Coronavirus isn't about Trump's stock market and 2020 odds. Or at least it shouldn't be.

He may lie, cheat and steal, but he has shaken up Washington and just look at that stock market. That (along with some help from foreign governments) is the formula President Donald Trump's team sees as his ticket to reelection. It’s also the logic to appeal to battleground independents who might not much care for Trump. But independents and even Trump loyalists have a breaking point.

It’s one thing to purge and silence the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency and career government employees, as Trump has done. These are dangers to our democracy and to our planet, but they seem far off to some.

It's quite another thing, however, for Trump to wipe out the chain of command for a public health emergency, end 80% of our pandemic prevention efforts, repeatedly try to reduce the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention budget, and propose to cut $3 billion in global health funds and 40% of our uniformed public health officials. And then watch the new coronavirus hit.

Every day, a new coronavirus mistake

Being a dedicated career civil servant with some manner of expertise is no picnic these days. The CDC was overruled by the Trump administration's State Department when it allowed 14 infected cruise passengers to board a plane returning to America filled with people not affected by the highly contagious virus.

CDC professionals had to listen to Trump say for weeks that  America is “in great shape,” “we’re doing great,” anyone affected is “getting better” and the virus "goes away in April with the heat.”

Like U.S. officials who ended up losing their jobs for telling Congress and the American people the truth, these public health officials have also been forced to contradict the president. No, on purging and silencing, we may just be getting started.

The whole matter has an air of improvisation. Every day, a new mistake: botched test kits, Department of Health and Human Services workers meeting Americans evacuated from China without proper training or protective gear, three people named as being in charge, shortages of masks, a budget request to Congress that doesn’t even restore what Trump cut.

But Trump has been monitoring the situation closely. He’s worried about it. And by “it,” if you think I mean the public’s health, sorry — I meant the stock market. He has found, however, that  as the virus begins to spread in Europe and in new parts of the United States, his assertions that the epidemic is over are falling on deaf ears. The more he talked last week, the more the stock market dropped. 

Two important things are required of the nation’s chief executive: competence and credibility. And they’re missing. President Barack Obama’s cool, competent handling of the Great Recession, auto industry bankruptcies and the Ebola virus turned potential disasters into boring blips. An accountable chain of command, listening to experts, a dispassionate intelligence community, coldly evaluating options, and seeking full collaboration and funding from Congress — all have been replaced by Trump's improvisation and reliance on his own genius.

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Trump believes he was elected to shake up this boring bureaucracy and he has replaced it with family members, campaign donors and business acolytes with disdain for government, science and expertise. Our national rebellion is having a gut check now that we face an immediate danger and a competency crisis magnified by a credibility crisis.

Trump contempt for bad news

Americans want to be reassured by their leaders who see the entire picture in times of crisis. But Trump has lost that ability. There was “magic-marker gate,” when he showed Americans a weather map with an improvised (and wrong) change in a hurricane path. There are his claims to protect insurance coverage of preexisting conditions even as he tries to kill the law that protects it. There are the daily untruths and exaggerations, which may not matter to his supporters and may even seem amusing — but not when we're up against something like the coronavirus.

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Every decision is suspect in view of Trump's obsession with his image and contempt for any bad news that contradicts his reelection narrative. The man we relied on to tell us the truth during the Ebola outbreak, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, canceled Sunday TV appearances. Trump political loyalist and former TV commentator Larry Kudlow, who claimed that the virus has already been contained, is on the Coronavirus Task Force. It's headed by Vice President Mike Pence, who ignored public health practices and exacerbated an HIV outbreak as governor of Indiana.

Trump and Pence are not up to the seriousness of their jobs. We don’t need leaders who spin, resist and watch the market and the polls, instead of trusting the experts to inform us. If the new coronavirus triggers an economic meltdown on the order of the 2008 collapse, only voters can save us — by choosing a return to competence and honesty this fall.

Andy Slavitt, board chair of United States of Care and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a former health care industry executive who ran the Affordable Care Act and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2015 to 2017. Follow him on Twitter: @ASlavitt