America is about to choose how bad the pandemic will get

The president’s response to the pandemic should not have been a surprise. In December 2016, a month before Donald Trump was inaugurated, I asked how a pandemic would play out during his term. The question was not idly put: Every recent president before Trump had been challenged by epidemics, and Trump’s actions as both a citizen during the 2014 Ebola outbreak and a candidate on the campaign trail had been troubling. His record suggested that come a pandemic, he would lie, spread misinformation, opt for travel bans in lieu of more effective measures, and heed his own counsel over that of experts.