This is the dangerous, immature and irresponsible core of Trump’s belief system: the Trump approach to risk is reactive. He is not only deeply ignorant about how vaccines work, as he demonstrated this week, he has terrible ignorance about basic risk management.
Instead of using and valuing programs that can prevent problems from developing, Trump believes in waiting for bad things to happen, and then taking action to try to solve those problems.
When asked on Feb. 26 about Coronavirus and his previous (2017-2019) cuts to the CDC budget, President Trump said, “I’m a businessperson, I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.” Here is the video including this quote.
Trump thinks that you only “need people” when they are solving an active problem. He doesn’t understand that you “need people” doing things to prevent problems before they occur.
He has clearly demonstrated this thinking in cutting budgets and forcing elimination of programs and resources at the CDC.
Coronavirus Testing Problems
How else do we know that the Trump approach to risk management is reactive? His view toward risk helps explain why Coronavirus test kits were not available and why testing was not done in January and February in the United States, while other nations were testing people — and finding cases of Coronavirus — by the thousands.
Moreover, Trump’s desire to keep testing capability low has a two-part cause: it combines this reactive approach with the Trump administration’s desire to keep the numbers of reported cases in the US low: you can’t count a case of Coronavirus if you do not test for it. If you don’t look for something, you will not find it.
Only recently, after heavy pressure, has the administration begun to take steps to try to increase testing capability. When people are working under emergency conditions, they are more likely to make mistakes. And sure enough, the first run of test kits were flawed and had to be scrapped, which just set the testing process back even further.
Trump’s reactive approach affects more than public health.
He has applied and will continue to apply this approach to every aspect of government: the environment, employee safety, rail and air transportation, infrastructure including roads and bridges, power generation, law enforcement, etc.
In addition to his being a criminal, Trump’s reactive approach to risk management is one of many reasons Trump is completely unqualified to be President of the United States.