Donald Trump’s response to handling COVID-19 is the worst in the world. The United States both tops the charts in the number of cases, and before Trump can claim that this is because there’s “too much testing,” it worth noting that the U.S. also beats all comers when it comes to deaths. With the U.S. sadly set to cross the 200,000 deaths line in the coming week, it’s far ahead of even Brazil, where would-be Trump Jair Bolsonaro has done seeming everything possible to spread the disease.
As we learned over the past week, Trump’s failures to address COVID-19 were not a matter of ignorance and incompetence—though Trump has plenty of both. Instead he deliberately withheld facts from the public, downplayed the threat of the virus, and encouraged people to return to normal activities even though he absolutely knew his words were putting people at risk. This information only compounds the crime first identified back in July, when it was made clear Trump had purposely halted plans for a national network of testing centers under the belief that more people would died in states with Democratic governors so he “could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”
What Trump has done with COVID-19 isn’t incompetence, it’s malfeasance. And it’s something that absolutely, positively, did not have to happen. So what would it be like if the United States had been managed competently? How many people might really have been saved? Continue reading.