Navigating Coronavirus — May 4

We will have new Navigator numbers tomorrow, but check out below for the key takeaways from the last week of polling on public opinion on coronavirus.

It’s been 67 days since President Trump said we’d soon have zero cases in the U.S. We now have 1,188,000 cases and 68,590 deaths — more deaths than any other country in the world.

THE LATEST

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

Trump is overruling medical experts to focus on his reelection, risking American lives for his own vanity.

Trump is so selfishly focused on his reelection, he’s unilaterally decided, against all medical experts’ advice and with the guidance of TV hosts like Laura Ingraham, that this health crisis is over as we near 70,000 dead Americans, and rising.

• BOMBSHELL WAPO REPORT >> Trump used projections made by political staff to issue health guidance on re-opening, instead of scientists’ models. All to boost Trump’s political interests, not save lives.
• A former senior administration official called it “a catastrophic miss.”
• Trump’s “decision-making has been guided largely by his reelection prospects.”
• And Trump is ignoring medical experts altogether >> “On April 16, when Trump and Birx released their guidelines for a slow and staggered return to normal in places with minimal cases of the coronavirus, many of the details fine-tuned by the CDC were stripped out.”
• NYT: “The virus is still spreading in the United States, because efforts to contain it have been incomplete at best, public health experts warned on Sunday, saying that there were signs that the country may face a steady flow of new cases and deaths for many months to come.”
• REMINDER >> Real experts already had to revise up the country’s death toll estimates last week, after Trump’s push to prematurely end social distancing made the country less safe. And we’re getting close to passing those higher estimates too.
• MORE >> Trump spent the weekend touting his poll numbers and tweeting about holding more rallies, not addressing the death rate.

Trump’s rush to prematurely end social distancing is extending this crisis.

Trump is pressuring states to reopen and sympathizing with fringe armed protesters who don’t represent the views of the majority of Americans, even as his own experts say they are making us less safe.

• NY POST: “Dr. Birx calls protesters without masks ‘devastatingly worrisome’”
• VOX: “US coronavirus data is at odds with Trump’s push to get the economy back up and running” >> “Not a single state has met a key reopening criterion identified by the White House coronavirus task force: a steady 14-day decline in new cases.”
• NAVIGATOR DATA >> 62% have serious concerns that Trump is ignoring the advice of health experts by encouraging people to protest stay-at-home orders at state capitols across the country.

And it’s hard to know the full impact of Trump’s rush until it’s too late.

• Director of Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: “Because of the virus’s incubation period, it will take a bit of time to learn if reopening was a mistake. ‘You probably won’t see a change in hospitalization rates or ICU capacity until two or three weeks from now.’”
• NAVIGATOR DATA >> 79% believe we need to increase or maintain our current amount of social distancing in order to stay safe and 62% are worried it will end too soon and risk more American lives, including 74% of college-educated women.

NAVIGATOR TRACKING NUMBERS

Key Navigator numbers from the last week as we look ahead.

• Trump’s approval over the last week remained under water. Trump may have tried to rebalance his poll numbers by staying out of daily press briefings, but it didn’t work. His coronavirus approval remains 6 points underwater (46/52%), and the number of Americans who “strongly disapprove” has climbed 10 points in a little over a month.
• Notably, his disapproval is high among key demographics. For example, his disapproval among college-educated women is 65%.

• The public still trusts governors way more than Trump as they look for a safe re-opening. Americans believe that the country’s governors, not Trump, are striking the right balance when it comes to responsibly easing social distancing and keeping people safe. Democratic governors see a slightly higher approval than Republicans.

ECONOMIC CRISIS IN CONTEXT

The latest on how the economic crisis sparked by coronavirus is actually fueled by years of President Trump’s conservative economic policies, focusing today on the latest reports of Trump’s misguided priorities and bungling that is hurting people and the economy.

Trump is desperate to “open up the economy,” but what the economy actually needs is for workers and families to be safe, secure, and back on their feet.

• Trump is clearly worried about what the economic turmoil will mean for his reelection, but his focus on helping Wall Street and big business no matter how many workers and families pay the price is wildly off base and devastating for the economy.
• The reality is that people make up the economy, not the stock market or massive corporations. And if policies don’t help workers, families, and consumers, then they aren’t actually good for the economy.
• Trump is acting as if America faces a choice between squashing coronavirus and helping the economy — but this is a false choice and absolutely wrong.
• Economists and experts have weighed in: We need to save the economy by squashing coronavirus and making sure that workers and families have the support they need while we do that.
• Trump and his conservative advisers’ promotion of unproven treatments, reliance on discredited models, and focus on pushing workers back on the job before the crisis has abated will lead to more people getting sick and dying.
• Trump even ignored the public health experts in his own administration who tried to tell him that the conservative economists were absolutely wrong.

As Congress comes back into session, they should reject Trump’s false choice and prioritization of Wall Street and big business and move quickly on sweeping legislation to help workers, families, and the economy.

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

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