Democrats Have a Real Problem, Part VI
Novel coronavirus, COVID-19, Wuhan virus, whatever you want to call it.
If thousands of dead in mainland China didn’t convince you that the novel coronavirus should be taken seriously, then the United States economy grinding to a halt should do the trick. COVID-19—or Wuhan virus, as those of a more conservative persuasion have taken to calling it—is no trivial matter.
However…
Democrats and Democrat-friendly media outlets have followed their disturbing pattern of taking one of President Donald Trump’s serious and genuine vulnerabilities, and turning it into a potential asset for him by going into full-blown, nuclear-meltdown mode before objective data justifies it. Instead of hammering Trump for the inexcusable failures to provide widespread testing for the public and protective gear for medical professionals—very real and potentially devastating abdications of leadership—#TheResistance types have opted for apocalyptic headlines and sound bites laying the fiasco at President Trump’s feet that are often out of sync with the facts.
First, let’s look at the receipts.
Here is an article from New York Magazine with the subtle headline “CDC’s Worst-Case Coronavirus Model: 214 Million Infected, 1.7 Million Dead” in a country of 330 million. You have to read the article to learn (a) it’s actually summarizing a different article published by The New York Times; and (b) the model is based on taking none of the preventative measures that were already under way or being contemplated. Very helpful. As is this one from the same outlet, entitled “This Will Get Worse—the grim math of a coronavirus future.” Here’s another article from The Times discussing whether the contrarian stance on the pandemic panic is reasonable while citing “health officials” who put the low-end prediction of American deaths due to Wuhan virus at 160,000 (with a high end at 1.6 million). CNN lent further credence to a death toll in the hundreds of thousands with this contribution. Here’s an article from The Atlantic declaring COVID-19 America’s first 50-state disaster without explaining why neither the swine flu epidemic (killed 12,000 Americans in 2009–10) nor influenza (kills tens of thousands Americans each year) qualified. It’s also become fashionable to compare the virus to the Spanish flu of 1918, which afflicted roughly one in four people on the planet and killed anywhere from 17 million to 100 million people (from a global population of 1.9 billion).
As for articles blaming America’s developing catastrophe on Trump, it would be far too tedious to offer even brief summaries of them all. Suffice it to say there are dozens of articles from left-leaning outlets pinning the soon-to-be-soaring death toll on Trump due to delay in testing, not acting quickly enough, not acting decisively enough, downplaying the threat, spreading misinformation, intentionally suppressing the number of Wuhan virus cases via unnecessary testing limitations, using xenophobia to deflect culpability, and various other missteps ranging from legitimate to tin-foil hatted.
The message is emphatic, consistent, and crystal clear—the United States will be extremely lucky to escape the COVID-19 pandemic with a death toll in the tens of thousands and it’s Donald Trump’s fault.
Which begs the obvious question: What do Democrats and their media counterparts do if the death toll is less than what’s been plastered all over cable TV and the Internet? What if it’s a lot less? What if it’s a lot less and less than what other countries suffer?
China was ground zero for the outbreak, tried to cover it up for a two months as the virus spread to all parts of a population of 1.4 billion, and its death toll is approaching 3,300 with the situation apparently in hand after roughly four months. It’s true that China locked down unlike anything the US could ever contemplate doing without sending every ACLU lawyer to her/his nearest courthouse. It’s also true the US wasn’t ground zero for the global outbreak, has a population approximately 25 percent the size of China’s, and locked down faster than China.
Italy has also been exceptionally hard hit by the virus, approaching 32,000 cases and 2,600 deaths in a population of almost 61 million. Account for the different sizes of populations and that would put the US death toll at ~14,000 (ignoring Italy’s higher population density) if it echoed Italy’s, which would be both horrific and also one tenth of the total frequently hyped in the media. This would count as a win for Trump based the media coverage.
Of course, there are significant differences between Italy and America that indicate the US outbreak might pale (perhaps, is paling) in comparison. For example, the Wuhan virus is particularly dangerous to an older population and Italy’s is the second oldest in the world (to Japan). Additionally, my wife’s family is from Italy with extended family still living there and they swear Italians go to the hospital for everything, no matter how trivial, because it’s free. Granted, this is anecdotal evidence, but if it’s true, an older population that makes frequent trips to the hospital would seem to be an outlier in the COVID-19 risk department.
More importantly, however, the statistical evidence doesn’t suggest the Italian and American outbreaks are similar. The first confirmed US case was announced on January 21st—eight days before Italy confirmed its first case—and there are currently just over 110 deaths (or roughly 24X fewer) despite a much larger population. Even if you ignore overall population size, the US outbreak is lagging. In other words, in order for the US outbreak to be as severe as Italy’s, it would have to be delayed and the delay would NOT result in a mitigation of its peak impact. Mapping the Italian outbreak onto the US outbreak using number of overall cases rather than date of the first confirmed case shows the two nations tracking very closely at first with America’s total (almost 6,500) now passing Italy’s corresponding number as testing becomes more prevalent:
Even in this scenario, though, America’s outbreak looks less severe when you consider Italy’s fatalities. On Friday, March 6th, Italy saw 49 new deaths for a total of 197 whereas the US mourned 29 new deaths today for a total of 115.
Similar arguments can be made to differentiate the outbreaks in Spain and France, as well. There’s even less reason to see US parallels with the Iranian outbreak given the stark differences between the two societies.
Now, it’s certainly possible our best-case scenario ends up being much worse than the reality’s unfolding in the rest of the world. Part of what makes COVID-19 so problematic is the lack of certainty about its immediate future. It could mutate into a serious threat to a broader segment of the population, it could prove to linger in healthy people much longer, it could come back stronger in a second wave of infections, etc. It would be foolish to look at the numbers as they stand now and say there’s no chance they start spiraling out of control.
But Democrats and their simpaticos in the mainstream media aren’t presenting such doomsday scenarios as possibilities; they are presenting them as likelihoods if not outright inevitabilities.
Worse, they’re not making even a token effort to support them with evidence beyond “the experts say.” That leaves them highly vulnerable on two fronts should the magnitude of the crisis not match the narrative. Dems and Dem-adjacent media personalities would be left justifying the withering criticism of the Trump Administration despite the US emerging relatively unscathed compared to its international peers and compared to frequent headlines projecting a terror-inducing scale of carnage. They would also be left explaining why Trump should deserve no credit for the country arriving at an end point so much rosier than the one they told us to expect.
The political cost of handing Trump a gift like that right as his re-election campaign hits full stride is staggering, even if you ignore the moral implications of recklessly inciting national/global panic. This is a real problem.
