There are two important articles on the front page of the Washington Post this morning. One deals with the decision in early March by the Trump regime to precipitously close off travel from Europe, leading to returning Americans jamming U.S. airports:
The sequence was repeated at airports across the country that weekend. Harrowing scenes of interminable lines and unmasked faces crammed in confined spaces spread across social media.
The images showed how a policy intended to block the pathogen’s entry into the United States instead delivered one final viral infusion. As those exposed travelers fanned out into U.S. cities and suburbs, they became part of an influx from Europe that went unchecked for weeks and helped to seal the country’s coronavirus fate.
Epidemiologists contend the U.S. outbreak was driven overwhelmingly by viral strains from Europe rather than China. More than 1.8 million travelers entered the United States from Europe in February alone as that continent became the center of the pandemic. Infections reached critical mass in New York and other cities well before the White House took action, according to studies mapping the virus’s spread. The crush of travelers triggered by Trump’s announcement only added to that viral load. [snip]
Trump has repeatedly touted his decision in January to restrict travel from China as evidence that he acted decisively to contain the coronavirus, often claiming that doing so saved more than a million lives. But it was his administration’s response to the threat from Europe that proved more consequential to the majority of the more than 94,000 people who have died and the 1.6 million now infected in the United States. (our emphasis)We well remember scenes like this from major U.S. airports over the course of a few weeks in February. No social distancing (or much screening) there:
Of course, it was part of a pattern of incompetence that's become one of the hallmarks of the Trump regime, especially in it's bumbling, criminally negligent response to the coronavirus pandemic:
The travel mayhem was triggered by many of the same problems that plagued the U.S. response to the pandemic from the outset: Early warnings were missed or ignored. Coordination was chaotic or nonexistent. Key agencies fumbled their assignments. Trump’s errant statements undermined his administration’s plans and endangered the public.
The entire article provides a devastating, detailed indictment of the way the Trump and his regime botched this, which contributed significantly to the spread of the virus in the U.S. It was nothing short of depraved indifference.“We kept foreign nationals out of the country but not the virus,” said Tom Bossert, who served as adviser of homeland security at the White House until last year. The move to restrict travel came when it was more urgent to arrest the spread of infections already in the United States, Bossert said. “That was a strategic miscalculation.” (our emphasis)
The second Post article reports on a studies by the University of Wyoming and University of Chicago on how the economic benefits from social distancing policies are a huge net:
They reached a very different conclusion from Trump.
Economists at the University of Wyoming estimated the economic benefits from lives saved by efforts to “flatten the curve” outweighed the projected massive hit to the nation’s economy by a staggering $5.2 trillion. Another study by two University of Chicago economists estimated the savings from social distancing could be so huge, “it is difficult to think of any intervention with such large potential benefits to American citizens.”
The studies center around the concept of VSL -- the Value of a Statistical Life -- which the government calculates at $10 million. The Wyoming study points to the trade- offs of social distancing and economic impact in coming to their conclusions:In other words, the economists are saying, “the cure” doesn’t come at a cost at all when factoring in the economic value of the lives saved. (our emphasis)
Their study looked at models projecting both the pandemic’s death toll, the effects of social distancing efforts and the economic impact. The study estimated the U.S. economy would shrink less from an uncontrolled pandemic (GDP declines by $6.49 trillion) than a pandemic curtailed by social distancing (GDP declines by $13.7 trillion). But social distancing would slash the peak infection rate in half, resulting in 1.2 million fewer deaths — leading to a VSL of $12 trillion. So the value of social distancing would work out to a net benefit of $5.16 trillion, the study estimated. (our emphasis)Unfortunately, when you have a head of government whose head is empty, you get the simple, short- sighted notion that staying safe at home equals "the cure is worse than the disease." When the history of this pandemic is finally written, the price we've paid by installing an unfit, unintelligent, uncaring shitgibbon in the presidency will be appallingly high, both in terms of lives lost and lives altered forever.
