Five years ago this week (March 13, 2020), President Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency. It was the beginning of a national trauma. According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 1.2 million Americans have died of COVID in the past five years, while millions more suffered severe illness.
Compounding the misery, government-ordered shutdowns triggered an economic calamity. The March 2020 jobs report showed an immediate loss of 20 million nonfarm payroll jobs, as unemployment skyrocketed to 14.8%, the worst level since the government began tracking the rate in 1948. The U.S. economy contracted by a devastating 31.4% in the second quarter of that year, representing more than $2 trillion in lost economic activity.
But 2020 was also an election year, and President Trump had just emerged victorious from a Democratic-led…
