I agree that there can be unintended consequences of politicized medicine--and by "politicized" I don't mean the petty partisan capturing of medicine, but the decisions made in a state of emergency when the country is on lockdown and the normal rules no longer apply.

Still, the US response to the pandemic was uncoordinated because of its culture of individualism. If the US ends up doing less damage in the long run, it would only have been by chance.

Personally, I find doctors in general to be breathtakingly arrogant. They suffer from God complexes and inflict that illness on their patients in the form of oozing condescension. Likewise, I'm no fan of politicians in general. I've written dozens of articles against many aspect of politics, including the bureaucratic form of pseudorational, highly abstract speech that automates their systemic lies.

But yeah, Trump was different. I understand that he was an outsider, so hopes were high. But Trump is perfectly monstrous as a quasi-human. I've argued at length that he is indeed evil in the technical sense of being a malignant narcissist. Like most forms of real evil, his made for his self-destruction. The same compulsions that made him selfish and sadistic made him lazy and incompetent, so he didn't do as much damage as could have in that position.

But short of being an apocalyptic antichrist, he still did all kinds of damage to American symbols and mystique. He exacerbated domestic terrorism and made the Covid pandemic worse than it had to be in the US. Trump is psychologically incapable of acting to benefit anyone other than himself.

Why are conservatives so averse to wearing masks, though? How is that obvious remedy a political matter? Only because know-nothing Trump made it one. That's the same Trump who thought we should inject disinfectant in the human body to fight the virus.

Trump was only ever an arch troll as president; he was never any kind of statesman.