Navigating Coronavirus — August 12

In today’s email, we have new Navigator polling on vaccines, which finds that Americans want to keep politics — and Trump — out of vaccine development. We also discuss Trump’s failure to control the unmitigated spread of the virus, including among children.

Read on for today’s Navigating Coronavirus…

It’s been 168 days since President Trump said we’d soon have zero cases in the U.S. We now have 5.3 million cases and more than 167,000 deaths.

THE LATEST

Message guidance on the latest developments with President Trump’s handling of the crisis.

ANOTHER WEEK OF CLIMBING NUMBERS AS TRUMP DOES NOTHING TO CONFRONT CORONAVIRUS.

It took six months for the world to reach 10 million coronavirus cases, but just six weeks for that number to double — and the U.S. has the worst outbreak of anywhere in the world. Despite this reality, Trump continues to insist that we will soon be in “very, very good shape all over our country” — when the truth is the worst may be far from over.

• Washington Post: “With no end to the pandemic in sight, coronavirus fatigue grips America”
• “An exhausted, exasperated nation is suffering from the effects of a pandemic that has upended society on a scale and duration without parallel in living memory […] The metaphor of a marathon doesn’t capture the wearisome, confounding, terrifying and yet somehow dull and drab nature of this ordeal for many Americans, who have watched leaders fumble the pandemic response from the start. Marathons have a defined conclusion, but 2020 feels like an endless slog — uphill, in mud.”
• NEW NAVIGATOR DATA >> Nearly 6 in 10 Americans still believe that the worst of the pandemic is yet to come.
• AMERICANS THINK TRUMP COULD DO MORE >> 57% of Americans feel that the Trump administration is not doing enough right now to respond to the pandemic, and the same number believe Trump could have done more to prevent 160,000 Americans from dying.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to tout his own response as states barely struggle to get by. Trump’s refusal to take the pandemic seriously and use his authority to actually fight it forced states to fend for themselves, leaving governors competing for resources without an effective national strategy.

• SHOT >> Trump on Tuesday continued to downplay the importance of testing while claiming we are doing a great job.
• CHASER >> Axios: “State coronavirus testing plans fall short of demand: Continuing on without a national testing strategy almost certainly means more chaos ahead.”

TRUMP’S PUSH TO REOPEN SCHOOLS IS MORE RECKLESS THAN EVER, AS CASES AMONG CHILDREN RISE AT ALARMING RATES.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen growing evidence that children are at risk of catching and spreading coronavirus. And now, Trump aides are even admitting themselves that outbreaks in schools are “inevitable.” However, Trump is forging ahead with his demands to reopen and children could pay the price.

ACROSS THE COUNTRY >>

• FLORIDA: “Florida’s Covid-19 cases in children have increased 137% in past month”
• CALIFORNIA: “Coronavirus cases among children and teenagers are surging in California, up 150% last month”
• GEORGIA: “Coronavirus cases lead over 800 to quarantine in Georgia school district where masks not required”

*NEW* NAVIGATOR TRACKING POLL

TODAY’S FULL SLIDE DECK >> HERE

• As the world races to develop a vaccine, Americans are more worried that we will move too fast and create unintended health consequences rather than being too slow or cautious. When it comes to the vaccine, Americans care most that Trump listens to public health experts, tells the truth, and is transparent.
• MORE >> Approval by Fauci and the F.D.A. are key to Americans feeling comfortable getting a vaccine. In contrast, Trump’s endorsement doesn’t carry much weight, and nearly two-thirds of Americans want Trump to stay out of vaccine development all together.

• People don’t want politics to play a role in vaccine development or distribution. More than 8 in 10 Americans agree we need transparency about any clinical vaccine data and think that experts need to be able to make decisions without political pressure. More than 75% agree that political staff should not get the final say.
• LEAVE KUSHNER OUT OF IT >> Speaking of political staff, a majority of Americans would be very concerned if Kushner was put in charge of vaccine development.

• Trump is trying to claim that coronavirus will go away soon, but majorities of Americans still believe the worst is yet to come and want more aggressive social distancing.

—

Navigating Coronavirus is a joint project of Governing for Impact, Groundwork Collaborative, The Hub Project, and Navigator Research.

Know someone else who should be on our list? Have them SUBSCRIBE HERE