I want to know criteria for assessment how well Trump did with COVID-19. I mean real criteria, of course, not "he will fail because he is republican" or "he will do good because he is republican". Some people already know everything (though I agree one can predict future performance based on past performance).
Honestly, the generalized shutdowns all over at this point in the US, rather than more localized ones, are more a consequence of a poor initial response and a general lack of testing. The free falling stock market is a pretty good sign of the same. It would have got here, regardless, yes and the stock market would have dropped somewhat, but with aggressive testing from the start, the damage to both would have been greatly minimized, in fair part because a largely unknown threat is much scarier than a decently well known one that's pretty clearly being handled competently. You can easily look back to, say, Obama's (and likely even Bush's) Presidency to see a very significant contrast in how such things were handled and the damage done. It's not a perfect mirror, of course, but when the Obama Administration had, say, a million tests in less than a month versus the Trump Administration having closer to 30K in two months, that's an absurdly overwhelming difference in the foundational necessity of information that can be used to appropriately address the situation. I apologize for not having specific numbers to offer, though, between what's good and bad.
For me, pretty good objective critera would be amount of deaths. Certain minimal number is inevitable even with best response, of course. But how much is too much?
Number of deaths is one important measure, but hardly the only one that I'd point towards. Still, it's worth taking a moment to acknowledge that, without tests even being available in sufficient numbers, death numbers
will not be accurate and thus it's not a good measure - and that that's exactly the situation that we're in. When people test positive for the flu and therefore don't qualify for a COVID-19 test, despite having both at once, that will skew the numbers. When, like the Russians apparently are, the cause of death is mostly just being registered as pneumonia, that'll skew the numbers. The Chinese numbers were very likely being suppressed quite a bit for a while, too, as they did a lot of saving face downplaying of the danger and damage (just like Trump and Putin), though the current numbers are... plausible. More could be said, but... ugh.
In the first part, I poked at a couple things that also can be used as something of a measure. The generalized shutdowns and stock market drops, for example, are parts of the larger economic damage done measure, and they're directly related to the spread and lack of aggressive testing from the start. To poke at that last thing, yet again, testing is the foundation of all good response plans. That Trump made it perfectly clear that he didn't want the numbers to go up (with the totally obvious note that all he cared about was the appearance and the perceived effect on his image and re-election chances, rather than actually addressing the pandemic itself, hence the Administration having dragged their feet on everything), that he pointedly refused to accept offered test kits even after it was perfectly clear that our available testing production ability was FUBAR, and so on are all clear signs of a poor response. Plenty more could be said, but, moving on.
Next, preparedness. We are facing a crisis in the form of shortages of PPE, certain chemicals for testing kits, and medical equipment for medical personnel across the country. This was... entirely foreseeable and seen the moment numbers were actually run. The response? Pretty much nothing at all outside of what seems to be a blind reliance on the free market to be prepared for a very large load of the kind that pretty much always leads to massive shortages, and using the federal government to compete with the states for the same PPE orders, repeatedly outbidding the states who Trump was intent on pushing all the actual leadership onto. At least until very recently when Trump invoked the threat of legally commandeering businesses to make more PPE - something that has apparently only remained a threat so far, despite all the posturing.
That last bit touched on leadership - Trump's been regularly and brazenly lying to the public for his whole Presidency. That's a terrible base to work from in a time when trusting the government is essential to limit the damage. He's continued to lie like crazy all through this, even after finally acknowledging that things really are bad - though that was only after the stock market plummeted, causing notable damage there. Causing confusion, uncertainty, and a fundamental inability to trust the leadership is a clear sign of terrible leadership. ETA: To add a slight bit here, good leadership is exemplified by a trusted leader giving good directions and information. It's true that it doesn't technically need to be perfectly true, but brazen lies erode at the trusted part quickly.
On the positive side of things, now that the problem is long past the point of uncontainable and they've been forced to acknowledge some uncomfortable truths, Trump and the Republicans have been making better decisions and are more at the point of a low competence response rather than actively hindering the response so much. Admittedly, part of the reason why I call it low is because they screwed up the initial, most important parts so badly that there's likely not really any actually good options left on the table to try to salvage the situation after their long-term sabotage and misuse of the tools that were available, even when they can bear to use them.
I could probably go on, but... Meh. We'll get through this, but it's guaranteed to be a lot less pretty than it could be.
Obviously, this kind of assessment would be possible only in aftermath, or at least when majority of crisis is over. I think November is sufficiently far away in future. In fact, it is sufficiently far in future to catch screwups like allowing for second wave of infections and things like that.
Mmm. Some things can be easily determined on an ongoing basis, though, as well as credit can be pointed correctly where it's due. It wasn't Trump who ordered shutdowns in Ohio when the data showed that there were probably over 100K unconfirmed infections of COVID-19 in Ohio, for example. That was the Republican governor - a governor that gets attention primarily because he was a Republican who actually acknowledged reality in much the same way that Democratic governors had been and took some recommended action to try to limit the damage. I'm entirely fine with giving that positive credit to him, rather than Trump, because no positive credit is deserved by Trump for that.
