BRANDON J. WEICHERT | THE WEICHERT REPORT
When someone becomes a doctor, they are required to take the Hippocratic Oath which states, “First, do no harm.” There has been much consternation and disagreement with the medical community’s concern over the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) from Wuhan, China.
Some on the Right have even insinuated that Trump is receiving bad advice from Fauci and his medical team because they are virulent “Never Trump” deep staters. Such accusations are unfair and inappropriate. Fauci, like all of the doctors in this country, has taken an oath to do no harm. Part of doing no harm is ensuring people do not spread disease in order to keep the current political paradigm from being upset.
What Trump and his team fail to realize, clearly, is that the old paradigm is dead and we are all going to pay the price for his fecklessness on this one.
In the words of one anonymous staffer from the Trump administration since the COVID-19 strain arrived in the United States, Dr. Fauci and his team “would prefer it if no one had any contact with another human being until July.” But that makes sense, given the nature of the disease we are faced with today.
President Donald Trump has heeded that medical advice thus far. Why wouldn’t he? No matter how much you may disapprove of your doctor’s advice to eat healthy or to stay indoors during a plague, you would probably listen to him–especially if you’ve gotten second and third opinions saying the same thing–lest you suffer needlessly. Trump was being smart by listening to his medical team.
But, there now appears to be cracks forming in Trump’s decision to respect that which the medical professionals are saying.
Recently, the president indicated that, for the sake of the economy, he was going to reopen the economy “in a few weeks.” Of course, that would put us in mid-April. And that is the period in which every medical professional is warning will be the most severe time for an outbreak of the COVID-19 disease in the United States.
When medical personnel talk about “flattening the curve” they are referring to the need to prevent a total swamping of the already-beleaguered medical system in this country. So, in order to prevent hospitals in the US from reaching over-capacity, the medical community has recommended social distancing and self-quarantining as effective countermeasures.
That way, people who are sick and/or who do become infected with COVID-19 do not overwhelm the system so greatly that they cause it to shut down and force medical staff to ration care–which is precisely where we are headed, if the president reopens the country prematurely.
It was odd listening to President Trump discuss the disease as though we had already overcome it. I hope he has information that we do not about the coming cure or effective treatment protocol. Because if the president is going to sacrifice public health for economic prosperity, he’s going to pay dearly at the polls in November–more so than he would under the current conditions of economic shutdown, recession, and possible depression.
The president is in a lose-lose situation.
Does he want to lose little or lose big?
If he goes down the path of reopening the country in a few weeks, at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak here–without a cure or medical treatment protocol on hand–not only will he have needlessly spread the novel coronavirus at greater levels (that will break the medical system in this country) but he will also suffer an economic collapse, as people cannot–or will not–go to work and the entire logistical supply chain here in the country utterly collapses.
For the country and the president, this crisis was proving out to be a shining moment. Until yesterday, the president had acted boldly and swiftly to avert what was a coming health crisis. Even under best conditions, though, things were going to be tough–at least for a while. In order to flatten the curve, we would be killing the economy. But what could have come after would have been the apotheosis of everything Trump had campaigned on during the 2016 election.
What should have been at least a five-week shutdown of the country until the COVID-19 season passed, could have been followed on by the greatest exertion of presidential authority since FDR to revitalize the ailing industrial centers of the country; to force companies to return home; to diversify the supply chain away from China; to reclaim our national borders; to distance ourselves from a world torn asunder by disease, famine, war, and hardship.
Now, the president is slinking away from this pristine opportunity to Make America Great Again. Instead, he is giving in to the globalist political and Wall Street class who fear such necessary change.
Regardless of what the president does during this crisis, given its nature, he will suffer politically. Yet, had the president stuck to his guns and exhibited the bold leadership he had been until yesterday, he would have not only gotten the country through but won reelection handily.
Alas, the president is surrounded by mediocrities who do not understand the new paradigm we are in.
His obsession with reopening the economy at the cost of lives is a telling example of little he understood the opportunity that God had handed him (and, yes, this opportunity is something that could have only come from the divine).
Trump is tempting fate–with our lives and livelihoods.
There is no statistical data that proves what he is saying to be true. There is nothing other than his gut feelings on the matter. We shall see if he is correct. For everyone’s sake, I hope he can defy the odds. If he is wrong, as I suspect he is, We, The People will suffer. What’s more, he will pay dearly for such recklessness at the polls in November. And that should concern everyone. I have long maintained that, whatever his failings, Trump is the only thing standing between this country and the abyss.
Fact is, we will recover from the economic downturn; the fundamentals of our economy remain as strong as ever. Although, if the public health crisis ends up becoming a medical catastrophe mirroring what happened in Italy (and it will be closer to that than anything else), Trump will pay dearly politically for it. This is sad because whatever recovery inevitably happens would be better served by a Trump presidency than a scatter-brained, quasi-socialist Joe Biden presidency.
In fact, the president’s approval numbers were doing very well during this crisis (this is from CNN of all places, too):
Here’s what Trump’s net approval (approval – disapproval) averaged in each of those periods:
March 1-8: -8.6 points
March 9-16: -9.0 points
March 17-24: -7.7 points
The differences across these periods are statistically insignificant. If anything, you could argue that the President’s standing is slightly up overall.
That was certainly the finding of the highest quality poll taken in the last week. Monmouth University found that Trump’s net approval rating among adults was -2 points and even among voters. Both of those ratings are not only up from the last few Monmouth polls, but are also the highest Trump’s ever been in a Monmouth poll.
We do need to see more high quality polling to confirm how much of what Monmouth is indicating is real or if it’s just statistical noise.
Still, it’s pretty clear why Trump’s position is steady: Plenty of Americans are approving of the job he’s doing handling the coronavirus pandemic. In the Monmouth poll, 51% of voters say Trump is doing a good job dealing with it. This echoes an Ipsos poll from last week that showed 55% approved of the job Trump was doing regarding the outbreak.
These numbers do not reflect Trump’s apparent reversal yesterday. I suspect his poll numbers will either remain the same or decline when the next round of polling is done. In fact, I’d expect many Americans to applaud this decision in the coming weeks…until the medical system is overwhelmed; people are dying en masse (see here and here for why); and then society is forced to probably shut down again, as people are either too sick or too scared to get sick.
Life is dynamic. No two situations in history are identical. But there are times–savage times, really–when the most seemingly absurd or draconian steps to mitigating a crisis are required. In this case, the two most unconventional approaches to the COVID-19 outbreak are to either do nothing, as Trump appears interested in doing or to do everything; to shut the country down (truly, not partially the way it currently has) and flood the markets with liquidity–much more, in fact, than the $1 trillion stimulus that has been proposed.
Once we “flatten the curve,” we can return somewhat to normal, as the warmer months will probably (maybe) naturally mitigate the disease while at the same time give scientists more time to develop a cure and/or treatment regimen while also allowing for hospitals across the country to better prepare for the colder months, when COVID-19 returns in force.
The biggest question that must be asked is: why the sudden change of course from the president?
It could not have been the economic data.
After all, the worst aspects of the economic fallout from social distancing and self-quarantining have already been felt. It is not totally part of the economic scenery going forward (at least through Q3). It isn’t that medical professionals are telling him it’ll all be over in a few weeks.
Only the gonzo, fringe types are talking like that. Instead, it is likely because the stimulus bill–which almost everyone assumed would pass–has failed, due to Democratic Party chicanery (as well as Republican insistence on favoring corporations over workers).
The reason the Democrats killed the bill in the Senate, though, was not out of real opposition to the CAREs Act. Oh no. It was because the Democratic Party leadership sensed an opportunity to politically damage the president in a contentious election cycle where at least part of the Democratic Party’s voters will refuse to show up to vote (since Senator Bernie Sanders is not on their ballot) and in which the Democratic Party’s candidate, former Vice-President Joe Biden is, frankly, senile.
By completely crippling the economy due to the coronavirus–and then refusing to allow for relief to be sent to American workers and industries most directly impacted by the shut down–the Democrats are dragging out the economic damage to ensure that as many ordinary voters are negatively impacted as possible, so that by November, the people would rather vote for “Sleepy Joe” over temperamental Trump.
I believe that Trump is trying to partly throw the issue back in the Left’s faces: if they won’t work with Trump on resolving the pandemic as efficiently as possible, he won’t let them deprive his campaign of an essential talking point going into November. It’s all very petty from both sides–and it’s playing with our lives and livelihoods.
What Trump should have done, but obviously won’t, would have been to do that which I argued: use this crisis to not only medically resolve the problem but to also fundamentally transform the economy back to a more traditional model; one in which the family became the key economic driver (as opposed to atomized individuals); in which local communities were championed at the expense of mindless profit-seeking; in which American jobs were populated by Americans; where the obsessive quest for degrees was replaced by actual work and experience; an economy where one parent was able to support a family of four on one-income; where Americans could save rather than live one paycheck away from total insolvency…do you see how much better the pre-1960s way of economics in the United States was?
This was what we voted for with Trump–and he has yet to give us this.
Now, he won’t.
We’re going back to the Neoliberal model. And we will all pay dearly for it…other than our political class, who benefit most from that shabby way of doing business. For Trump, the way forward was not by going back. The way forward was by pushing through his radical agenda and using this novel coronavirus as the method for doing that. Embracing that new paradigm was the only way to creating long-term stability and prosperity.
Instead, we will get more uncertainty and even more sickness. Because Trump is denying a total paradigm shift now, I believe he will suffer at the polls in November. I hope I’m wrong. Truly. I remain convinced that his presidency is better for the recovery than anything the Democrats can put out. But, if I am right, this is a grave mistake that will pose the greatest threat to Trump’s presidency since he was sworn in.
The fear about the disease is not overblown. It is real. The disease itself is not a hoax. It is real. And it has the ability to totally bring down our medical system–which concern all of you. I’d expect rampant propagation followed on by the total swamping of the medical system if the president goes through with his plan of reopening the economy. We will be hurt by this and the country will limp on for many more months all while suffering through a deeper economic down turn. The president is wrong to do this.