Ross: Why earlier COVID lockdowns wouldn’t have made a difference

Joe Biden is blaming President Trump for the COVID death count.

“He knowingly and willingly lied about the threat imposed on the country for months,” Biden said this week.

This is based on Bob Woodward’s new book, which reports that back in February, the president knew exactly how deadly the coronavirus was. He’s even got it on tape.

“It’s also more deadly than even your, you know, even your strenuous flus,” Trump told Woodward.

That was on Feb. 7. And yet at a rally two days later, he speculated it would miraculously go away in April.

Well, Joe Biden was furious.

“Experts say … if he acted two weeks sooner back in March, 54,000 lives would have been spared in March and April alone,” Biden said.

But let’s think about that. Let’s assume the president had shut down the country on March 1. That means he would have shut down schools, shut down businesses, shut down public events, isolated family members, ordered mandatory masks – and tanked the U.S. economy – at a time when the daily death rate was three. Not 300, not 30, but three.

Do you think enough of us would have obeyed that order to make a difference? Heck, there are people who won’t follow the rules now even knowing the consequences.

So, Trump may have lied. But the idea that the truth would have actually have made our stiff-necked countrymen snap to attention strikes me as magical thinking.

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