Rick, as I see it the problems the US had were the following.
The virus essentially became politicised because you were facing a Presidential election. Trump, for all his failings, had a good chance of re-election and no obvious challenger had emerged by the new year. Trump saw the "economy" as a winner, using the DJI as the simplistic indicator for Joe Public, to prove his point. Everything in his thinking was to keep the Stock market buoyant.
The virus hit early in the new year, I believe in Washington State at first. Information at that time was sketchy, but it was obvious that Wuhan was having a serious health crisis. Unfortunately the US decided to develop their own testing kit. It was not effective early and so that caused serious issues. New York also had outbreaks, and we know the problems that caused.
Now we know that a significant number of people are asymptomatic spreaders. Also people can spread the virus for days presymtomatically. So you can see, community spread was out of control, with no real way of testing. The only way of diagnosis was via severe symptoms. The only experience with severe corona virus disease previously was with SARS, years before. That’s what many used to judge what to do but the characteristics of this virus are different.
Trump's focus was the "economy" ie. his re election. Every action taken was with that filter in place. He was the "cheerleader", not for the country, but for the DJI, his winning in November. Eventually he imposed the limited travel bans but it was too late, the virus was already spreading inside the country.
In my city we have not had a community spread case since April 14. Two days ago we had 4, today 17. We are fortunate enough to have the numbers of contact tracers to track those possibly in contact with them down. Our hospital system can cope at present. I fear for the toll on health workers and the health system in the US given the rapid growth in numbers recently.
Colin,
Donald Trump was always on track to losing the election. His approval ratings were always in the low to mid 40's and never reached 50 at any time during his illegitimate presidency. The 2018 midterm election was a determining factor of how Americans were dissatisfied with him and the GOP.
If you looked at the polls numbers from last October 2019 in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania they were pretty much accurate showing a generic Democratic candidate would defeat him by the same margin.
Donald Trump destroyed manufacturing with his bogus Chinese tariffs and trade war. Thousands of people were losing their jobs in those states as good American jobs were off shored to China. He promised new factories in those states and new jobs were supposed to be created. No factories were built or new jobs created. It was a lie to get people to vote for him. The people living there knew that and decided they weren't going to vote for him back then.
Manufacturing entered into a recession last September 2019 and the United States entered into a recession in February before the pandemic was declared and emergency. So, it's his failed policies that destroyed the economy but the pandemic made it even worse.
Yes, Donald Trump only cared about the stock market and nothing else attempting to use Covid for his advantage. Like I said, he admitted that to Woodward on tape.
The point is, that he knew about this pandemic back in November 2019 and was briefed several times in January. If he was a real leader, he would have been planning for a National emergency coordinating with Governors and health experts on getting testing kits, getting ready to lockdown, and making sure life saving equipment was ready to be distributed.
Instead he did nothing and let the virus take over America. Airlines restricted flights in mid January and a few days later, Donald Trump called for restrictions but flights were still coming in. So, his asinine claim he "saved millions of lives" is a joke. He spent the rest of time golfing and holding rallies and on Feb 28th attacked Democrats and called it a "hoax". The right wing media hacks echoed the same propaganda for the sheep.
Washington was having outbreaks and a top medical expert came on tv and said this is a dangerous pandemic which will alter the way we live. The next day the stock market sunk and Donald Trump went ballistic over it. That's when the propaganda started from him, his GOP Stooges and the right wing media. It was all about keeping the stock market inflated so he could claim the "economy was great" when it wasn't.
Two weeks later he finally declared a national emergency but didn't take any responsibility. He threw everything to the Governors to handle so he could blame them if things went wrong. Some states had lockdown while others didn't, and it was a half-assed operation where Governors had no equipment and had to do everything on their own.
Let's not forget Donald Trump shipped 17.8 tons of our medical equipment to China. He then blamed Obama for leaving him "nothing" when he sent it all to China. He also accused nurses and doctors of stealing the equipment for profit when they were forced to use diapers and trash bags as gowns. Many got Covid themselves because of him.
Then as we started to turn the corner on the pandemic, by finally seeing positive results with states in lockdowns, Donald Trump started demanding states to open prematurely before his task force requirements to safely reopen were even met. He wanted to boost the economy for his election and started tweeting for his thugs to LIBERATE. He then started the division and chaos where states did reopen too early and Covid never became under control to where it's worse now than in March.
The disaster happened because Donald Trump did nothing, states were not prepared, lockdowns happened too late and not long enough, right wingers refused to wear masks and follow the orders, and Donald Trump and his GOP thugs lying and pumping disinformation.
This virus never should have been politicized. This is a health crisis. If everybody worked together and had an effective plan we wouldn't have had the mass deaths and infections we have today. Also, we most likely would have resumed a normal way of life. This has been going on since March and it's worse now thanks to Republicans that did not care to save American lives.
