Scientists and health experts generally agree that the world is most likely in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly five months after the first confirmed coronavirus death in Wuhan, China, and four months after the first confirmed case in the United States, the daily barrage of Covid-19 headlines serves as a sober reminder of just how little we know about the novel coronavirus, and just how unchartered the path forward is. But while our understanding of the virus itself — its transmissibility, symptoms, and potential treatments and vaccines — is fluid, the Republican playbook for responding to, and communicating about, the crisis has become clear.
Defining the Republican Strategy
On March 11th President Trump delivered a 10-minute Oval Office address about the coronavirus. Reading from a prepared statement, Trump announced a 30-day ban on travel from Europe, among other measures, and touted his administration's "unprecedented" response to the pandemic, claiming it was "…the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history."
Prior to March 11th, many GOP lawmakers, media pundits and voters collectively downplayed the threat posed by Covid-19, often drawing comparisons between the coronavirus and the common flu. According to Geoffrey Kabaservice, the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank, the tendency of the GOP to downplay the risk partly reflected Trump's initially dismissive messaging about the crisis, and also relates to deeper ideological suspicion of scientists, the media, and government officials.
While Republicans are still less likely than Democrats to view the coronavirus as a major threat to public health, Republican officials and right-wing pundits began introducing new talking points after March 11th. Instead of minimizing the health risks posed by the virus — an increasingly futile approach in the face of a mounting death toll — the GOP camp is now pushing a three-pronged strategy for responding to the coronavirus pandemic: cast a foreign villain, diffuse federal responsibility to the states, and create a false choice between economic preservation and public health.
Cast a Foreign Villain
During the 2016 campaign, President Trump ardently scapegoated Mexicans, Muslims and the broader immigrant community for America's economic and social woes. It was a strategy that many believe helped him win the electoral college. GOP strategists are now employing a similar tactic, seizing on the coronavirus pandemic to foment contempt for China and its government.
On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo bolstered a claim Trump has made previously that coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab — a theory for which there is no evidence — and insisted that China intentionally covered up COVID-19 to hoard medical supplies. New ads from President Trump's Super PAC lambasted China's response to the coronavirus as a "communist disinformation effort." Appearing on The View, Senator Lindsey Graham advocated for stricter sanctions on China, including shutting down visas for Chinese students and potentially closing off America to China altogether. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich and freshman Texas congressman Dan Crenshaw have made separate appearances on Fox & Friends, urging congress to adopt legislation that would allow Americans to sue China. Not to be forgotten was Ted Cruz's appearance on Justice w/ Judge Jeanine, in which he introduced a bill that would cut off Defense Department assistance for US movie studios that permit China to censor their content.
Trump and his allies are quick to point out the administration's decision to restrict travel from China on January 31st as evidence of swift and aggressive action that helped mitigate the spread of the virus in the United States. But according to public health experts, the travel restriction did little to contain the spread of the virus which, by that point, had already been circulating in Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world. The fact that GOP officials are still citing the travel restriction as confirmation of Trump's savvy, hardline approach to managing the crisis, despite what we now know about the virus's timeline, suggests these talking points are nothing more than political grandstanding.
To be clear, the Chinese government is not absolved of criticism for their handling of the coronavirus — intelligence agencies in North America and Western Europe say China concealed the extent of the virus outbreak, and manipulated its data in order to protect its own interests. Moreover, legitimate questions remain over how the West should engage with China, particularly in light of their despicable abuse of Uighur Muslims between 2017-2019, and their brutal response to pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong last year.
But we are still in the throes of this pandemic. Castigating China does nothing to address the ongoing crisis in our own country. Instead, the GOP is hoping to divert people's ire outward, away from our own administration's failings. Not only is such rhetoric counterproductive to confronting the immediate crisis, but it also deepens xenophobic sentiments and, when spewed carelessly, engenders harmful Asian-American stereotypes.
Diffuse Federal Responsibility to States
Early evidence from around the globe has provided a clearer picture of what a successful mitigation strategy looks like. Countries that have stemmed the spread of the virus within their borders, including South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, Portugal, Finland, Iceland and Germany, have either taken decisive measures early on — namely, strict isolation and contact tracing — to contain localized outbreaks, or have dramatically scaled production of the necessary medical equipment needed to test and treat their citizens, including diagnostic and antibody testing supplies, and personal protective equipment for frontline healthcare workers.
While the United States ramped up testing efforts in April, as of early May it remains behind a number of other countries in Covid-19 tests per 1,000 people.
And at every turn, Republicans have resisted pleas from Democratic lawmakers to adopt a national testing strategy, insisting instead that states should assume responsibility for testing.
Jared Kushner, a Senior White House advisor and the President's son-in-law, got into hot water in April when he asserted that the federal stockpile of medical supplies is not meant to be used by the states, a claim lawmakers say was false.
"Most other countries are doing it nationally. I wish that we had more help from the federal government." — Colorado Governor Jared Polis, NPR's Morning Edition
The lack of a national testing strategy and coordinated plan to re-open the country, coupled with the administration's failure to secure sufficient medical equipment for the hardest-hit states, has left many governors in a bind.
"We are still in dire need of critical resources from the federal government, including sufficient personal protective equipment and increased testing capacity. We have current, large unfulfilled order requests with the federal government for both PPE and testing materials; these are vital components to reopening Oregon and remain necessary to prevent a resurgence of the disease." — Oregon Governor Kate Brown
The administration's lackluster response to the pandemic is in part attributable to gross incompetence. But there is also a political calculus at play.
Leaving the states to fend for themselves may have the desired effect of relieving the administration of criticism for their handling of the pandemic and, conveniently, aligns with conservative preferences to limit federal intervention and provide greater autonomy to the states.
But it is a cynical calculation that will cost lives. A government's primary function is to protect the lives and general welfare of its citizens. The Trump administration's response in the face of such a dire crisis has been a flagrant dereliction of duty.
Economy vs. Public Health
The third component of the Republican response to the coronavirus pandemic has been to offer the American people a false choice between continuing to follow the public health guidelines and salvaging the economy.
In expressing opposition to an extended lockdown, President Trump has repeatedly remarked: "we can't let the cure be worse than the disease".
Republican lawmakers in congress, TV pundits, and conservative and libertarian voices on social media have echoed this sentiment in recent weeks. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has gone so far to say that "there are more important things than living" while asserting that many people would be willing to die if it meant saving the economy.
To be clear, the economic devastation caused by the virus and subsequent lockdowns is costing people their livelihoods, and the fallout from a prolonged shutdown could rival that of the Great Depression. Unfortunately, there is no scenario where a global pandemic of this scale does not inflict widespread suffering and devastation, particularly among those who were most vulnerable to begin with.
But it is possible to simultaneously prioritize public health — making decisions based on science — and also take more proactive steps to mitigate the economic fallout of the pandemic.
In the United States, congress has passed multiple relief bills, amounting to nearly $3 trillion, which have included direct payouts to individuals, an expansion of unemployment benefits, and financial assistance for small businesses. (It's worth noting that, even in those early stimulus bills, Democrats had to negotiate for added protections for essential workers, and funding for hospitals, and local and state governments).
But the rollout of the various relief programs, most notably the small business loan program, has been riddled with glitches. Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration have signaled they are slowing on approving additional relief. Pausing federal relief now, according to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, would further impede a recovery and cause undue economic suffering.
Furthermore, according to a preliminary analysis from Brookings, both the size and form of federal relief measures has determined which countries have, to this point, managed to mitigate the economic harm caused by Covid-19.
Among 20 countries surveyed, the United States stands out with close to 15% of its workforce having filed for unemployment benefits, a percentage many economists believe understates the true condition of the job market.
From an economic perspective, income-sustaining temporary layoffs and reductions in hours are better than outright termination. In this regard, other countries appear to be in a better position to navigate the economic fallout. For example, in Germany, which is credited for pioneering a short-term work program during the Great Recession that is now a model for other European countries, displacement has come through government subsidized furloughs. Amazingly, the share of its workforce filing for unemployment during the pandemic has declined.
The Payroll Protection Program in the United States was designed precisely with the intention of maintaining employer-employee relations and obviating the need for unemployment. But it has been critically underfunded, and additional support continues to meet resistance from Republicans who are not keen on adopting an all-hands-on-deck approach to federal stimulus (let alone on addressing any of the systemic failures that this crisis has helped to illuminate) if such action is unlikely to bear fruit before November.
Instead, they are opting for a patchwork re-opening of the country in the hopes of reaping more immediate economic benefits, even if it means costing more lives and hindering economic stability over the long-run.
What It Means for November
In their response to the Covid-19 pandemic, GOP leadership is signaling what the party platform will be this fall: Trump will be tough on China and restore the economic prosperity that preceded the pandemic; the Democrats would exacerbate the economic nosedive with their incessant spending, while infringing on state's rights.
The effectiveness of this message will depend on the path the virus takes.
Covid-19 has disproportionately hit large cities and metropolitan areas — Democratic strongholds — while thus far sparing smaller towns and less densely populated cities — Republican areas.
Source: NYT
If the virus never becomes pervasive beyond big cities, that could reinforce the sense among many republican and right-leaning voters that the threat has been overstated all along, and their skepticism of government directives was justified. Moreover, the GOP's imperative to "not let the cure be worse than the disease" is more likely to resonate with voters in the middle of the country if they never in fact feel the full wrath of that disease.
Regardless of how the next six months unfold, what is clear is that Republican officials are not measuring success based on the number of lives lost to the disease, particularly when those lives will be disproportionately black and brown Americans living in blue states. Instead, success will be defined by their ability to point to superficial measures of economic restoration in the short-term, and by winning at the ballot box in November. We deserve better from our leaders.