Max Boot, for my money the most pathetic of the NeverTrumpers, tries to argue that “populist” governments are doing worse than “techocratic” ones in the fight against the Wuhan coronavirus. Boot’s column isn’t a study, it’s a collection of anecdotes that don’t even support his argument.
Boot calls the U.S. “Exhibit A” in support of his thesis. There are two problems with “Exhibit A.” First, the U.S. isn’t doing that badly at this juncture in the fight against the virus, compared to non-populist governments of major democracies. Second, the U.S. response hasn’t been “populist.”
As things stand now, deaths per capita in the U.S. from this virus are lower than in all large European democracies except Germany. We have 233 deaths per one million people. Spain has 562, Italy 495, the UK 451, and France 398.
Boot ignores these nations, some of whose governments are anything but “populist.” He cites Canada with 177 deaths per million. But Canada isn’t comparable to the U.S. in terms of population density and level of contact with the Chinese.
Canada doesn’t have a New York City. Factor out New York City and surrounding areas (which, by the way, are not run by populists), and the U.S. numbers don’t suffer by comparison to Canada’s. But even without factoring out New York, our numbers, so far, align more closely with Canada’s than with technocratic France’s.
In any event, the U.S. response to the Wuhan coronavirus has not been populist. Trump locked down America at about the same stage in our outbreak that most large European democracies did in theirs. (The UK is an exception. It locked down later.) In doing so, Trump relied on the advice of doctors and scientists, ignoring conservatives who argued against the lockdown, both for economic and epidemiologic reasons.
A “populist” response would have looked like that adopted by Gov. Noem in South Dakota. She and a few other governors did not order a lockdown. Instead, she made social distancing recommendations and left it to the people –yeah, them — to decide how to act.
The result? South Dakota has only 36 deaths per one million people, among the lowest in the nation.
This doesn’t prove that South Dakota’s approach is better in purely health terms than the approach in states with higher deaths per capita. Other factors likely play a bigger role than government policy in determining the impact of the virus in a given state or country.
But that reality only highlights the frivolous nature of Boot’s article. He doesn’t consider other factors.
Which governments, other than ours, are the most hated by anti-populists like Boot? The governments of Poland and Hungary. Boot acknowledges, as he must, that Poland and Hungary have fared quite well, comparatively, in this pandemic. Deaths per one million in Poland are a mere 20. In Hungary, they are 41.
These statistics would have caused an intellectually honest pundit to submit a different column to his fellow Trump haters at the Post. In Boot’s case, they caused him to focus on Belarus. But Belarus reports only 121 deaths from the coronavirus — 13 per one million people.
It does report a high number of infections. However, on a per capita basis, it reports fewer than Portugal, Sweden, and the Netherlands, and not that many more than Israel.
Boot’s final “Exhibit” is Brazil. There, says Boot, there are more confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths than anywhere in Latin America and, indeed, the developing world.
But Boot neglects to note that Brazil’s population dwarfs that of nearly all developing nations. On a per capita basis, Brazil’s reported numbers — 642 cases and 44 deaths per one million — aren’t that bad. They compare favorably to Peru’s, Ecuador’s, and Panama’s.
Boot suggests that Brazil isn’t reporting honestly. That might be. It might also be the case with any Latin American or developing nation, as well as some developed ones.
But Boot can’t build a case based on what might be. Based on what we know, Boot has no case.
How did Max Boot go from respected columnist at the Wall Street Journal to Eugene Robinson’s rival for worst columnist at the Washington Post? Hatred of Donald Trump is the obvious answer, but one that doesn’t quite seem to explain the full descent.
