Trump v Biden, COVID-19. In the past I compared their handlings rigidly by date: Every death from first through Inauguration Day 2021: on Trump's watch. Everything from Jan. 21 forward, Biden's. Such a bright line rule offers clarity if nothing else, but can we do better than clarity and nothing else? Over the summer I read Dr. Deborah Birx-Mengele state that "there was nothing we could do about the first 100,000 deaths but after that it was all on us." Because of the source I discounted the message but it always stuck in my head. Surely there was some number of early, early deaths that nobody could have prevented. We didn't have the tools, the knowledge, anything. Can we reasonably estimate that number and add fairness even at the expense of muddying the clarity? On Biden’s side of Death's ledger, it does seem preposterous to claim that all deaths from noon Jan. 21, 24 hours after his inauguration, are his "fault."
I state at the outset here that I am half-resigned, and the percent of my resignation rises, that, as I have written many times, "This thing is just better than us," alternatively, "We're just not that good;" that is, that maybe none of the deaths are any president's "fault." I acknowledge that that is rank, unreasonable defeatism. However I, at least, am compelled to ask, and I think the overwhelming majority of Americans, scientist and non-scientist alike, do too, if with 788,315 cumulative deaths and billions of dollars spent on developing vaccines; with the recession that the COVID lockdowns and slowdowns forced on the economy, and with the subsequent supply-chain bottlenecks and inflation, was this “just going to happen" and there was not a damn thing (other than the vaccines!) that we could do about it? Another more common and slightly different question: "Was the cure worse than the disease"? I am not going to submit to defeatism without a fight though I do acknowledge the validity of both questions, the "there was nothing else we could have done" and the cost-benefit question. I do not know the answers, there theoretically are answers but they are going to be subjective and perhaps always be "unknown knowns."
Therefore, casting off defeatism like a prom dress, I've looked at the milestone numbers and the dates those milestones were reached. This is the NYT graph of the early months:
100,000 deaths was summited on May 27, 2020. Our daily high in those early months was 2,752 on April 15. As a personal marker, March 11, was the conclusion of my last jury trial. Florida courts went on lockdown on March 16. March 16 seems to me a reasonable date to say that Trump mitigation efforts began. However, as we recall, no sooner had Trump "recommended" that the states go on lockdown than he said that he "saw no reason" why the country could not reopen by Easter, April 12. So, typical of Trump, he sent mixed messages from the beginning of his mitigation efforts. On April 17 he tweeted his "LIBERATE" messages to his Nazi supporters in Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia by force. We could use April 17, 2020 as the date after which all deaths were Trump's "fault." My recollection is that it was not until June that most states which had enacted strict mitigation began reopening. We could use June 1 or June 15 but that seems too generous to Trump, for it was June, 2020 also that Trump, who had been actively pressuring governors and undermining mitigation for at least six weeks. just surrendered to the virus.
I am going to use April 17 as the date when Trump turned pro-COVID. It's a little generous to Trump given his earlier statements about reopening by Easter, but on April 17 he made himself crystal clear. So what were total deaths through April 16, 2020? I found a CBS report dated April 17, 2020 that, per Johns Hopkins, “more than 33,000” Americans had died as of that date. So we will give the Orange Orangutan a pass on the first 34,000 deaths. (If any person had said to me on April 17, 2020 that the first 34,000 deaths were unavoidable, not Trump's fault, I would have punched him in the face and turned my back and walked away.)
Trump's Operation Warp Speed opened on May 15, 2020. That was his last effort to combat the virus. The total deaths from April 17 through May 15 are all Trump's. The cumulative U.S. dead on May 15, 2020 was 84,161. Since we give Trump a pass on the first 34,000 we subtract and get 50,161 deaths caused by the pro-COVID Trump (Birx-Mengele was off, in my judgment by nearly a factor of 3.)
What about the vaccines? The vaccines are the only thing the bum did right. I don't remember if he resisted being urged to pay for the vaccines before May 15 but I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and hold that May 15 was a reasonable date to order the vaccines developed and manufactured at "warp speed." Even so, Trump knew the vaccines were going to take time to manufacture. In fact, the goal of Warp Speed was to "produce and deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with the initial doses available by January 2021. Trump did nothing else between May 15 and the end of his term of office. In fact, he actively discouraged any other mitigation efforts like social distancing, he refused to wear a mask, he held super-spreader events and rallies, even after he contracted COVID and had to be hospitalized, and thereby fanned resistance to the very vaccines that he himself funded! Only on his last day in office did Trump receive the vaccine, and then in secret.
Now on the back end. It is unreasonable to hold President Biden accountable for every single death--337,015--and counting--that occurred after noon on January 21, 2021, 24 hours after his inauguration. The COVID "death interval" is three-four weeks. If we use that as a bright line then all deaths from April 17, 2020 to February 11 or 18, 2021 would be Trump's; all after either of those dates would be Biden's. I'm going to cut the baby in half and use February 14. Minus the 34,000 we're giving him a pass on Trump is responsible for 451,300 COVID-19 deaths.
What about Biden? The Trump vaccines are fabulously effective at preventing death. They're the only thing either Trump or Biden (in administering the vast, vast majority) ever did that worked against COVID. Both should get credit for preventing the deaths that would have been occasioned had no vaccines ever been developed or administered. How to parse that! It occurs to me that in theory you could take the vaccines statistical inefficacy and multiply that against...what, the number of people who did get shots?, the number who didn't get shots? I am not competent even to theorize about that. According to a BBC report dated December 14, 2020, the vaccine "roll out" in the U.S. began that date, in the interregnum between the Trump and Biden administrations but Trump was then focused on hanging his vice president and plotting his coup d'etat of January 6, 2021, not getting shots into arms. The BBC report states that although December 14 was the first date any Americans had been administered any shots, "Most Americans will not be able to receive the vaccine until well into 2021". CDC learned, and learned us, that peak vaccine efficacy was reached only after two weeks from the last shot. Then we learned of "waning vaccine efficacy" and the need for booster shots, which some of us have gotten. None of that is the fault of Trump or Biden, it is "just the best we could do." Through January 20, 2021, 16,525,281 doses of vaccine were administered. The vast majority of those would have been first shots. As of today, Dec. 7, 236,363,835 people (different from doses) have been fully vaccinated.
With one exception the Bidens have been as quick and efficient as is humanly (American-ly) feasible in vaccinating, and hence combating COVID-19. That exception, however, is immense: Delta. The CDC went dark just as Delta dawned in the U.S. Walk-back Walensky had issued an all-clear signal. A few weeks later she had to reverse it. Delta became the dominant variant in the U.S. in June. Since then it has accounted for 99% of all COVID cases in the country. It follows that approximately 99% of all deaths from July 1 to date are from Delta. That number stands today at 384,458. President Biden can rightly be faulted for some portion of those deaths. What could he and his team have done by way of mitigation? I am not going to discount his responsibility for the reversal of the social distancing and masking policy. Too little, too late; too much cynicism built up, too much COVID fatigue. His responsibility gets pared only, but it's a big only, by the vaxed deaths. He had set a goal of 70% by July 4, he didn't reach that goal until a month later. That is not his fault. There is no doubt that a large chunk of the unvaxed are Trump supporters and the unvaxed are 13x more likely to die of COVID-19 than people without metal plates in their heads. It would be fair to both presidents to attribute a large chunk of the unvaxed dead to Trump and not Biden. But I am not going to do that. Neither am I using the bright line to calculate the number of Biden dead.
"Can we," I asked in the first paragraph of this post, "reasonably estimate that number [of unavoidable, beyond American capability to prevent, deaths] and add fairness even at the expense of muddying the clarity?" I believe we can and I believe I did it with fairness to both presidents. Except for his handling of Delta, Biden has done everything an anti-COVID, anti-death president can do. Trump is at fault for 451,300 American dead; neither president is at fault for a total 371,015. Biden is at fault for 25,560 COVID-19 deaths, almost all Delta.
