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Jeoffry Gordon, MD, MPH's avatar

Thanks for compiling this important, well detailed chronology, As a family doc and public health epi person, I agree it documents the sociological/political dynamic of failure and denial which made a substantial (if more hidden) contribution to the alienation, insecurity and anger of the electorate and the Democratic loss.

While you acknowledge (with a kind of conspiratorial voice), "Right-wing dark money groups had been working to undermine public health efforts against COVID from the outset of the pandemic, casting stay-at-home orders as an assault on freedom and promoting false claims downplaying the seriousness of the virus.," etc. This counterproductive narrative was culturally far, far more vibrant and pervasive than you describe and needs a more detailed discussion. I think you down play, to the point of omitting, the often vociferous, to the point of violence, public opposition to fundamental federal and local public health measures.

In the first place, if you look at the history of pandemics, they routinely seem beyond public and governmental comprehension (think 1918). Combine this with denial, fear, and uncertainty and public disorder is sure to follow. These are the relatively universal, anonymous factors of human sociology.

Secondly, the arrogantly selfish, ignorant, transactional President Trump's dysfunctional response initially and continuing, to the COVID pandemic set the stage for national cultural resistance and denial to basic, known, public health insights and strategies and their messengers. An excellent specific example is his intervention (in response to the meat processing corporation lobbying) to provide political censorship and misdirection to the CDC's guidance for meat packing plants, thus allowing an explosion of local infections. (This bodes ill for the next 4 years.)

Thirdly the President's poor management capacity and his general right wing allegiances (especially with evangelical Christians) boosted the anti-science, anti-fact, anti-medical authority, pro freedom and pro liberty cultural meme to the point of knee-capping and even purging competent public health officials. Sadly, this cultural meme and perspective was so powerful that many courts, including the Supreme Court, put personal and (especially religious) group freedoms ahead of systemic public benefits.

Fourthly, it has been well documented that the most important factor internationally in countries that coped the best with the COVID pandemic was trust in government and your neighbors. Thus after 50 years of neoliberal exploitation of the majority of Americans, we entered the pandemic with a great reservoir of distrust, vulnerability and seething resentment (which independently contributed to the 2024 Democratic loss) which, when fanned by the President led to active and vociferous popular opposition to effective public health measures and leaders. (Sadly, it is well documented the Republican Americans experienced more COVID morbidity and mortality.)

Fifthly, the once internationally gold standard, CDC was already a degraded bureaucracy, insular, academically oriented, demoralized, impotent, under resourced, legally restrained and incompetent to deal with the pandemic. Moreover, it was hobbled and degraded further by the President's political priorities and brazen interference. Its incredible incompetence included lack of recognition of asymptomatic spread and its aerosol characteristics (both of which were apparent in February, 2020 on the Princess cruise ship) as well as the bizarre incompetent delay in and constraints on available testing early in 2020 (along with the FDA).

Sixthly, by the time President Biden came along, his pandemic policies (even if he wanted to have assertive and appropriate public health interventions) were greatly constrained by the atmosphere of popular pandemic fatigue, the energized rightist freedom and liberty advocates, just enough Congressional opposition to kill programs, and the capitalist, corporate business lobbyists who wanted to get back to profit making life as usual. It is remarkable and emblematic that none of the emergency pandemic measures that so clearly benefited poor Americans (child tax credits and subsidies, preventing Medicaid disenrollment, renter protections, etc) and provided such well documented benefits to struggling families were able to be made permanent under the Biden administration. He had a mandate to soothe the nation and was not prepared to stir up a hornet's nest with assertive public health or anti-poverty measures. Thus, as you documented, he failed America - and yes, this contributed to the ground swell of rejecting the Democrats in 2024.

Sixth, within the general cultural milieu of expanding individualistic freedoms and libertarian liberties (fed by Trump, magnified by right wing media and misunderstood by mainstream media), confused by fabricated pseudoscience, discounted by religious faith, with loss of trust in authorities, competent infectious disease and public health authorities and leaders well above our pay grade, who promoted public health facts and strategies have been unable to overcome this general cultural opposition to effectively promote protective public policy.

These cultural and political barriers remain strong, persist and must be specifically documented along with the history of events. They are about to get worse.

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Dennis D.'s avatar

This review article is valuable because it is easy to forget those individual milestones that show just how wrong the minimizers have been at every step. I didn't want Trump to win again, and he was a complete clown when it came to the COVID response, but I had to grit my teeth every time somebody said "Trump lied, a million died" when most of them died during Biden's term. And he had the advantage of vaccines for almost the entire term!

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