Pages

Saturday, April 18, 2020

Trump's Shameful Performance Is Costing American Lives

It remains to be seen, but it looks as though Trump's incompetence may end up making America's response the worst in the world.

The following is a complete comment made by pgerlings, in reply to an article in the Boston Globe by Michael A. Cohen (not Trump's lawyer, but a regular Globe columnist) entitled "The incredible shrinking president":
It cannot be overstated just how bad of a job the trump administration is doing at keeping Americans safe from this virus. Relative to the rest of the world, both the case rate and the fatality rates are growing at far higher levels, and consistently so.

Through this morning, here are the cumulative growth rates in total cases from March 23 through this morning according to the data at the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 website:

US: 1215%
Belgium: 771%
Japan: 720%
France: 630%
Netherlands: 449%
Spain: 378%
Germany: 329%
Iran: 220%
Italy: 149%
South Korea: 18%
China: 3%

World: 440%

The growth rate in new cases in the US is so much higher than the rest of the world, to the point where more than 30% of new cases is identified worldwide have occurred in the United States, even through the US makes up only 4% of the world's population. Worse, our growth rate is almost 3 times higher than the world total, even though we make up an ever increasing portion of that total.apan: 720%

When we look at the growth rate in fatalities, it's even worse. Again, these data are current through this morning and represent the growth rates seen since March 23.

US: 5152%
Belgium: 4370%
Germany: 2672%
France: 1745%
Netherlands: 1149%
Spain: 612%
Japan: 342%
Italy: 234%
Iran: 156%
South Korea: 93%
China: 2%

World: 731%

These numbers are mind boggling. While there are other countries having similar challenges (Belgium, for example), the US again leads the world and is growing at a much faster rate! Back on March 24, the US made up about 12% of the world's fatalities; yesterday it was at 42%.

The most striking comparison is against South Korea.

On January 20th, both the US and Korea reported their first local cases of the virus. Today, the US total case load is a staggering 700,000 versus "just" 10,600 in South Korea, a nearly 70-1 ratio.

Both countries have had the same amount of time to prepare for this. Both countries relied on the same data from the WHO. And yet the US has suffered 70 times more disease than South Korea, and it's still early days! Worse yet, the growth differential keeps getting worse. Every single day since March 23 has seen the US case load growing faster than the world as a whole. We still lag most of these countries as it relates to testing as a percent of the total population, as well as those who show symptoms (a great many Americans are dying and not being counted in the totals).

It is simply astonishing how many Americans will tragically, needlessly perish because of Trump's stunning mismanagement of this. Sure there is blame to go around, but none more than the White House, whose track record is the bottom of the barrel compared to just about every other country out there.

It is because of this that trump is trying so hard to distract Americans. He knows he is failing Americans, and that many of his own constituents are at risk. So he is trying to change the subject.

Don't let him.

0 comments:

Post a Comment