WASHINGTON—In a televised address on Wednesday night, Donald Trump tried to reassure his increasingly nervous nation — and panicked financial markets — that he was taking the spread of coronavirus seriously.

After all the dismissive comments and baseless predictions that the virus would be no big deal, the president was finally convinced that America needed its leader, and the world needed its global superpower, to present a clear plan to manage the pandemic.

It didn’t work out that way.

In the minutes after Trump spoke, futures markets dropped 1,000 points. On Thursday, the Dow Jones suffered its worst one-day drop since 1987.

If Trump was hoping to inspire confidence, he seemed to have done the opposite. Minutes after his speech, the White House had to correct mistakes Trump had made — big mistakes, like when he said trade with Europe was being banned. Meanwhile, his headline-grabbing announcement of a 30-day ban on travel from Europe was widely panned as ineffective.

He spoke haltingly, in a flat and sombre tone, for just under 10 minutes. This was prepared-speech Trump, a much less confident and engaging version of the president than riffing-rally Trump.

“I will never hesitate to take any necessary steps to protect the lives, health and safety of the American people,” he said, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant and nervous. “The virus will not have a chance against us. No nation is more prepared.”

He deflected blame for the pandemic’s penetration of America, noting that the virus originated in China, and claimed that he was leading “the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.”

He’d banned travellers from China early on, he said, but European governments had failed to take the same measures and, “as a result, a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travellers from Europe.” So now, he said, he was banning all incoming travel, cargo, and trade from Europe for 30 days, effective Friday.

Of course, the government later clarified, the policy does not apply to cargo and trade — Trump apparently misread the script. It also doesn’t apply to all of Europe, just to Europeans and others who have visited, within the past 14 days, the 26 European nations that share open borders.

For all that he misspoke, there was no denying the boldness of his actions. But bold doesn’t mean wise — almost immediately, experts pointed out that the plan was not likely to be effective. The virus is spreading through the United States. Stopping and slowing its spread within the country’s borders — and ramping up testing and treatment — are what is needed.

Trump did touch on the domestic challenge. He recited a list of personal hygiene measures such as handwashing, talked about restricting travel for higher-risk people, told those who’d contracted the illness to stay home, and advised listening to local authorities about social distancing.

This was a welcome change from his recent freestyling on the subject, when he said people with mild symptoms might still go to work, and dismissed the virus as no worse than the flu. His grave tone and clear language might have helped convince those who suspected a partisan hoax to take the pandemic seriously.

But Trump’s emphasis was on measures to shore up economic confidence. Over the past week, the economic fallout of the coronavirus seemed to trouble him more than the public health threat. The strength of the economy, and of the stock market, has been a central plank of his re-election platform, and he can see as well as anyone how they are threatened by this global crisis.

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Trump has spent weeks blustering about the virus in an attempt to instill confidence. The virus has apparently paid him very little mind, spreading across the country and undermining his efforts. The markets are now responding to real fears of widespread illness and death.

Regular Americans, like those watching around the world, fear the same thing. A plan would help. Blaming China and Europe does not fit the bill.

Beyond the White House, there are signs that civil society is adapting to the scale of the problem. Professional sports leagues have suspended their seasons; universities have closed campuses; Disneyland will close through the end of the month. You could read these as signs of panic. But you could also be reasonably reassured by them.

These are the types of strategies that experts have said may slow the spread of COVID-19, and give health care systems a fighting chance to effectively deal with the virus. Professional sports leagues and Disney sent a clearer signal to Americans than any government official did — even the president.

“This is just a temporary moment of time that we will overcome together as a nation and as a world,” Trump said Wednesday night.

That might yet prove to be the case. But his speech didn’t move his nation or the world any closer to that goal.

On a night when the president of the United States set out to show everyone he was stepping up, he let them down.

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