In many ways, our nation’s complete inability to protect ourselves against the current coronavirus pandemic is a function of late-stage capitalism. Our public transportation doesn’t get appropriately cleaned because that costs money and reduces the profits of airlines and bus companies. Our hospitals can’t get the lifesaving equipment or even the space they need because they can’t afford it. Our component states have fallen into a bidding war over masks and ventilators because our chief executive seems to think that all the federal resources are for him alone.

Donald Trump’s reactions to the spread of COVID-19 have always been most kindly described as erratic and more accurately framed as troublingly incompetent. As the pandemic spreads, however, his actions are becoming increasingly malevolent and motivated by his own selfish desires.

The individual states are desperate for life-saving medical supplies, having exhausted their own stockpiles already. However, the Trump administration does not seem eager to open the federal reserves. In a press conference, Jared Kushner says of the federal reserve, “It’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”

This claim is distinctly to counter the purpose of the Strategic National Stockpile, as said on their website: “The Strategic National Stockpile’s role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies.”

Who does Kushner think the supplies are for if not the American people? Does he not realize the individual states comprise the union? Or does he, along with the rest of the administration, see them as tools to aid red states and blackmail blue states? As I covered in my column last week on Democide, Republican-heavy states such as Florida have received ample supplies from the federal government, while Democratic strongholds have received only fractions of what they require to save their populace.

In addition to all this, Trump is using his platform as president in this time of crisis not to offer messages of reassurance or unity to the American people but to offer them drugs. According to Newsweek, hydroxychloroquine is a malaria medicine that can also be used to treat arthritis. Its value as a coronavirus cure is questionable at best. Granted, a small study in France has yielded some encouraging results, but as the study was examined with only 36 subjects remaining in the preliminary phase, it is jumping the gun for the president to propose it as a solution to the pandemic. Medical experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci have warned against using hydroxychloroquine to treat the disease, stating that there is simply no hard data to support the president’s claims.

Moreover, the side effects of hydroxychloroquine include cardiac arrest. Doctors are growing concerned that this drug might not only fail to cure COVID-19, but it might actually increase death rates. Our focus on this drug might even slow us down in finding an actual cure, as the number of tests focusing on hydroxychloroquine have rocketed up from one in 10 to one in three since the president advocated for it.

So it’s all very well for Trump to ask, “What do you have to lose?” regarding taking the drug, but the answer is, quite a lot.