New York Times: America and the Virus: ‘A Colossal Failure of Leadership’
Nicholas Kristof, opinion columnist at the New York Times

“…[I]n terms of destruction of American lives, treasure, and wellbeing, this pandemic may be the greatest failure of governance in the United States since the Vietnam War. … [I]n retrospect, Trump did almost everything wrong. He discouraged mask wearing. The administration never rolled out contact tracing, missed opportunities to isolate the infected and exposed, didn’t adequately protect nursing homes, issued advice that confused the issues more than clarified them, and handed responsibilities to states and localities that were unprepared to act. Trump did do a good job of accelerating a vaccine, but that won’t help significantly until next year. … The best way to protect the economy was to control the virus, not to ignore it, and the spread of Covid-19 caused economic dislocations that devastated even homes where no one was infected. … So in what is arguably the richest country in the history of the world, political malpractice has resulted in a pandemic of infectious disease followed by pandemics of poverty, mental illness, addiction, and hunger… ” (10/22).