Trump and Covid

My first reason for rejecting Trump is his instability, which, in my opinion, disqualifies him from a position with warmaking powers. But another aspect of his personality is his inability to constructively lead. His response to Covid is the best example. All the reports from his advisers indicate that he cannot handle bad news of any kind and responds with anger or denial. This is not that big of a problem if no crises come up, but it is a fatal flaw for a leader faced with a real problem. He denied the reality of Covid throughout the beginning of the crisis, and then once the crisis was in full swing, he delegated the problem to the states. It's true that in our system the governors control some aspects of disease response, but historically they follow the president's lead on issues like this. He simply hasn't led. This has been especially damaging in the area of marshaling resources: the president is the natural coordinator given his powers to command war production for items of national importance. We are six months into the pandemic and we have not solved the PPE problem. I can't buy an N95 mask on Amazon. This is not a technology problem. Because the companies that produce these products don't believe that the pandemic will go on forever, they are not investing in new production facilities. And so we, and what's worse, first responders, do not have the necessary protective gear needed. Trump is the only one who can solve this problem, and he has chosen to ignore it. Note that because of his inaction, this problem is actually not being solved. There does not appear to be any prospect of new production facilities coming online in this country at scale so long as he is in office. This suggests that we are looking at an additional minimum six-month delay before a solution for this problem. Of course, if he is reelected, then there would be no reason to expect the problem to be solved in the forseeable future. A comparison of our situation with Europe's shows the depth of Trump's failure. Despite getting hit with the infection first, and so having at least a month less of time to prepare, and despite living conditions which make the fight against Covid harder, i.e., many more people living in dense cities using mass transit, Europe is largely done with the pandemic. People who don't deal with foreigners have in many cases dispensed with masks except on trains and buses, and are free to go out to dinner in actual restaurants. Sports leagues are starting up again. The daily death rate over there is two orders of magnitude less than ours. There are several European nations with higher cumulative death rates than ours, e.g., Belgium, but if you look at the graphs is clear that this will not continue. What's happening here is that Belgium went through the entire Covid experience and is done now with a daily death rate close to zero. We are nowhere near done, and it appears from the graphs that by the time we are finished the only competitors for us for the highest death rate will be Brazil and Mexico. No developed country will be anywhere near us. Biden is normal and likely defer to experts on the pandemic like most presidents would. With a typical president I'm sure there would have been mistakes and it would likely not have been a great experience, but we would probably have outperformed Europe's thanks to our car lifestyle which in most cities lends itself better to isolating people from their neighbors.