It seems that Trump is descending into his usual self-aggrandizement and racism - somebody must have slipped something into his Diet Coke for Monday's (semi) coherent performance. Unfortunately, that's now worn off. If you haven't seen it, the Washington Post skewers the blatant hypocrisy of Fox News. Also, the Trump administration was given the opportunity to think about pandemic response during the transition from the Obama administration. Most of the people involved are no longer with the administration, even the subset of them who managed to act interested.
One of my arguments last time was that the U.S. social fabric was ill-equipped to handle COVID-19. Here's a nice, short piece that condenses a lot of the reasons why the social safety net is a disaster. For something more optimistic about the social fabric, read this.
I also suggested that the point of suppression and curve flattening needed to be viewed as stalling for time. I focused on the development of treatments; over in The Atlantic, Aaron E. Carroll and Ashish Jha point out that the time could be used to put in place a comprehensive testing regime that would enable more targeted suppression efforts, instead of the blanket lockdowns we have now. They also emphasize that if we succeed in slowing the disease now, we urgently need to avoid developing a false sense of security from that fact.
Finally, this is the first piece I've seen that details the gender dynamics of the coronavirus response.
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