Governors of New York and New Jersey, whose states together have more virus cases than any non-US country, are resisting question of whether they could have saved lives by shutting things down earlier. Just won't go there. 1/3

Baldly put, NY/NJ argument is that governors couldn't have shut things down earlier without a sufficient public fear level. If there weren't enough cases to make people afraid, then public would have scoffed at, ignored shutdown orders. 2/3

There might be something to that. Of course, it applies to national officials, too. But could a real leader have stirred up public fear when there were few cases, virus virtually invisible in some places? Made shutdown order stick? Unclear. Perhaps unlikely. 3/3