The pandemic did not appear out of nowhere. We have known about its existence since November 2019, or at least China did and kept quiet about the true extent of its spread. Regardless, the United States’ executive branch is in a unique position to exert a sense of leadership and control. However, these attempts fell flat as the administration took multiple questionable steps to suppress the virus and criticism.
January marks the first few times the Trump administration downplayed the risks. Numerous tweets dismissed the threat of the growing outbreak in China, even praising their handling of it.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” he tweeted on January 24. There was little mention or action until January 31, when the United States barred travel to and from China. It was an obvious move to make, as the virus raged in Wuhan, its origin city, and other places in the country.
Testing was a difficult task; the US, among other countries, struggled to produce tests. The CDC’s distributed tests weren’t functional, and the US refused to receive functioning tests from the World Health Organization. The president’s remarks to the media were not helping either, as he constantly presented an optimistic attitude about the future of the virus. This would be acceptable if the administration took the action necessary to make that vision a reality. However, the response to COVID-19 failed on every level. This isn’t entirely the Trump administration’s fault, but it does paint a questionable picture of how the government is built to respond to crises like this.
In March, the government shut down travel from Europe except for US citizens, who had some time to return. This again made sense as infections grew there, but it excluded travel to and from the United Kingdom for a while, which had COVID-19 cases just like many other countries.
State governments also failed in their responses in multiple ways. While quicker to respond due to being able to take more immediate action on a more local level, there were still missing ventilators for patients and questionable directions to citizens over where to go. The federal government then failed to gain the resources that the states required to address patients and prevent new cases.
Whether the Trump administration and the rest of the government will continue to uphold the necessary standards to keep American citizens safe is yet to be seen. What is also yet to be seen is how the rollercoaster of results will affect the coming election; will this be just another temporary hurdle for Trump or will he be rejected by the public?