https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/25/opinions/pandemic-covid-19-shutdown-meadows-sachs/index.html
Trump team just announced its surrender to the Pandemic
Donald Trump has surrendered without ever joining the battle. I have no doubt he will be remembered as the greatest presidential failure in American history.
Trump surrounded himself with fools and knaves who echoed his false belief that the choice was Covid versus the economy. This includes three types of advisers who led Trump to his likely imminent political demise and to our nation's mass suffering.
The first group were the evangelical preachers who were more interested in packing their pews than in saving their parishioners who caught the disease in their megachurches. This is a key part of Trump's base. Its leaders helped lead Trump to calamity.
The second group was the Murdoch media empire with the "thought leadership" ― if one can call it that ― of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and the nihilism of Fox News. What is incredible about the Wall Street Journal editorial board is that they were so fixated against closing the economy that they failed to give serious consideration to Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), despite their proven success in the Asia-Pacific. As a result, the Journal's editors overlooked the most effective policy approach and thereby helped steer Trump to disaster.
The third group was those who would stand up and oppose the overwhelming scientific consensus on NPI's, thereby bolstering Trump in his conviction to do nothing. The recent pseudo-scientific advice of Dr. Scott Atlas, from Stanford University's conservative Hoover Institution, provided the simulacrum of academic approval to the White House do-nothing position by calling it "herd immunity," a position roundly rejected by the public health community.