And you always show up late*

I admit that as I watched the Trump administration's inept approach to the coronavirus outbreak, my first response was an uncharitable one. I mean, any student of history knows that the US showed up very late for two world wars, so why should the global fight against a new virus be any different?

Then for a brief while, I had a more positive thought.  Sure, the US stayed out of both wars until the initial combatants were exhausted, but once America entered those wars, the outcome became just about inevitable.  Once Trump started taking coronavirus seriously, the country would pull out all the stops and the tide would start to turn, right?

And then....Trump's Oval Office speech last night. We should not, I suppose, be surprised that his focus seemed to be on finding someone to blame -- China!  the Europeans! -- after all, blaming people is what he does. Nor should we be surprised that the first step he announced was a total ban on travel from most of Europe to the US, because putting up barriers is what he does.  Nor should we be surprised that he incorrectly described the travel ban, leaving the Department of Homeland Security to walk most of it back overnight, because mis-speaking is what he does.

What is slightly surprising and potentially lethal is that beyond the largely symbolic travel ban, he had so little to offer. The payroll tax cut, already trailed earlier in the week, seems dead on arrival, with even the normally compliant Senate Republicans unwilling to go along.  It still seems that Trump's main concern is to prevent a recession, or rather to stop the massacre in the stock market, and the astounding further sell-off in markets overnight and this morning is evidence that he is abjectly failing at that.

Trying to prevent a recession is not Job One here -- you don't need to look at the stock indices to know that it's probably too late for that. The US needs to catch up to other countries in testing for the virus, and Trump had nothing to say about that.  And it need to start preparing for the kind of "social distancing" that effectively stopped the virus in its tracks in Hubei Province, and is now being attempted in Italy.

In the absence of proper leadership from Trump -- although I have to say Mike Pence is doing his best here -- it's up to others to do what the White House won't. The effective quarantining of New Rochelle, NY at the instigation of Governor Cuomo may be just the first of many such developments. Schools are closing, universities are going all-online and sports are suspending their seasons, providing the sort of social distancing that the administration seems scared even to mention.

The United States will "get through this", as Trump said last night, but as and when it does, it will be no thanks to anything he and his team have done so far. 

* First Warren Zevon line I've been able to use in a while, from "The French Inhaler". Whole couplet might have been written about Trump"  "you just can't concentrate/and you always show up late".