The coronavirus is a danger to Trump’s political health

Editorial: Polling suggests the president’s complacent response to Covid-19 already appals many of the swing voters he will need to win when the election arrives in November

It’s time for the US leader to start trusting the experts (Getty)

Could the president of the United States be the biggest casualty of the coronavirus outbreak?

Not, probably, in the clinical sense of the term “casualty”. Despite evidence that Donald Trump has come into contact with people who have self-quarantined over Covid-19, it is not so infectious that it can be automatically assumed to have set about attacking the leader of the free world. Besides, the famously germophobic Mr Trump is never far away from a hand sanitiser.

His unusual diligence about personal hygiene is, to be fair to him, an example to the world in current conditions. Mr Trump’s presumably still relatively robust health and close medical supervision should enable him to survive any likely illness. Assuming, that is, that he doesn’t simply deny there is anything wrong with him, and that any sniffles are merely fake news, as is his habit.

No, the more potent danger is to the president’s political health and his reputation. For thus far he has gone out of his way to ignore, if not belittle, the expert advice on the coronavirus epidemic, and described the World Health Organisation’s estimate of the mortality rate, for example, as a “false number”, adding he has a “hunch” the real rate is “way under 1 per cent”.

He has suggested that a vaccine will be discovered soon, while the scientists assert that it will be a year or more away. He has blithely claimed that “a lot of people think [the virus] goes away in April with the heat”.

That may not entirely reassure people faced with an epidemic. The president has also expressed a preference that the Covid-19 patients on board a cruise liner in California stay on the ship rather than be treated on shore, because that would inflate the numbers.

Mr Trump’s approach prevents an effective and proportionate response to the crisis. The United States will be faced with a worse outbreak than it would have had if the president had allowed the scientists to frame policy rather than leaving it to his own hunches.

That means American lives lost and the American economy damaged needlessly.

The telling contrast in this respect is with Boris Johnson in the UK. Mr Johnson’s style has much in common with Mr Trump’s (though he’d be reluctant to admit it). But on this issue, the prime minister has been wise to defer to the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser, and to allow them to answer questions when they flank him at press conferences.

The NHS action plan has been framed under expert guidance. It has, thus far, provided a mostly consensual approach, marred only by the likes of Nigel Farage and Rory Stewart claiming that they have superior knowledge of how to control a pandemic.

Mr Trump, however, is unable to subordinate his ego to the sober assessments of others, even when they happen to be standing beside him in the Centres for Disease Control. He is thus going to be held personally responsible not for the Covid-19 epidemic, but for the failure of the American authorities to take it seriously enough, early enough.

Thus far, polling suggests that his complacent response already appals many of the swing voters he will need to win when the presidential election arrives in November. Indeed, by that time the epidemic may well be into its second phase, having naturally abated during the summer.

Yet even were Mr Trump willing to take on the challenge he faces, the American health and social security systems seem especially badly designed to cope with it. The coronavirus testing kits may or may not be freely available shortly (reports vary), but if an individual tests positive then they may be in an even worse position than they are in Britain, say, to claim sick pay for time off work self-isolating.

The NHS, under its principle of free treatment at the point of delivery, is also a more flexible, less bureaucratic and less costly (to the patient) way to deal with an onslaught of cases.

Of course it is perfectly possible that the president’s staunchest supporters will dismiss the whole coronavirus story as a hoax, even if they happen to be in the sick beds when doing so. Such cognitive dissonance is not unusual among the voting public in any democracy. Yet Mr Trump’s position has never been unassailable, and he remains eminently beatable.

The coronavirus challenge is a real one, and one that will cost America, and its president, dear if it is mishandled. Mr Trump should be as careful about whose advice he listens to as he is about whose hand he shakes.