The late, great Rush Limbaugh used to say, “‘What If’ is a children’s game.” But I’m a kid at heart. This is all silly speculation, but what might the pandemic look like today if Donald Trump had lost in 2016 and Covid-19 had struck America under Democrat Executive Rule?

1. There would have not been the Trump travel bans. When Trump proposed bans on international travel, particularly from China, the Democrats accused the President of racism. If those bans hadn’t been imposed, perhaps the United States would have been struck with more cases earlier resulting in many more deaths.
2. All states would have been forced to impose lockdowns. A complaint that continues from many Democrats is that Trump didn’t act boldly enough and force all the states to enact lockdowns and mask regulations. Now we have empirical evidence that shows that states that enacted harsh regulations are often doing much worse than states that allowed more freedom.
3. The Supreme Court would not have struck down the harsh lockdown regulations imposed by states such as California. “But Gorsuch” is still a Never Trump mockery, but without Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, but instead justices chosen by Hillary Clinton (nominees that surely would have had a diversity of pigment and sexual proclivity, but not thought) would have upheld all of the violations of the First Amendment rights to worship and assemble.
4. There would be less effective treatments for Covid-19. The Trump administration encouraged experimentation in treatments for Covid-19 and was often mocked for doing so (“He wants to inject people with Clorox!”) But the stoppage of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in recent days reminds us that under Democrat regimes, there is “an abundance of caution” which doesn’t allow for expedient medical experimentation by rather allows bureaucrats to slow every process.
5. We would still be years away from an effective Covid-19 vaccine. Under a Clinton administration, there would have been no Operation Warp Speed. Every rule and procedure the FDA has put into place demanding slow and rigorous studies to be performed before the next step in vaccine research and production could be taken. And any vaccine for Covid-19 would still be a distant hope.

This is all speculation, of course, fantasy really. But as for me, I have little doubt, that the United States, and the world, would be in a sorrier state today if Hillary Rodham Clinton had been the 45th president.