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The Public Health Response of the US Federal Government to the Coronavirus Crisis and the Narrative of Donald J. Trump

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COVID-19 and Social Protection

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Abstract

Since first coming to the attention of the global public in January 2020, few countries in the world have been as severely impacted by the novel coronavirus as the United States. Though it holds just four per cent of the world’s total population, as of mid-2020 the US leads the world with a quarter of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. Despite this dire situation, the Administration of President Donald J. Trump has frequently downplayed the severity of the virus, and Trump himself has often relayed misinformation to the American public about both the virus itself and his Administration’s response to it. Accordingly, independent analysis has ranked the US last in “fact-based communications” about the coronavirus when compared to other nations with advanced economies. This chapter provides a chronological overview of how the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded in the US through September 2020, with a particular focus on the various comments made by President Trump. By drawing on Trump’s many public statements, the chapter pieces together the narrative that Trump has constructed about the coronavirus crisis and examines that narrative in light of the broader public health response of the US federal government to the pandemic. In concluding, it finds that Trump’s narrative has been erratic, divisive, and misleading and that this, combined with a chaotic federal response to the crisis, has undermined public health in the United States.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    186,162 Americans have died from Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) as of September 13, 2020 (US Daily Cumulative Totals 2020).

  2. 2.

    An annual event, the State of the Union is one of the most high-profile domestic speeches delivered by the American president.

  3. 3.

    Multiple studies have found that while travel restrictions were modestly useful at slowing the spread of the coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic, only other public health interventions, such as social distancing, rapid contact tracing, and widespread testing, can significantly curb its transmission (Chinazzi et al. 2020; Tian et al. 2020; Wells et al. 2020).

  4. 4.

    Experts consider widespread testing to be one of the most critical tools for containing an infectious disease like the coronavirus (Tromberg et al. 2020).

  5. 5.

    Indicative of both the United States’ sluggish testing rollout and how the Trump Administration has often amplified misinformation, on Wednesday, March 4, Vice-President Mike Pence—who by that time was leading a federal coronavirus task force—stated that 1.5 million tests would be available across the country by the end of that week. Two days later, Trump stated “Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is” (Trump 2020v). Available data indicates that approximately 3,128 tests had been completed in the United States at the time of Trump’s March 6 statement, and 1.5 million tests would not be completed until one month later on April 4 (US Daily Cumulative Totals 2020).

  6. 6.

    Both epidemiological projections and independent analysis comparing the United States to peer nations have indicated that a high percentage of the American coronavirus deaths to occur in the first several months of the pandemic could have been averted with more efficient testing, quicker lockdown orders, and national social distancing guidelines (Sebenius and Sebenius 2020).

  7. 7.

    Congress ultimately rejected the Trump Administration’s proposal and instead approved an $8 billion funding package with overwhelming bipartisan support, which Trump signed on March 6 (Axios 2020b).

  8. 8.

    Confusion over Trump’s wording and a failure to consult with the EU beforehand meant that Trump’s speech created a minor panic, as Americans living abroad—many in COVID hotspots—rushed to try and return to the United States. Markets also faced uncertainty about whether trade goods were subject to the new restrictions (Miller et al. 2020). Over the next few days, the Administration was forced to clarify that European restrictions would be significantly less stringent than Trump had implied (Lopez 2020c).

  9. 9.

    Academics and social justice experts have argued that this type of racialized terminology promotes anti-Asian bias and exclusion. Additionally, at least one study identified that media reports of hate incidents committed against Asian-Americans increased as public officials began to adopt such terminology in Trump’s wake. In March, Trump stated that Asian-Americans should not be blamed for the coronavirus (Gover et al. 2020). However, as the pandemic has continued, he has continued to use racialized language, notably describing the coronavirus as the “kung-flu” at a campaign rally in June (Nakamura 2020).

  10. 10.

    In April—after many states instituted stay at home orders—the US unemployment rate spiked to 14.7%. This was a record single-month increase since record keeping began in 1948 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020). The CARES act provided for direct cash payments to American citizens, funding for hospitals, loans for small and large businesses, and funding for state and local governments in an attempt to respond to the economic disruption (Grisales et al. 2020). While, as the largest emergency spending measure in US history, the CARES Act was undoubtedly significant, its overall effectiveness is disputed, and it has faced significant criticism due to its inclusion of sizeable tax breaks for wealthy individuals and large corporations (Brown and Ozoguz 2020; Sloan 2020).

  11. 11.

    However, he did not actually make use of it until the end of the month, only taking action following urgent requests from the American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, and American Nurses Association for the federal government to force the production of medical supplies (Edelman 2020).

  12. 12.

    For example, comments from Trump’s daily press conference on September 4: “I think North Carolina, I think that Michigan and Pennsylvania and other states, they should open. The governors—the Democrat governors—should open their states. They’ll open them [the day after the US general election] on November 4th. But they should open them now. It’s very unfair to the people to have those shutdowns continuing at the level that they’re continuing” (Trump 2020p).

  13. 13.

    By July, polling conducted by Pew Research Center found that only 46% of Republicans considered the coronavirus to be a major threat to public health, compared to 85% of Democrats (Tyson 2020).

  14. 14.

    While it was not widely known until later in the summer, in the early months of the pandemic, the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner led a secretive team working to develop these types of long called for national plans. However, the plans that were developed were ultimately scrapped in favour of continuing the state-led patchwork approach. A public health expert in frequent contact with the federal coronavirus task force stated that this was because “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy” (Eban 2020).

  15. 15.

    On May 15, the House of Representatives passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, a $3 trillion-dollar stimulus package designed to follow-on from the CARES Act. However, largely as the result of ideological divisions within the Republican party, the Senate has failed for months to advance any new legislation, and the prospect of any new economic relief legislation for American citizens appears dim as of September 2020 (Zhou and Nilsen 2020). On August 11, President Trump signed four Presidential memorandums and executive orders to provide enhanced unemployment, defer payroll taxes, prevent evictions and foreclosures during the pandemic, and defer payments on federal student loans. These faced immediate legal questions and bipartisan criticism, and have thus far been of marginal benefit (Keith 2020; Millhiser 2020).

  16. 16.

    Public outcry caused the Administration to quickly reinstate them (Goodnough and Haberman 2020).

  17. 17.

    On July 25, the United States saw 78,427 new confirmed coronavirus cases. For comparison, the United Kingdom saw 731, Germany 781, and France 1,130 (Coronavirus (COVID-19) Cases 2020).

  18. 18.

    For example, on a visit to the state of Maine in June, Trump stated of Democratic Governor Janet Mills: “You have a governor that doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s like a dictator. Why isn’t she reopening up the state?” (Trump, qtd. in Andrews 2020). Throughout the pandemic, Maine has been one of the most successful US states in terms of containing the coronavirus when measured by common metrics such as per capita infections and deaths.

  19. 19.

    During a widely publicized interview on August 3, Trump stated to Axios Jonathan Swan that, in terms of the coronavirus, the United States was “lower than the world” in “numerous categories” (Axios 2020a). Seeking to clarify the President’s statement, Swan identified that Trump was using statistics that measured coronavirus deaths as a proportion of total coronavirus cases. He then asked Trump about American deaths as a proportion of the population of the United States, a category in which the US fairs poorly relative to its peer nations. Trump responded: “You can’t do that”.

    While Trump was partially correct that the US’ case fatality rate of 3.0% is fairly good (though it does not come close to leading the world), Swan was equally correct that the United States’ per capita death rate of 58.61 per 100,000 population is among the worst in the world. According to statistics compiled by Johns Hopkins University, in that category, the United States ranks 158th of 169 countries for which data is readily available (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center 2020b).

  20. 20.

    For example, Trump stated in an interview with Chris Wallace in July: “Chris, [cases numbers are high] because we have great testing, because we have the best testing in the world. If we didn’t test, you wouldn’t be able to show that chart. If we tested half as much, those numbers would be down” (Trump 2020q).

  21. 21.

    For example: “Uhh, if it did slow down, frankly, I think we’re way ahead of ourselves, if you want to know the truth. We’ve done too good a job, because every time we go up — with 25 million tests, you’re going to find more people. So then they say, ‘oh we have more cases in the United States’” (Trump, qtd. in Allassan 2020).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Canterbury, Christchurch, CT, New Zealand

    Jeffrey Willis

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  1. Jeffrey Willis
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Arts, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Steven Ratuva

  2. College of Arts, University of Canterbury, Lyttelton, Canterbury, New Zealand

    Tara Ross

  3. University of Canterbury, Rolleston, Canterbury, New Zealand

    Yvonne Crichton-Hill

  4. School of Health Sciences, University of Canterbury, Sheffield, Canterbury, New Zealand

    Arindam Basu

  5. Sociology, Criminology and Gender Studies Programme, University of Otago, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand

    Patrick Vakaoti

  6. Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand

    Rosemarie Martin-Neuninger

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Willis, J. (2021). The Public Health Response of the US Federal Government to the Coronavirus Crisis and the Narrative of Donald J. Trump. In: Ratuva, S., Ross, T., Crichton-Hill, Y., Basu, A., Vakaoti, P., Martin-Neuninger, R. (eds) COVID-19 and Social Protection. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2948-8_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2948-8_13

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-16-2947-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-16-2948-8

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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