Coronavirus testing: The Batman leadership test revisited

Early on in the coronavirus mess, I wrote this post on what I called "the Batman test" for presidential leadership.  Short version:  you have to be willing to do the right thing and let people hate you, like Christopher Nolan's Batman at the end of The Dark Knight.

I think that the concept of the Batman test works as a general principle, and that its application to our current circumstance becomes ever more clear.  This post is mostly a simple update, demonstrating how clearly the Batman test explains what is happening with respect to coronavirus testing.

The short version is that Donald Trump wants to reduce coronavirus testing.  He said so publicly, and while his flunkies attempted to fall back on the standard lie that it was just a joke, Trump undercut that by saying, no, he's serious, and, "I don't kid."

Consider two scenarios, following from my set-up in the original Batman post.

Scenario A:  We conduct a full range of testing, and on the basis of that testing, we establish a set of policies designed to maximize the efficacy of policies at the national, state and local level to contain COVID and save as many lives as possible.  Yet, because we test, the total number of deaths we measurably attribute to COVID is N.

Scenario B:  We restrict testing for the purpose of reducing the total number of cases of COVID measured.  As a consequence, we cannot design any coherent national policy to contain the coronavirus.  Due to our inability to design an informed policy, the total number of actual deaths attributable to coronavirus is P, where P > N.  Yet, since we dramatically curtail testing, making ourselves intentionally ignorant, we don't observe P.  Instead, we only measure Q deaths due to coronavirus because we have restricted testing, and Q < N.

So P > N.  The total number of actual deaths attributable to coronavirus under Scenario B is greater than the total number of actual deaths attributable to coronavirus under Scenario A because we cannot design health policy without information.  However, that very lack of information creates a falsely low death toll under Scenario B, where the official tally is lower under Scenario B than under Scenario A:  Q < N.

This brings us to the Batman test.  Suppose you are president.  Suppose you are choosing between Scenario A and Scenario B based on the belief that you will be reelected or defeated based not on the actual death toll, but on the official tally.  This is simplistic, but go with it.  If you select Scenario B to get reelected, then you are killing people to get reelected, and failing the Batman test.    You are trying to convince the country that you have contained the death toll when that is manifestly not the case, and indeed, you are increasing the death toll by lying.  This is exactly what I was describing in my post about failing the Batman test.

For Trump, this has always been about official tallies, not actual lives, so this has been obvious all along.  Months ago, he tried to stop a cruise ship from docking because he didn't want an official tally to reflect those infections.  "I like the numbers being where they are."  There's no news here, no new information about Trump.  He is what he has always been:  a textbook sociopath, created in a psychology lab to convince psychology skeptics like me that the discipline actually has something to it, because no human being could otherwise so completely fit the DSM diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder.

You want a conspiracy?  There's your conspiracy.

I don't have any more insight here, because I wrote it back in March.  The Batman test.  It's a good test, and we are seeing a clear reason you shouldn't elect someone who would fail it like this.  Merely passing the Batman test isn't enough, but failing it in this manner...

Sorry, James Buchanan.  Your trophy for "Worst President Ever" has been pried from your cold, dead hands.  Unfortunately, the number of those-- by which I mean, "cold, dead hands"-- is going up.