Written by John Furlan
Open Letter To Trump, Pelosi
And #Don’tFireFauci
Trump said Friday during a White house news briefing:
“I would say, without question, it’s the biggest decision I’ve ever had to make.”
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Asked what metrics he’ll consider, he pointed to his head and said:
“The metrics right here.”
The decision Trump was referring to was when to start easing social distancing and selectively reopening the economy. You’re right about “the biggest decision,” wrong about where is the biggest metric. The latter is simple.
Provided the downtrends in deaths and cases per day, which seemed to begin last week, see my April 8 article, continue, then the key metric right now is tests per day. Either solve the test and trace issue this week, or get voted out in November. It’s really that simple. Which will it be?
Because if you don’t solve the test and trace issue this week, the health experts have said you can’t safely start to re-open. They’re right.
[4/14 update: Fauci interview with AP: “Among Fauci’s top concerns: that there will be new outbreaks in locations where social distancing has eased, but public health officials don’t yet have the capabilities to rapidly test for the virus, isolate any new cases and track down everyone that an infected person came into contact with.”]
[4/14 update: Ezra Klein interview with Dr. Scott Gottlieb, bold emphasis added: “But getting to the point where you have a 2 – 3 million test capacity per week – which is probably where you need to be initially as you do this transition – is going to be very hard. We’ve tapped out the available platforms and now we’re dependent upon creating new platforms and new supply chains to fuel those platforms. We’re approaching an upper limit in spare capacity. The question is how fast can Abbott and other companies build new testing platforms? And how fast can LabCorp and Quest scale up new labs that didn’t exist before? That’s a harder exercise.
When will we get there? I don’t think we’re gonna get there by May. I think that we’re still going to be under-testing relative to what is optimal from a public health standpoint. I think we have the ability to get there by September, but we need to be doing a lot of things right now to invest in that. Congress is going to need to ultimately act.“]
Health experts may not be factoring in, because it’s not their job, how much the political and economic pressure to start to selectively re-open will build in coming weeks, if/when Covid-19 deaths and cases continue down, and unemployment, 17 million claims the last three weeks alone, continue up, along with extreme stress on small- and medium-size businesses.
“if you don’t solve the test and trace issue this week, the health experts have said you can’t safely start to re-open.”
That building pressure to re-open the economy is simply inevitable if those two trends continue, along with the onset of warmer weather.
The only way to get ahead of that is to greatly increase the number of tests. So pick a number this week, right now, and have a laser focus on it. How about 300K test results per day , about double current level, suggested by Calculated Risk, the source of the following chart. Far more credibly, have Fauci give you the number, or if he won’t do so, Dr. Birx.
Those focused on healthcare issues will probably vehemently disagree with my trying to get Trump to focus on one test goal, saying I’m opening the door to complacency and disaster if he starts to re-open the economy too soon.
But Trump is going to try to do so anyway, sooner or later, probably sooner. And on Thursday he said:
“We want to have it [a nationwide testing system-jf], and we’re going to see if we have it. Do you need it? No. Is it a nice thing to do? Yes. We’re talking about 325 million people.”
Comprehensive nationwide testing is a “nice thing to do“?! We’ll “see if we have it“?! So there you have it, in a nutshell. To paraphrase Yoda:
“Do or do not, there is no see.”
Would the health experts want to work with Trump to get as many tests in place as possible before he almost inevitably starts to re-open the economy, or not? It’s as simple as that.
So just pick a number of tests per day and focus 110% on hitting it. This is do now, model later. You’ve seen how much the projected total deaths have been coming down, to now near 60,000 from IHME. Do you think anyone and any model really knows the right numbers. Just have a goal, and hit it.
So here’s the testing data. Study it every day, it’s by far the single most important thing you can look at. Presumably these are mostly PCR antigen tests for who has the virus, serology antibody tests for who has been exposed previously also are necessary and just now becoming available, which will give more data for the models as I’ve previously written about, with a new generation to also show immunity months away.
“So just pick a number of tests per day and focus 110% on hitting it.”
Start and end every meeting and press briefing with one question, and one question only. Why aren’t we at 300K tests yet, and when are we going to get there? And I mean real tests with real results within a very short period after the test.
Appealing to Trump’s Crass Self-Interest Always Will Work Best
If you start to re-open the economy in May and the virus remains contained, you’re a national hero, you’ll be re-elected in November by a large margin, perhaps taking the House with you. So if you get the tests, the only thing you lose is about as much money as you may be spending on gold-plated toilets for the Pentagon.
If you start to re-open the economy and the virus isn’t contained, if you get the tests, you can say you did what Fauci and the other experts advised and they failed miserably. But if you don’t get the tests, you will go down as the WORST President in U.S. history and lose in a landslide in November, probably giving the Senate to the Dems, maybe permanently.
So it’s either the worst goat President of all time, or one of the greatest of all time (GOAT), at least in the eyes of your supporters. Which is it going to be?
“Whatever you do, DO NOT FIRE FAUCI … That would be political suicide.“
If you do provide all the tests necessary ASAP, I guarantee you the stock market will shoot up, which you care so much about. So for once please just forget what your buddies on Fox News say about testing/tracing and just do it. As soon as your poll numbers go through the roof, they’ll be back on-board the Trump train anyway.
Whatever you do, DO NOT FIRE FAUCI, as some have been calling for and you retweeted this weekend, or have him fire himself and quit. That would be political suicide.
You need his support and political cover for when you start to re-open the economy sometime in May. And he needs you. Fauci has always wanted to be an influential person on government policy, per the new extremely long portrait of him in The New Yorker:
“He [Fauci] once explained to me that he has developed a method for dealing with political leaders in times of crisis: “I go to my favorite book of philosophy, ‘The Godfather,’ and say, ‘It’s nothing personal, it’s strictly business.’ ” He continued, “You just have a job to do. Even when somebody’s acting ridiculous, you can’t chide them for it. You’ve got to deal with them. Because if you don’t deal with them, then you’re out of the picture.””
So Fauci is someone you have and can continue to do “business” with, Queens Godfather to Brooklyn Godfather. Again, DO NOT FIRE FAUCI, if for no other reason than it will greatly hurt your-re-election chances.
You made time to talk with Russia’s Putin and MBS of Saudi Arabia last week to try to save the fracking industry. Nobody is going to remember that in November, except in the fracking fields in key swing states. Surely testing is even more important to your getting re-elected.
Pelosi: House is Still in Recess After 17 Million Unemployed Last Three Weeks?!
All of the above goes for you and Congress too.
It’s easy to write $2.2 trillion worth of checks, it’s not your money. The hard part is getting Americans safely back to work again by containing the virus. You’re failing at that just as miserably as Trump, don’t kid yourself.
Starting in an update to my March 25 article and in three subsequent articles on March 29, April 1, and April 6 , I first suggested to Sanders then to anyone who would listen, including Trump, to create an Economic Jobs Council.
On April 10, fifteen days after I floated that idea, Trump said he’s forming a new “Opening Our Country Council,” which most assuredly didn’t come from my posts. The Dems couldn’t have run with my suggestion before that, while they were on recess, or Spring Break, or whatever it is?
“[C]reate an Economic Jobs Council.”
Biden finally published on April 12 as a NYT op-ed “Joe Biden: My Plan to Safely Reopen America,” in which he says, of course, “there needs to be widespread, easily available and prompt testing – and a contact tracing strategy that protects privacy.”
As Mike Tyson once said;
“ Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
The U.S. is being repeatedly punched in the mouth by Covid-19, it needs to punch back with more tests, this week, no more b.s., the time for plans passed two to three month ago, just do it.
So, getting back to how many tests a day to aim for, just pick a reasonable number and go with it. Look at Cuomo. He said he needed about a bazillion ICU beds and ventilators, just to be on the safe side, but probably close to a bazillion more than he will eventually need, he’s now a national hero.
In picking the number of tests, Trump should use the same trick his corporate CEO buddies have done with quarterly EPS “guidance” for decades to goose their stock options. Low-ball it, sell it to the “analysts,” “journalists” in this case, then beat it.
“[H]ow long are we going to shut down the entire country for six states?”
Meet or beat, so say you’ll do 300K tests a day, then do 310K. Then do it again, raise the estimate going forward, and meet or beat it, etc. Works on Wall Street.
Why Trump Is Going to Start Re-Opening the Economy in May
He will re-open because the political pressure to do so will be too intense. Here’s the data from the NYT that will make him feel forced to do so. (Scroll down to the table.)
Only six states have more than 10 deaths per 100,000, that’s 0.01%, one hundredth of 1%. 31 states have 2 or less, 0.002%, two thousandth of one percent. That’s not an epidemiological model – if you want one, go to IHME, see my April 8 article, they have projections by states.
It’s just simple data that Trump will see.
People in those non-top six states are already very antsy, some want Fauci fired. Americans can be compassionate people, but sooner or later they’re going to look at these simple numbers and ask how long are we going to shut down the entire country for six states?
The health experts will reply, it’s not just those six states, Covid-19 will spread all over the country if we don’t continue a national lockdown and try to re-open too soon.
But Trump and others have been saying he doesn’t want “the cure to be worse than the disease.”
According to the health experts Trump’s just plain wrong. If we don’t contain the disease right now, the pain will be far, far worse. Now is NOT the time to take the foot off the social distancing pedal, if anything, it’s time to put the pedal to the medal.
I don’t disagree with that. I’m not an epidemiologist, nor an economist, so I’m not going to dispute their expert advice.
“According to the health experts Trump’s just plain wrong. If we don’t contain the disease right now, the pain will be far, far worse.”
But I believe, as I said above, that as long as deaths and cases seem to be trending down, it is almost inevitable that Trump will try to selectively re-open in May, so we have to try to make the best of it, and focus his attention on getting as many tests as possible ASAP up and running.
I Greatly Respect Bill Gates, But I’m Not Sure I Agree with This Quote
In an interview with FT on April 9, Bill Gates makes another argument about staying the course, which he’s made before, my bold emphasis added:
“And so over the next couple of years, hopefully in 18 months, we’ll get that vaccine, and things can be so you’re not completely changing the economy because of coronavirus. And economies can come back. As painful as this is, as unprecedented as it is, the deaths, those you can’t reverse. And so right now, people are scared. People are doing less economically.”
I greatly respect Gates, as I’ve written a few times in recent weeks, he is far smarter than I am, and infinitely more well-connected to experts around the world. Even Trump asked Gates to be his science adviser in 2018. But I don’t agree with Gates’ quote.
“It’s about the tens of millions of young kids staying home from school right now”
You can’t reverse the deaths, but you also can’t reverse the losses in the economy, and far more importantly to living people’s hopes and dreams. You do have to try to take those into account, both from economic and political viewpoints.
It’s NOT about GDP, per se, or the profits of Trump’s greedy business friends. That’s not how to talk about it. It’s first and foremost about America’s young and struggling people. People need to see some light at the end of the tunnel, so that their sacrifices seem worthwhile.
It’s about the tens of millions of young kids staying home from school right now, losing valuable learning time during their start in life, who are being emotionally scarred with early childhood memories of being locked in for dreary weeks that never seem to end.
It’s about the tens of millions of young adults who have recently graduated from college or are about to do so loaded with debt into the weakest job market in American history and having their lifetime cumulative earnings potentially lowered by literally millions of dollars per person.
And perhaps most of all it’s about the tens of millions of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, or worse without one at all, terrified that their jobs won’t even be there when they try to return – so they might lose everything, including their homes, health insurance if they have any, and their dignity.
“It’s about the tens of millions of young adults who have recently graduated from college”
Gates and those who agree with similar views on Twitter probably simply can’t understand how that last group feels, since they all have good middle-class careers or much better, so they have no personal experience with it.
I know Trump’s business friends only care about their profits and Mnuchin only cares about Wall Street. So tell those big shots, we’re going to open up ASAP, as soon as we get the tests. You want to open up so badly, help get me the damn tests. Until you do, don’t bother calling. I’m not going to take the fall in November for you guys just so can have even more mansions, jets and yachts.
It seems very crass at a time like this to put numbers on what Gates is talking about. But as just an absurdly extremely simple one-paragraph example, because the projected deaths keep coming down (it’s 61,545 right now from IHME – see my April 8 article) people are going to do the following arithmetic on their phone calculator, as I just did.
100,000 U.S. deaths (probably way too high) x $9 million value of U.S. life (again probably way too high, since most deaths are of the elderly) = $900 billion. For GDP, $21.4 billion per year x -20% decline x 0.5 (for two quarters, half a year, assuming V-shaped recovery in 4th) = $2.14 trillion.
Trump, Pelosi: the Whole World Is Watching U.S. v. China – Guess Who Seems to be Winning
According to the same NYT data source cited above (again scroll down to the table), China has had 6 cases per 100,000 people, the U.S. 170, 28.3 times more. Even if you believe that you can’t trust China’s numbers, China is already starting to go back to business.
“[P]erhaps most of all it’s about the tens of millions of Americans living paycheck to paycheck”
China, with 4.2 times the population of the U.S., has reported only 15.2% the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths as the U.S., which has had the benefit of seeing what was going on in China, yet bumbled and fumbled away weeks to do anything about it, especially on testing and tracing. See this see this April 11 NYT article, long or short version.
And look at Taiwan, the U.S. has 42.5 times the number of cases per 100,000. Taiwan has less than one death per 100,000, the U.S. has seven. The U.S. has 8.5 times the number of cases per 100,000 as S. Korea, which also has less than 1 death per 100,000.
Both Taiwan and S. Korea are right next to mainland China. So why are the numbers so much better there than the U.S.? Because both democracies have serious, competent governments. The U.S. simply does not, and hasn’t had one for a long time, far before Trump.
The data above indicate a failure of catastrophic proportions for the U.S. China beat Trump in his trade/tech war. It beat him on 5G and Huawei. Now it’s re-opening its economy and beating him on Covid-19, which very well could be THE decisive battle for global leadership in the early 21st century, without a single shot fired.
Bottom line: this is the week both Trump and Pelosi put up or shut up on testing/tracing. I apologize for being so blunt in this article, but it is necessary.
Stay safe.
Make America and World Awesome, MAWA
This article is an adaptation of a commentary on Medium 13 April 2020.
Photo credit: Calculated Risk
