2-25-2021
Trumpedemic: The Coronavirus Death Toll Reached 500,000 Because Trump Sabotaged the Covid Response.
Donald Trump placed his perceived political interests over stopping a pandemic.
An economy devastated. One in twelve Americans sickened. Millions hospitalized. One half million dead.
As we mourn 500,000 Americans who have died of Covid-19, we should remember that their deaths were not the inevitable results of a pandemic, not unavoidable acts of God.
Most of the dead would likely be alive today—
most of the suffering America has endured could
have been avoided but for Donald Trump.
In our year of the plague, Trump went from neglect and incompetence to sabotaging the national response, causing massive death.
A cynical and self-absorbed man, Trump saw a lethal contagion only an opportunity for political gain.
He calculated that his prospects for reelection would be advanced if he generated political warfare over the difficult steps public health authorities knew were needed.
So he called coronavirus a “hoax,” mobilized his credulous base to go to war against public health officials, and systematically undermined efforts to confront the challenge.
All of these preexisting social and health conditions have made tens of millions more vulnerable to coronavirus and accelerated its spread.
Trump understood coronavirus was no hoax.
“This is deadly stuff,” he told journalist Bob Woodward in interviews early on.
“It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”
But Trump opposed actions “disruptive” of life as usual because he saw a rising stock market as key to reelection and feared that recognizing the crisis would “spook the market.”
So he laid his political bets on opposing serious efforts to contain coronavirus and mobilized Republicans to resist precautions.
Trump’s resistance derailed efforts at the outset to limit the exponential spread of the disease. Epidemiology researchers from Columbia University concluded in May 2020:
“If the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, the vast majority of the nation’s deaths –
about 83 percent – would have been avoided.”
In a mere two-and-a-half weeks, from March 18 to the beginning of April, identified Covid-19 cases would leap from 8,500 to 240,000 and deaths from 145 to over 7,000.
Against this backdrop, Donald Trump turned to sabotage.
He campaigned against social distancing, mask use and closures.
He convinced Republicans they were defending “liberty” when they behaved in a manner likely to spread infections, threatened public health officers, and defied public health requirements.
Inevitably, thwarting the recommendations of by doctors, scientists and public health leaders caused lives to be lost.
No other country on Earth has had as many coronavirus cases or deaths as the U.S. Germany’s Covid death rate is about half of ours. Canada, one third.
When instead a president mobilizes as many as quarter or a third of the population to rebel against the discipline needed to contain the pandemic, it becomes nearly impossible to control the outbreak.
Home 