is guidance from the Centre for Health Protection of Hong Kong (CHP). It’s HK’s version of the CDC.

Here’s what they say to their citizens on wearing masks, it begins with the the following:

The following preventive measures, apart from wearing a mask, should be emphasised:

Hand hygiene is the single most important measure of reducing the spread of diseases. Members of the public should perform hand hygiene properly and frequently, especially before touching eyes, nose and mouth;

Again, you a mask alone will not protect you.

Here are links on CHP’s guidance for COVID-19 and masks.

Frequently Asked Questions on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) [Centre for Health Protection, Department of Health, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region]

Proper Use of Mask with videos and other tips [CHP]

PDF with visuals on mask usage [CHP]

We should have been educating

I strongly believe that we should have been educating Western people about proper usage of masks, rather than claiming they’re “not effective.”

A common statement in American media is that it creates a “false sense of security.” That’s quite condescending. Are the billions of people in Asia more capable of learning how to wear a mask properly, in conjunction with hand washing and social distancing? No. They simply get educated on proper use.

It’s like saying that we shouldn’t use condoms because they are not 100% effective at preventing unwanted pregnancy or STDs, and used incorrectly can also be dangerous. We know the only thing that can 100% prevent unwanted pregnancy or STDs is abstinence. Telling people not to use condoms and to rely on abstinence as the only way to prevent unwanted pregnancy or STDs has been proven not to work.

It is extremely important to wear a mask properly and in conjunction with other hygiene practices. This is not an excuse to go to a rave wearing a cool bandanna and thinking that will protect you from COVID-19. But since you’re practicing social distancing (right?), you are probably only wearing this for that quick stop to the grocery store, so your mask removal practices should be much more simple than a doctor or nurses.

You must also be very careful to properly disinfect a cloth mask, or properly dispose of disposable masks. How do you disinfect a cloth mask? The general guidance for countries where cloth masks are used is to throw it in the laundry.

UV light (like the sun) could possibly be helpful as well. This study looks at a “block and burn” tactic as a Plan B for disposable face masks if they have to be reused by HCP:

The tactic proposed is one of “block and burn” — masks to block and UV irradiation to burn the viral pathogen. The focus is on attacking the virus in the environment, rather than in the patient.

Source: “Disrupting the Transmission of Influenza A: Face Masks and Ultraviolet Light as Control Measures” Am J Public Health. 2007 April; 97(Suppl 1): S32–S37.doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2006.096214

We need to de-stigmatize mask wearing

Beyond limiting the spread of COVID-19, you should wear a mask (or alternative) for the social aspect as well. In the United States, the stigma against wearing masks is both a public health disservice and causing harm to people who do wear them.

There are thousands of people out there who are at high-risk of contracting COVID-19, who have valid medical reasons to wear masks: cancer patients, people who are immunocompromised, etc. Further, there are thousands of people from Asia (and also Latin America) reading news from countries where governments are wisely telling the public to wear masks. An unfortunate spike in hate crimes towards Asians, particularly Asians wearing masks, has been reported.

We should all be working together to protect ourselves, our communities, and especially our healthcare professionals and front line workers during the time.

Are you on board but don’t have anything you can use? Wear a scarf. It’s winter. If you sneeze into it, that’s still SOME droplets not landing on someone else. But wash your hands when you take that scarf off, throw it immediately in the laundry, and wash your hands again.

Here are some resources on home made masks (these have not been vetted as thoroughly as other links):

Diymask.site — Has patterns for adults, children, and babies

Freesewing.org — Pattern for cloth face mask

Deaconness Health Systems — the pattern they gave the public when they requested cloth masks

City University — This is made of paper towels, tissues, and other household items.

I am still unconvinced!

If the sources and citations above did not help sway you, then:

Please share a peer reviewed study that says masks do more harm than good when used properly and in conjunction with hand-washing practices.

Please ask yourself why you’re quibbling over a few percentage points? Condoms are also not 100% effective and neither are seat belts. They need to be used properly for greatest efficacy, same with masks (homemade or otherwise). Given that hospitals are asking for homemade masks, I think we can all agree this is a pedantic argument at a time when our collective brain power would be better utilized elsewhere.

Please reflect on why you think that multiple governments in Asia have less rigorous scientists or experts than the United States, especially given our delayed response to this crisis. In particular, Taiwan’s Vice President is an epidemiologist who led the SARS response team.

If you’re still on the fence, that’s fine as long as you let other people wear them. Do your part to de-stigmatize it. Don’t give the rest of us dirty looks, and educate others who wish to wear one on how to do so safely.

If you want to know what I’m doing beyond writing long Medium posts and hoping someone will listen, I am currently trying to use my company to produce as many cloth masks as possible so that I can donate them to those in need: hospitals, the homeless, and vulnerable communities. I am happy to report that many of the factories I work with are already producing hundreds of thousands of masks so can’t take on my tiny request.

I believe that within the next few weeks official guidance in the United States will be to start wearing masks in addition to social distancing, hand washing, and self-isolation when sick.

Until that time, I hope you’ll join me in wearing a mask.

Trump Would Hurt Economy by Trying to Restart It by Michael Strain fo Bloomberg

Trump Would Hurt Economy by Trying to Restart It

By

Michael R. Strain

bloomberg.com

 

March 25, 2020

 

3 min

 

 

President Donald Trump seems to think he can restart the U.S. economy by scaling back some of the restrictions on work, commerce and social interaction that have been put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“America will again — and soon — be open for business,” the president said on Monday. “Very soon, a lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. A lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”

He’s wrong. Trump is deluding himself if he thinks that he can step behind a podium and reopen the economy.

First, there is the practical problem that the economic shutdowns have been ordered by governors and mayors. Stay-at-home directives in California, New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C. have captured much of the media attention. But my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, told its residents to stay home and non-essential businesses to close last Saturday. Now I live in northern Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C., and received an email from my barbershop Tuesday morning announcing expanded hours during the day as a response to the governor’s decision to close recreational and entertainment businesses for 30 days, effective at midnight.
As of Tuesday morning, at least 163 million people in 17 states, 14 counties and eight cities are being told to shelter in place. That’s roughly half the U.S. population, and growing.

Less than two weeks ago, governors and mayors began taking matters into their own hands and issuing shutdown orders, frustrated by the lack of a reasonable, coordinated plan from Washington to ensure public health. The president does not have the necessary credibility with many of these state and local officials to convince them to rescind their guidance to businesses, households and schools.
But even if he did, he still couldn’t restart economic activity at the levels the U.S. enjoyed just two weeks ago. Many people are frightened about the virus, and Trump won’t be able to assuage those concerns. Because we are worried about catching the coronavirus, my family wouldn’t go to a crowded restaurant for dinner tonight regardless of what the president might say. Would Trump be able to convince you to go to a movie theater or a concert?
Two weeks ago, my spring calendar was filled with conferences and speaking engagements. Those have all been canceled, and along with them the airline tickets and hotel reservations I had made. Even if Trump calls off the shutdown once his “15 days to slow the spread” campaign expires, those tickets and reservations will not be rebooked and those conferences will not resume as planned. Trump can’t just restart economic activity in these sectors with a wave of his hand.

A warning to the president: Trying and failing to reopen the economy before economic activity is organically ready to resume could have dire economic consequences.
Many people would ignore Trump’s directive to restart economic life, but not all would. And if the premature resumption of economic activity resulted in significant public health consequences — more cases, more deaths, hospitals more overwhelmed — by allowing the coronavirus to spread further and faster, the president will have lost control.
An even more dire public health crisis would bring a much more severe and lengthy economic downturn. And a more dire public health crisis brought on in part by the president’s decision to reopen the economy too early would have even worse economic consequences because the government would have lost the credibility to inform Americans about the virus.
Many people would be afraid for longer to resume normal economic life regardless of what the government tells them. People would avoid dining out, shopping, taking public transportation, traveling and working from their offices for longer than would be necessary, because there would be no federal authority that could credibly give them the all-clear.
More and better information on the virus is desperately needed. People will feel comfortable resuming economic activity when the facts — importantly, from more and better testing — suggest that it is reasonable to do so. Trump can’t substitute his pronouncements for those facts, because many people, not to mention state and local officials, simply wouldn’t respond to his message.

But the president should be careful. The more people who would take his word for it, the worse the economic downturn could become.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Michael R. Strain at mstrain4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net

Published on March 24, 2020, 12:17 PM EDT

Sanders Is Running for Relevance Now, Not for President by Jonathan Bernstein



Sanders Is Running for Relevance Now, Not for President

by Jonathan Bernstein, bloomberg.com

March 10, 2020 06:04 AM

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Democrats vote on Tuesday in six states, with Democrats Abroad also choosing delegates. As of now, it’s quite possible that former Vice President Joe Biden will win in all of them. He’s heavily favored in Michigan, Missouri and Mississippi, and at worst a toss-up in Washington, Idaho and North Dakota. Three big wins and even three close losses, two in small states, would add plenty to Biden’s delegate lead. 

The truth is at this point that unless the polling is entirely wrong — and there’s always that possibility, but there’s no reason to expect it — what’s at stake isn’t whether Biden will be the nominee. It would take some massive unexpected change in the contest to put that in real question, and there’s no obvious place for such a change to emerge from. (By contrast, change of some sort was fairly certain to result from the Feb. 29 South Carolina primary, given that a six- or seven-candidate race wasn’t going to continue.)

No, what’s at stake on Tuesday is whether Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders exits the race — and especially whether his presence will matter.

If Sanders has a great day — let’s say he wins Michigan despite being way down in the polls there, and wins all three toss-ups by decent margins — he’s still going to be a huge long-shot to get the nomination. Once all the ballots are counted in California and the other states that voted last week on Super Tuesday, Biden is likely to lead by over 100 delegates. The FiveThirtyEight forecasting model predicts that he’ll add some 80 delegates to that lead this Tuesday, and giving Sanders every possible edge plus a major polling error in Michigan would still mean that Biden gains a bit. But this week is still likely to be a lot better for Sanders than March 17 (with voting in Biden-friendly Florida, Ohio, Illinois and the more competitive Arizona) and March 24 (when Biden-friendly Georgia votes). 

Nothing is ever impossible, but all the state and national polling since Super Tuesday, along with the current delegate count, point to a Biden nomination by a somewhat wider margin than Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. If Sanders rallies and beats the polls, then Biden’s margin is likely to be similar to Clinton’s four years ago. Anything better for Sanders is no longer really plausible.

So if Biden does have a good day Tuesday, he’ll essentially lock up the nomination, and probably open up a convincing 400 delegate lead by March 24. Sanders might stay in the race anyway, and he might even continue to run attack ads in the March 17 states and might stay on the attack in the March 15 debate, but it’s not going to matter very much what Sanders does as long as he eventually backs Biden by the July Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, as he’s pledged to do and did for Clinton in 2016.

There’s a long tradition of hopeless factional candidates fighting on when the nomination is wrapped up. Sometimes they even win a primary or two late in the calendar. The Republican culture warrior Pat Buchanan stayed in until the end in 1988. Former (and future) California Governor Jerry Brown not only remained in the 1992 Democratic race but actually won the Connecticut primary after Bill Clinton was a certain nominee. Those challenges have no effect on the general election. If anything, Biden victories over Sanders in most or all of the primaries after Tuesday could sustain his current standing as a winner and as a moderate all spring. I suspect that Sanders would turn away from attacking Biden fairly quickly, going back to mainly advocating his policy positions along with attacks on President Donald Trump.

If it’s Sanders who has a good day on Tuesday, then Democrats will be faced with something closer to a rerun of 2016, with Biden having little danger of losing the nomination but Sanders winning often enough to make seriously contesting it a more justifiable choice. If that happens, then it’s at least possible that Sanders will wind up harming Biden in the general election, and Democrats will very much want Sanders to drop out once the delegate math makes winning impossible. 

The conventional wisdom is that Sanders is in it until the end no matter what, since he stayed in until the last primary in 2016 even though he never came close to winning. It’s certainly possible that’s correct. But there’s really no way to know. Sanders may be more concerned about the effects on the general election this time than he was four years ago; he also may have learned from that effort that when the delegate math is against you, there’s really no magic wand that can change it. So I don’t really have any prediction about if, or when, Sanders might drop out. Only that if he doesn’t do better than the polling suggests very soon, it’s just not going to matter very much.

1. Michael Tesler at the Monkey Cage on how the coronavirus could threaten Trump at the ballot box. 

2. Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Meredith Conroy on where Senator Elizabeth Warren’s voters will go.

3. Dan Drezner on Trump in a crisis.

4. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Tyler Cowen with the case for optimism about the U.S. response to the coronavirus. 

5. Heather Hurlburt on authoritarianism and the virus.

6. Annie Lowrey on fighting a coronavirus-sparked recession.

7. And Matt Yglesias argues for stimulus and automatic economic stabilizers.

Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net

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Will the coronavirus affect this year’s presidential election? / Mischiefs of Faction / Matthew Green

mischiefsoffaction.com
Will the coronavirus affect this year’s presidential election?
6-8 minutes

March 6, 2020
By Matthew Green



As the number of Americans infected with the coronavirus has continued to climb – including three new cases in Montgomery County, which is just north of Washington, D.C. – some have speculated that the virus will affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Could it?

The health effects of the coronavirus are, in my opinion, much more serious and weighty than its political ramifications. Still, it is an election year, and both Democrats and President Trump have been making some partisan hay out of the virus. It is thus worth at least contemplating how it might influence what happens in November.

An (admittedly brief) search in political science literature did not turn up much about the relationship between viral epidemics and election outcomes. Seth Masket, in an excellent short essay about the Ebola virus and the 2014 midterm elections, cited a few relevant studies. One study, by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, found that American voters have sometimes blamed incumbent parties and presidents for “acts of God,” though 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was not one of them.

Based on others’ research and my own speculations, I came up with three possibilities, ranked roughly from most to least likely (in my view).

1. Changes in voter preferences. How people choose to vote could be shaped both directly and indirectly by the coronavirus. If the virus depresses domestic economic growth, that could reduce voter support for the incumbent president (and there is a well-established relationship between the economy and election results). Achen and Bartels surmise that this was why a peak in shark attacks off the New Jersey coast hurt President Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 vote share in the area. The attacks deterred tourism, which hit the region economically, and Wilson was blamed for it.*

There are already plenty of signs that the coronavirus is slowing the global economy, not to mention fueling a major selloff of stocks. Its economic impact may not last long enough, nor be big enough, to weaken Trump’s odds of reelection. But if the virus (or, more accurately, response to the virus) badly damages the U.S. economy for the rest of the year, it would probably spell trouble for the president.

More directly, voters could decide that the White House has mishandled the epidemic. The political scientist David Mayhew wrote that “valence” issues—matters related to government management—often correspond to major shifts in party control of government. Though usually associated with the government’s management of the economy, valence issues could include health-related matters too.

Trump has tried to position himself as the best person to protect Americans from the epidemic. Nonetheless, there have already been distressing stories about malfunctioning test kits supplied by the government, failure to test people who carry the coronavirus, and even the accidental release of a patient who had tested positive for the virus. If these stories continue, it could erode the president’s reputation among voters.

A great deal depends on whether citizens blame the president for something that is largely out of his hands. Explaining why the 1918 flu did not hurt Democrats at the polls, Achen and Bartels suggest that people “thought of the pandemic as part of the natural world rather than as part of the social world.” Voters may be less forgiving today, however. Unlike a century ago, citizens expect the federal government to take an active role in protecting their health, including the prevention and treatment of viral infections.

2. Reduced voter turnout. If the coronavirus becomes even more widespread and lethal, people may decide it is not worth the risk to leave home and head to the polls. In-person voting could especially decline in areas where the pathogen has proliferated, or among voters (like the elderly) who are at greater danger of severe illness. A more extreme possibility is that people are prevented from voting altogether because of government-mandated quarantines.

Fear of the coronavirus has certainly grown, and people could stay away from polling places out of an abundance of caution. For now, though, I am skeptical that this would disproportionately help or hurt either party in the November elections. Keep in mind that a number of states have mail-in voting or make it easy to vote by mail, reducing the importance of in-person voting. Also, as Jeremy Brown points out, the 1918 flu spread “in the pre-antibiotic era.” Medical science has progressed exponentially since then, making it far less probable that it would seriously sicken enough people to put a dent in turnout or lead to massive quarantines.

3. Changes in election campaigns. Finally, there is a chance that the virus hinders the ability of candidates or parties to mount “normal” campaign operations. Perhaps the Democratic Party is unable to hold its convention, preventing a so-called convention bounce in the polls or the resolution of a contested convention (though after Biden’s solid victories in Super Tuesday, the latter seems increasingly unlikely). Even worse, top campaign staff – or, heaven-forbid, one of the major party’s presidential candidates – becomes ill.

This third possibility seems the most far-fetched to me. Yet it can’t be entirely dismissed. The Democratic Party has begun contingency planning should it have to cancel its convention in Milwaukee. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) has warned that fear of the virus could curtail some party and campaign events in her state. And Vice President Mike Pence was recently at a military academy where one student was potentially infected with the virus.

We are still eight months away from Election Day, and it could be that none of these scenarios take place. But the coronavirus is a sobering reminder that, while presidential candidates and parties do lots of long-term strategizing to win elections, the vagaries of Mother Nature can sometimes throw them a powerful curve ball.

* There is some debate over how much the 1916 shark attacks really influenced voter behavior. For a useful summary by Andrew Gelman, see here.

Most of Trump’s own supporters think he’s self-centered. His coronavirus response helps show why.

Most of Trump’s own supporters think he’s self-centered. His coronavirus response helps show why.

A national survey published Thursday by the Pew Research Center showed that 73 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe “self-centered” describes President Trump either very or fairly well. Overall, 8 in 10 U.S. adults agree.

Eighty percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they agree with Trump on many or nearly all of the important issues facing the country; the same percentage approve of his job performance in the poll. But only 31 percent said they like the way Trump conducts himself as president. Half said they have mixed feelings, and 16 percent say they don’t like his conduct.

Among the Republicans and GOP-leaning independents surveyed by Pew, 35 percent said he’s prejudiced, 49 percent said he’s even-tempered, 62 percent said he’s morally upstanding and 71 percent said he’s honest. But 87 percent said he fights for what they believe in. That’s the key to his reservoir of support on the right.

Trump’s town hall on Thursday night in Scranton, Pa., which aired live on Fox News and focused extensively on the novel coronavirus outbreak, captured these dynamics in miniature. The first audience question came from Katherine Pugh, an undecided voter, who said the Trump administration’s initial response to the coronavirus “seemed to some as being confusing or minimizing.” She wondered “what plans are being considered on a federal level for the possibility of a long-term disruption” from its spread. Rather than discuss what’s next, Trump focused on touting his initial response.

He credited his own moves with the relatively small death toll – he said 11 Americans have died, though the number is now 12 – compared to other countries. “Well, actually, we are being given really tremendous marks – you look at Gallup, you look at other polls – for the way we have handled it,” he said. “And one of the things I did is I closed down the borders to China and to other areas that are very badly affected. … And I closed them down very early against the advice of almost everybody. And we have been given rave reviews.”

There is no public evidence that there was widespread opposition to the travel restrictions in the administration. Moreover, the Gallup poll Trump referred to, conducted from Feb. 3 to Feb. 16, did not ask about Trump’s handling of the situation. Instead, it asked Americans about their confidence in the federal government’s ability to handle an outbreak in the United States. A lot has changed in the past three weeks, including the seesawing stock market and a spike in the number of confirmed cases in the country. The Dow fell 700 points Friday morning in the first few minutes after the opening bell.

An Economist-YouGov poll conducted earlier this week found that 41 percent of Americans thought Trump’s policies were not taking the risks seriously enough. Another 34 percent said his policy was appropriate. This poll finds that 68 percent of Americans are now either “somewhat” or “very” concerned about a coronavirus epidemic in the United States, up from 62 percent in an Economist-YouGov survey last month.

Trump himself has emerged as the administration’s greatest obstacle to sending a clear and consistent message about the coronavirus. Leading public health experts from across the government have found their messages undercut, drowned out and muddled by Trump’s push to downplay the outbreak with a mix of optimism, bombast and pseudoscience, Toluse Olorunnipa reports: “The president has repeatedly misstated the number of Americans who have tested positive for the virus and claimed it would ‘miraculously’ disappear in the spring. He has given a false timeline for the development of a vaccine, publicly questioned whether vaccinations for the flu could be used to treat the novel coronavirus and dismissed the World Health Organization’s coronavirus death rate estimate, substituting a much lower figure and citing a ‘hunch.’ On Wednesday night, Trump made an uncritical reference to people who continue to go to work while infected with the coronavirus — placing himself at odds with doctors who have strongly urged those with even minor symptoms to stay home.”

 

Fox News anchor Bret Baier told Trump during the town hall that, while he’s said he wants to take politics out of the crisis, the president also keeps blaming former president Barack Obama for delays in distributing test kits. “Well, I don't blame anybody,” he said, before blaming Obama. “I want to get everybody to understand they made some decisions which were not good decisions. We inherited decisions that they made.”

Trump added that his own performance will get criticized no matter what. “If we found a cure, and everybody's better tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, they would say, he's done a terrible job,” he said. “It's just automatic. … And we have done a great job. Again, we have gotten the highest poll numbers of anybody for this kind of a thing.”

Fact-checker Glenn Kessler awards Four Pinocchios to Trump for his “bogus” effort to blame Obama for sluggish coronavirus testing: “The administration has been under fire for its failure to quickly expand testing for coronavirus across the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had distributed flawed tests to state and local health departments. The lack of tests, compared with countries like South Korea that have tested tens of thousands of people, has meant the possible spread of the virus in the United States may be hidden.

“Trump suggested the problem instead was an ‘Obama rule’ on testing that his administration had recently overturned. But this turns out to be completely wrong. …There was no Obama rule, simply ‘guidance’ that was never acted on because Congress stepped in and decided it would craft the necessary legislation, according to experts we consulted. The Trump administration, in fact, has been working with Congress on such legislation.”

Baier asked Trump why he didn’t expedite testing when the world learned of the virus spreading in January. “I'm thinking about a lot of other things too, like trade and millions of other things,” the president answered. “I mean, we are doing some job with the economy and all. So I'm not thinking about this. But as soon as I heard that China had a problem, I said, what's going on with China? How many people are coming in? Nobody but me asked that question. … And we were given A-pluses for that. … Saved a lot of lives.” 

Later in the town hall, a self-described “big supporter” of the president – identified by the network only as Robert – thanked Trump effusively for “everything that you have done for this country and continue to do for this country.” But then he lamented how “insult politics have become a staple of this political environment.” And he wondered: “Could there be a way that we can deliver your message without the controversial rhetoric in efforts to reunite this country during these divisive times?”

Trump’s answer boiled down to no. “When they hit us, we have to hit back,” he said. “I wouldn't be sitting up here if I turned my cheek.” He added that Fox News wouldn’t be interviewing him if he wasn’t a counterpuncher because it’s good for ratings. “We get hit so hard,” Trump added. “If we don't fight back, you won't be a fan of mine very long. But I appreciate the question. Thank you.” The crowd cheered. Robert applauded. And the Trump campaign war room quickly blasted out the clip.