Somewhat funny is that, had Trump successfully defeated the virus - meaning it was basically prevented from affecting the US while obviously crushed much of Asia and Europe - he very well may have sealed his election.

Instead, looks more and more like it will seal his defeat.

Right or wrong, like half of Americans are happy with his response

I think the final results will tell the story. If the US gets hit the hardest of any country or something (still far off from Italy right now) it would not help him. Nor would the start of the new depression.

Technically, in most crisis, presidents get a large approval bump. And as time goes on, that drops back down. Remember, Bush had a HUGE approval rating right after 9/11.

Basically the same amount of people who voted for him. There was a poll out last week about who would you trust more in this situation - Trump or Biden and bidden had over 70% of the support.

Trump would have taken initial heat had he preemptively locked some things down while ramping up treatment research and equipment production to actually get ahead of the virus, but the disasters in Europe would have proven him right. of course, he didn't do this, and it's a bad look for sure.

Now he is spinning it as the flu on steroids and noting much of the panic is not needed, which isn't really wrong it seems, but it's too late to avoid due to his earlier inaction.



I think Trump has taken a beating regardless of how it turns out. The expectation was always that we would figure it out and win, it simply a matter of the cost and how smoothly it went. Trump is failing on both counts.

Also, any sort of prolonged economic decline ends his reelection bid, I suspect. I don't think he was going to win anyway, but if he can't run on a strong economy, I think it's over. Biden is imperfect to ultra Dems but he is exactly what moderates in swing states are looking for, as evidenced by his series of blow out wins over Bernie. Something moderate, predictable, steady, etc. Most people do not want a "revolution", they just want a return to normalcy.

Trump feuding with the Michigan Governor will do himself no favors when running against the man who helped bail out Detroit.

If he’s failing then every other country is. The deaths per person rate is still pretty good in the US compared to the majority of Europe. That might change, but right now the numbers don’t support that he’s done the worst.

Right now the Republican base is seeing someone who’s trying his best, listening to experts and talking to them every day. He’s mainly pissing off the people who already weren’t going to vote for him.

Isn’t Trump’s approval rating at his highest. It’s like a fucking twilight zone episode

I agree with some and disagree with some.

-Most countries are failing, it seems; death rate per person will obviously get significantly worse as virus develops among the infected over coming week

-Republican base obviously won't win him the election. There is a sound argument to be made that Trump is trying his best today. There is a sound argument to make that he dropped the ball big time through February and most March. The soundbites of him saying the virus was basically nothing and wouldn't impact us etc are going to be broadcast for everyone to see over & over whenever this mess ends. That this played out in real time for the country to see will not help his efforts to spin as China's fault or something nobody saw coming, etc. With these type of things, leaders are greatly equally for their results as they are for their effort. Trump's efforts prior to mid March were obviously pathetic and not enough to avoid what has now happened. In the eyes of most people with functioning brains, Trump owns the obviously rough results of this thing and will receive lots of legitimate criticism for his handling of the events leading up to it. It is basically the same line of thinking the Repubs used to attack Hillary on Benghazi, how she was negligent, except times....100,000?

If the economy doesnt mostly recover by November, I think he legitimately gets obliterated in the election

-As has already been mentioned, a sub 50% approval rating during times of this nature is pathetic. The ceiling to DT's support is simply very low.

-Intangible thing that he is so unpredictable that it is both exhausting and destabilizing for everyone. People who say they media would be less panicked and would be treating Obama differently are right, but they would be treating Bush differently too. Trump has justifiably earned his erratic reputation and this is what happens. Just because he is being trusted differently than Obama does not mean he is being treated unfairly - he is being treated in accordance with his behavior, as was Obama during recession, Bush during 9/11, etc when they focused on being steady, stable, empathetic leaders. That Trump is arguing openly with governors of states suffering looks terrible even to Republicans. They all know it is ridiculous. Should he lose, the Monday Morning Quarterbacking by Republicans over Trump's handling of this credits will look very different than their commentary does today.

In hindsight, everything DT is doing now should have happened 4 or 5 weeks ago and US would be sitting pretty while Europe collapsed. DT didn't want anything to rain on his "economy is huge" parade and looked the other way until it bit him in the ass.

Except we know that he didn't do that. Doctor Donald had reports from the experts about this very thing happening back in January, but said, in public no less, that he was ignoring them in favor of a hunch. Doctor Donald chose faith in himself over all the evidence around him. Would Joe Biden have stopped the virus from spreading to America? Probably not. But he could have at least have looked at the global crisis and saw something besides how it would affect him, his reputation and his businesses. Doctor Donald is just incapable of doing that. America re-electing him would be akin to the wife who goes back to her abusive husband because he swears he isn't gonna drink anymore.

This is supposed to be the good news thread though! And Trump being defeated will be good news in November but we need more than that now. Like how about a headline that reads: "Uranus ejected a giant plasma bubble" - that crazy planet never fails to deliver the comedy.

In January it was so obvious the coronavirus would lead to a national emergency in January, that the House and media were entirely consumed with Trump’s impeachment. And it’s not as if Trump didn’t make any moves against coronavirus, such as shutting down travel from China in late January.

What makes Trump the villain more than Pelosi, who both wasted everyone’s time in January with the impeachment while coronavirus was spreading, and just this weekend delayed a stimulus bill so she could attempt to force the Republicans to pass things that had nothing to do with coronavirus like Green New Deal initiatives, changing election voting rules and paying 25 million to the Kennedy centre. Even after she compromised, the end result ended up being a 2 trillion dollar stimulus bill where only about 400 billion of it goes to people’s incomes and the rest is things like Wall Street bailouts.

Plus even if you could go back in time to January and shut the country down then, it wouldn’t even be a good decision. It’s not as simple as saying it’s worth it to shut down the economy to save a single life from coronavirus, since people losing jobs leads to suicides. It’s worth it now with the number of coronavirus deaths, but doing it months before the US really got it may have cost more lives than it saved. The long term consequences of this are going to be horrendous even as is.

You asked a question, that is the answer. Trump needed to get ahead of the virus. He definitely would have taken heat for it at the time, but he would be sitting pretty today. That would have been actual leadership, it didn't happen, and now he is & will continue to face political and economic repercussions for it.

If you want to actually know what steps he could have taken? It doesn't take a genius to realize the US was WAY behind on widespread testing. That should have been step 1. Forget everything else- travel bans, restrictions, etc - as soon as it become known this the virus carriers would not show symptoms for TWO WEEKS, had Trump, in January, said "we're testing everybody who comes in because they do not know if they have it or not", that along may have stopped everything. He literally said it was nothing and would disappear by April.

I am far from a simple Trump hater, but this situation has made him look like a complete fool to everyone but his most die-hard supporters.



Nothing with Nancy Pelosi changes that it got to this point under Trump's leadership. It is actually that simple. It is no different than Trump's slamming of W Bush for President on 9/11 due to the simple "it happened on your watch" mentality. Trump is not alone in blame - Di Blasio and Cuomo obviously fucked up with NYC, too.

But Trump is the President and this is how it works - you own the results, good or bad.



I have actually been a believer since the beginning that this particular virus does not look close to deadly enough to justify shutting down the economy. As they note in The Big Short, 40,000 people die for 1% of the economy goes up. Who knows if that is an actual statistic, but the concept behind it is correct - suicide and other stress-induced problems arise.

You need to understand that it did not have to be this way. Think of all changes we will likely implement after this should another situation similar arise. Wide-spread testing of people absolutely could have been readied by early February if the White House had reacted sooner and it would have totally changed the game.

At the end of the day, this happened on Trump's watch and was largely preventable. Hopefully it does not get much worse but right now, his Presidential legacy will look like dog shit. That DT is now openly feuding with the Michigan governor - a swing state he needs, no less! - just looks awful.

"A divisive, combative, controversial leader whose took over a growing economy and expanded it rapidly before a loosing it all in a large crash related to poor handling of the Covid-19 outbreak"

This is a legit question, why afre guys SO focused on testing? it takes a shitton of money to get tested when you could...... SPEND ALL THAT MONEY in giving hospitals what they really need.


testing is gonna save lives? or you know, giving ventilators, meds and everything else to doctos to save the critically ill?

at this stage it should be implyed everyone with cold like symtomps to be a probable covid case.
a¿And only test the critically ill or inpatitents needing treatment. so save all that money and invest it in things that could save lives.


you have cold like symptoms, self isolate for 14 days.

Agree with Mau at this point testing everyone might not be the right strategy in US. Get people to self isolate and test only the critical patients. The situation is already out of control in US.

Self isolating and extreme distancing WILL kill the economy - which, as a byproduct, will kill just as many/more than the virus will.

That's my take, but who am I, I'm just a third year resident of Emergency Medicine, where you know ... Things are getting wild and shit is starting to get real.

It's been real, and I am not dismissing it. I am, however, noting there are multiple perspectives to consider.

Economies of other countries have equally been affected and people haven't died IF they are made aware of the situation then I think people are generally sensible and cautious (there are odd balls everywhere). Leaders like Trump are the cause of people not being aware of the severity of this situation.

Is it setting an impossibly high bar though? Trump is of course, far from perfect, but is the US supposed to be the only major country to stop the coronavirus in its tracks despite having 327 million people, an outgoing country socially and being a tourist attraction? He didn’t do better than all the other major countries, but there’s no sign so far he did demonstrably worse which is what you go by the reactions to him you would think he would. Either every country decided to be idiots at the same time, or stopping coronavirus was really hard. It seems like the latter is more likely to me.

Deaths per 1 million:

Italy - 166
Spain - 128
Netherlands - 37
France - 35
Switzerland - 31
Belgium - 30
Iran - 30 probably lying
UK - 15
USA - 7
Germany - 5
South Korea - 3
China - 2 lol
Canada - 2
Australia - 0.5
Japan - 0.4
Russia - 0.03
Mexico - 0.1

Cases per 1 million:
Switzerland - 1,626
Spain - 1,566
Italy - 1,529
Belgium - 788
Germany - 689
France - 576
Netherlands - 570
Iran - 422
US - 374
UK - 252
South Korea - 187
Canada - 150
Australia - 149
China - 57 lol
Japan - 13
Russia - 9
Mexico - 7

Cases per death (probably a sign of testing rate and/or success handling it):

Russia - 316
Australia - 272.1
Germany - 133.2
Canada - 94.3
South Korea - 63.0
US - 55.5
Switzerland - 53.2
Mexico - 53
Japan - 32.6
Belgium - 25.9
China - 24.6
UK - 16.8
France - 16.2
Netherlands - 15.3
Iran - 14.1
Spain - 12.2
Italy - 9.2

US numbers look decent in all cases. The death numbers are going to look bad compared to places like UK and France cause it has over 5x the people. You can say the ocean protected the US more than other countries and it doesn’t have people who kiss each other on the cheek to say hello, but it also has a lot of social people (probably the key to Japan’s success) and tourists (probably the key to Russia’s).

Social distancing laws caused the huge tornado that ripped through an Arkansas mall and city to injure 5 and kill 0 as the space was basically empty.

The curve seems to be flattening in both US and Italy. Add in people using masks more and hydroxychloroquine having success and being approved and the peak will probably be passed not too long from now.

The US added 20,000 cases yesterday... That's flattening?

It's not going up at an exponential rate. Having 17,000 new cases on March 26th compared to 20,000 yesterday is not terrible, and worldometer is saying 16,000 today, though not sure it's fully updated. I do think the numbers in places like Louisana are about to blow up though.

Their records are usually accurate by 4PM EST each day. The amount of cases per day are not increasing like they were (Today might be lowest increase yet and maybe even lower, and deaths should be under Saturday again, which is some positive news finally in this thread.

At least 12 states have not been updated on the site.

Good to hear that there is a hope if its not a big hope.