Two epidemiologists, writing an op-ed together in The New York Times on Wednesday, are suggesting that earlier efforts to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus — even implementing social distancing measures by just a week or two — could have saved tens of thousands of American lives.

Britta Jewell, a research fellow in the department of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College, London, and Nicholas Jewell, chair of biostatistics and epidemiology at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (and also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley), wrote in their opinion piece that earlier action could have been beneficial.

Tactics for dealing with COVID-19 and other diseases where there isn’t an effective treatment, much less a vaccine to prevent their spread, require intervention methods that “go back to the basics,” the researchers wrote, noting that social distancing measures (like limiting large gathering sizes or closing schools) must be implemented in those cases.

Even with the advisory in place, the White House did not order any state or municipality to quarantine or make a blanket stay-in-place proclamation for the nation at large. A few days later, California became the first state to issue such an order, followed by 14 other states over the next five days.

Both authors stated that their research models suggest, had the Trump administration acted earlier in deeming social distancing measures necessary to prevent the spread of COVID-19, thousands of lives could have been saved.

Current models forecast over 60,000 Americans may die from COVID-19 by August. Had social distancing measures been pushed by Trump a week prior, however, the researchers concluded that the number could have been just 23,000 — nearly a 60 percent drop in current death estimates. A decision to implement those measures two weeks earlier than when the president’s recommendations were made would have dropped estimates down by 90 percent.

Noting that modeling estimates aren’t always a “crystal ball,” and that their numbers could be off, the researchers maintain that “What matters more is the relative effect of moving earlier rather than later in trying to contain the spread.”

In other words, had the Trump administration taken things more seriously, the number of Americans who are likely to die from the disease could be starkly smaller.

“Whatever the final death toll is in the United States, the cost of waiting will be enormous, a tragic consequence of the exponential spread of the virus early in the epidemic,” they added in their op-ed piece.

Indeed, the week or so prior to Trump issuing his social distancing recommendations, the president was making a number of statements suggesting he didn’t see the crisis as being all that important or that such actions were warranted. On March 9, for example, Trump sent out a tweet in which he expressed a desire to resist calls for distancing measures, comparing such actions as being out of line for what we do during flu season each year, and thus unnecessary for COVID-19.

“Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on” when flu season occurs, Trump pointed out.

Also on March 9, Trump sent out a separate tweet to his followers insinuating that fears about coronavirus were nothing more than mere partisan statements against him.

“The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant,” Trump said, citing the words of Surgeon General Jerome Adams that week, who said, “The risk is low to the average American.”

In the finest traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt — two of the U.S.’s most noteworthy wartime presidents — Donald Trump, the coronavirus “war” “president,” yesterday accused the state of New York of padding its coronavirus death toll, after New York revised its numbers to reflect thousands who died of COVID-19 before it had a name.

We’ve gone from “Fourscore and seven years ago” to “Nothing to fear but fear itself” to “Everything we have is documented and reported great,” which is how Trump responded to New York’s revised numbers. And you wonder why a new poll shows that 45 percent of Fox News viewers believe the coronavirus death toll numbers are inflated. The president said so!

Meanwhile, back in the middle of March when the COVID crisis was first beginning to roar but could have been better contained, the White House realized it had a shortage of face masks for its staff. This set off a scramble to get masks from Taiwan roundabout the 14th of that month. “At the time, the U.S. government was discouraging the public from wearing masks, saying that healthy people didn’t need them,” reports The Washington Post.

“A protest movement is taking hold targeting states that have extended social-distancing rules, closed schools, and restricted access to large religious gatherings,” reports The Daily Beast. “And it’s being fed by loyalists and political allies of President Donald Trump.”

These pro-Trump protests have been popping up in Idaho, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and other states that have not yet felt the full brunt of the pandemic. The most vivid example to date came just yesterday in Michigan, where thousands of right-wing protesters — a number of them packing AR-15s — swarmed the capitol building in Lansing to protest Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order. “Lock her up!” they chanted, because of course they did.

While Trump himself is largely responsible for this incredibly dangerous burst of deeply misplaced faux-patriotism, his ideological allies have been busy online. A misinformation-laden video denouncing Anthony Fauci, for now the other face of the daily coronavirus briefings, has gone viral with more than 6 million views. It accuses Fauci and others of being part of the “Deep State,” Trump’s favorite rhetorical target. Given Trump’s recent unsubtle hints that Fauci is telling too much truth, the appearance of this video puts one in mind of the old saying about how there are no accidents in politics.

Evangelical churches have been filled to capacity with Trump supporters who have been led to believe that these stay-at-home orders issued by state governors are an attack on their constitutional right to gather in worship as they please. Evangelicals, of course, have been the unshakable bedrock beneath Trump’s dwindling base of support.

Jerry Falwell Jr., president of the evangelical Christian crown jewel Liberty University, has been ardent in his outspoken belief that COVID is nothing to fear and a plot to undermine Trump. “Since March 29, when the first case was diagnosed in a Liberty student living off-campus, confirmed coronavirus cases in the Central Virginia health district, which surrounds Lynchburg and Liberty, have grown from seven to 78, reports The New York Times. “One person has died.”

Even as Trump’s most ardent supporters crush themselves together to protest necessary coronavirus restraints, COVID hotspots have begun to bloom in regions that have been, to date, the geographic core of his support.

Nebraska, Idaho, South Dakota and other rural farm belt states are experiencing spikes in confirmed COVID cases. In Nebraska alone, the state’s health department reports a 30 percent increase in cases over the last three days. That is the accelerating curve New York, Massachusetts and Washington State can tell Nebraska all about.

The so-called “curve” of cases does appear to be flattening nationally because a majority of people, especially in urban areas, are devoutly complying with the strictures of social distancing. There are about 30,000 new cases every day right now; the number is no longer accelerating, but is still horrifying to contemplate.

What happens when this thing really and truly burns through rural America? It has already begun, and because of all those Trump supporters standing shoulder to shoulder at capitols and churches to shout their defiance of science and the “Deep State” into the virus-polluted air, it will get worse.

It will get worse within days, if the pattern holds, and there is no reason to expect otherwise. The match has been lit. In two weeks, these rural areas — which have lost so many of their hospitals thanks to decades of conservative budget cuts — are going to be locked into the same nightmare the urban areas have been dealing with since March, but with far less medical infrastructure prepared to confront it.

It begs the deadly, wretched question: How many Trump voters are going to die between now and November? How many people who listened to their president and his Fox News mouthpieces, who jammed the Michigan capitol steps and the megachurches on Easter because the president said it was safe, will be dead by June?

Quite a lot, I fear. This is the very living essence of tragedy and farce. Trump has labored mightily to convince his people that this is all some sort of ruse to keep him from being re-elected, and millions of those people have swallowed it whole.

This is a snake eating its own tail in real time while the snake-handler-in-chief cheers it on … except we are not talking about snakes. These are people, all of whom are somebody’s children, many of whom have children. They trusted Donald Trump, and that will get many of them killed while subsequently prolonging a pandemic that has already infected 2 million people worldwide.

I wonder if they will still think it was worth it come the summertime. I wonder if they will want a word with Mr. Trump once the virus he called a hoax has its way with them.

Presidents always take credit for the positive things that happen on their watch, but Donald Trump has gone to a whole new level. He endlessly touted the “best economy ever,” even though, under his watch, we just saw the continuation of trends from the Barack Obama years.

There was a modest pickup in GDP growth, with the average for the first three years of the Trump administration being 2.5 percent, compared to an average of 2.3 percent in the last three years of the Obama administration. By contrast, the pace of job growth slowed, from 224,000 to 182,000 over the same period.

There was little change in most other macroeconomic variables between the two administrations, as we saw the gradual improvement in the labor market under the Obama years continue into the Trump years. That meant things were getting better on the whole. However, the hundreds of thousands of people who lost health insurance in the Trump years are likely to disagree with his boasts of the best economy ever, as are people facing crushing student loan debt.

But this is all past tense. One problem for those who want to take credit for everything good that happens on their watch is that they also have to take responsibility for the bad things that happen. In that sense, coronavirus completely belongs to Trump, although unlike the path of the economy, he really does bear responsibility.

At the most basic level, the epidemic itself was hardly a surprise. It was first reported in China in December of last year.

A serious president would have been taking the lead in organizing an international response. But Trump was busy doing other things. In addition to his golf games, Trump was holding campaign rallies and fundraisers around the country. When he wasn’t traveling, he was busy on Twitter making boasts about the economy, lying about his poll results and directing schoolyard taunts against his political opponents. With such a busy schedule, how could we expect Trump to have time to worry about a pandemic?

It gets worse. Trump had dismantled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) team to deal with pandemics. The CDC was also coping with Trump budget cuts, and is facing another cut of 16 percent slated for next year.

Trump also attacked those who tried to warn of the risks of the virus. He claimed the whole thing was a Democratic hoax, and said that the United States had 15 cases and that the number would fall quickly.

He then went full Trumpian in his management style, pushing aside the public health experts at the CDC, and putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of protecting the country from the pandemic. Pence’s main credentials for this task are a disbelief in science (he doesn’t believe in evolution or global warming) and a failed effort to stem the spread of AIDS when he was governor of Indiana.

Trump also attempted to clamp down on any accurate, concrete information that would contradict his “no-big-deal” story. He required that Pence clear all statements from the CDC. Using his famed vindictiveness, he also retaliated against a Health and Human Services whistleblower who reported that people exposed to coronavirus on a cruise ship were greeted by health care workers without protective gear or training.

In short, the fact that we are likely facing a serious pandemic, unlike any we have seen in more than a century, is 100 percent Trump’s fault. Because of his vanity and ineptitude, people will die, and many more will get sick. It is very likely that we will face a recession as people cancel travel plans and are reluctant to go out to restaurants, sporting events and other public places.

At this point, we can only speculate how bad things will get. But let us say it loud and clear: “Thank you, President Trump!”