If it wasn’t clear before Monday, it sure is now: the coronavirus outbreak is not only a health crisis, but potentially an economic one as well.

The spread of COVID-19 is slowing the world economy, tanking oil prices and sending stock markets into a tailspin. No one knows where all this is taking us, but how bad things get will depend in considerable measure on how effectively all of us, and especially our governments, react to the threat.

Leadership, in other words, is crucial. Governments can’t decree an end to a health crisis like coronavirus, but if people believe their leaders are being straight with them and doing all that can reasonably be done, it’s much more likely that we’ll all work together to contain and minimize the outbreak.

In that regard, we can already see a striking divergence between authorities that are handling the challenge well, and those that are flunking the test.

In Canada, the coronavirus crisis seems to be bringing out the best in governments at all levels.

For one thing, medical professionals have been allowed to take the lead. Politicians, for the most part, have kept themselves where they should be: off to the side, supporting the experts who know best and are most likely to inspire confidence among the worried public.

It was striking on Monday that the chief medical officers of Canada, British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta (three of them women) took turns updating the situation. All were straightforward, clear and detailed. None engaged in political spin.

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, has been briefing almost daily. On Monday she advised Canadians not to travel on cruise ships, a good suggestion given the outbreaks on some vessels.

In British Columbia, the lead has been taken by chief medical officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, a veteran of the SARS crisis back in 2003. Along with Ontario, B.C. is the province with the most cases of COVID-19 so far (32 as of Monday, out of 77 across the country). Henry announced the first death in B.C. with the professional aplomb that has marked all her briefings.

In Ottawa, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has been put in charge of coordinating the national response to the crisis. The Trudeau government has earmarked $27 million in extra funding for research into developing a coronavirus vaccine, and Finance Minister Bill Morneau says he plans to announce support for those quarantined as a result of COVID-19.

These are good and necessary steps. They give hope that Canadian governments are on the right track to, at the very least, minimizing the impact of the disease in this country.

We shouldn’t take any of this for granted. In fact, we don’t have to look far to find an example of just the opposite — a leader who seems interested only in how this crisis might affect his political prospects, who undercuts his country’s own medical professionals, and plays fast and loose with the truth about the most serious public health threat in years.

No prizes for guessing the identity of this person. Of course it’s Donald Trump, who from the very beginning has shamelessly politicized the COVID-19 outbreak.

He has blamed Democrats and the media for supposedly exaggerating the threat, which again on Monday he compared to the common flu, an equivalency that every medical professional says is plain wrong.

Last week the U.S. Congress approved a package worth $8.3 billion to fight the coronavirus. But long before that emergency response the Trump administration cut funding for research and brought forward a budget proposal that would defund key elements of pandemic preparedness, including support for the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health.

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With any luck, American medical professionals, local governments and decent people in Trump’s own administration will provide an effective response to COVID-19.

But that will be despite, not because of, the president. On both sides of the border, leadership matters.

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