No. of Recommendations: 5
So Trump and the powers that be had no responsibility to help ?
Not at all. As I said, the federal government still matters a lot. And it mattered a lot more in the early days of the Covid pandemic, when we didn't have this politicized split over pandemic response. IOW, the federal government had more ability to shape state responses in March 2020 than it will in March 2025. Trump is 100% responsible for all his failures during the pandemic. He will be 100% responsible for any failures that happen should a pandemic occur in the next four years as well.
But now, a lot of the pandemic response is simply going to be out of the federal government's control. Federal government effectiveness is now a necessary but not sufficient condition to an effective pandemic response. Because the states aren't going to follow CDC (or other agency) recommendations in the next pandemic the way they did in the early days of Covid. They still matter, of course - but you're not going to see a state like Kansas or Idaho issuing stay-at-home orders or lockdowns or workplace closures for months during the next pandemic. Because of the way our country's government is structured, the federal government can't directly control pandemic response very effectively - and the indirect measures for influencing and co-ordinating state actions are now broken.
