Like Reagan, Trump callously allows Americans to die

HIV and COVID-19 are very different, but the response from the two Republican presidents has been the same.

When it came to fighting a viral pandemic and saving American lives, Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan acted in frighteningly similar ways.

Except Trump says the quiet part out loud.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!

That’s the only significant difference between Trump’s negligence on coronavirus and Reagan’s on AIDS in the 1980s, as each enjoyed the support of much of their party in the face of these catastrophic failures.

This is instructive because it shows us just where the the GOP has gone over 40 years: Now Republicans feel emboldened to act with callous, reckless disregard in a much more blatant, in-your-face way.

Reagan, first elected in 1980, actually didn’t use the word “AIDS” for years as the epidemic — which emerged in 1981 — raged on during his presidency, ignoring any discussion of it completely in any public setting until a reporter finally asked about it in 1985. He discreetly pandered to religious conservatives — who fought safer sex advocacy and condom distribution in the same way conservatives commentators and politicians have resisted social distancing measures (sometimes just to keep churches full) amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Gay activists and AIDS advocates — people the media and the larger population didn’t care much about at that time — were largely ignored until we started making much more noise by the end of the ‘80s, with protest groups like ACT UP. Reagan took advantage of the public’s discomfort with even talking about homosexuality and modes of transmission, and relied upon the media ignoring the political crisis while sensationalizing the epidemic and exacerbating public fears.

Trump, conversely, responding to a mass media asking questions immediately, has used the word “coronavirus” from the start — and then later used racist terminology, dubbing it “Chinese virus” — but has downplayed it as something that would soon go away, from “15 cases” to “zero,” by some sort of “miracle.” Even after he acknowledged that the pandemic was serious, Trump openly fretted more about damage to the economy and the stock market than about actual lives, announcing that we “can’t let the cure be worse than the problem,” accepting the deaths as expendable in a way that Reagan wouldn’t say out loud.

The net effect, however, has been the same regarding both presidents: Dithering while people died, and rejecting science and warnings from public health officials.

Obviously, there are vast differences between the coronavirus and HIV pandemics. One involves a highly infectious virus that is transmitted via casual contact — and manifests itself within a few days — while the other transmits through the population over a longer period of time via sexual contact or exchange of bodily fluids, and it can take years for symptoms to emerge.

HIV in the U.S. also mostly has affected a despised minority — queer people — which the government in 1980s’ Reagan America, propped up by religious bigots, viewed with disgust. And AIDS also disproportionately has affected women and people of color, who’ve faced stigma in the health care system for decades.

It’s true that we’re seeing coronavirus disproportionately affect people of color in alarming ways, too, and we need to focus on that disparity. But COVID-19 also quickly reached into the highest strata of society, sending the United Kingdom’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, to the intensive care unit of a London hospital.

Differences aside, the response from the U.S Republican president to each pandemic has been the same: Denial of a public health crisis that the president viewed as a distraction from his larger agenda rather than as something that it’s his job to combat, quickly marshaling all the levers of the government.

We’ve even seen the same blame-shifting, with Reagan (and later George H.W. Bush) casting responsibility for transmission on individuals’ personal “behavior” while Trump blames governors, the World Health Organization, China and whoever else he can target.

Comparatively, time is radically compressed in the COVID-19 crisis. Whereas HIV, because of how it transmits, took years to mushroom, coronavirus exploded in a matter of days and weeks — and so did the political crisis surrounding it.

That’s why the response by activists — turning fear, grief and anger into action — needs to be quicker as well. Groups like ACT UP in the late ‘80s challenged complacency by staging dramatic protests to get media attention and jar people. Obviously, right now, with social distancing measures in place, physical protests are out of the question. But that doesn’t mean we all can’t be doing the hard work from our own homes, online and via social media.

Americans need to be challenged regarding “rallying around” the president in a time of crisis, as we’ve seen some polls suggest (though it seems this may be dissipating for Trump). Too many are saying in a time like this,“partisan” bickering needs to stop. But that is in fact dangerous — censoring the very voices that point to the inaction that causes harm and death

All of the evidence, brought out in some excellent reporting in the media, shows Trump is directly responsible for harming Americans and jolting the economy. He refused to make testing a priority, and we still don’t see mass testing across the country — the only weapon, besides social distancing itself, that we have right now to stem the pandemic. He and his administration ignored warnings and wasted critical time in January and February, while we now know U.S. intelligence warned about coronavirus back in November.

As the Washington Post reported in a deep and detailed story on the 70 days the administration had to come up with a plan:

“The failure has echoes of the period leading up to 9/11: Warnings were sounded, including at the highest levels of government, but the president was deaf to them until the enemy had already struck.”

Now is the time to be speaking out even more loudly and clearly.

Now is the time to push further against Trump’s agenda — and push back against anyone who seeks to give him a pass — and organize to both pressure the government to use every tool it can against this pandemic to save lives, and to get Trump out of office come November.