Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash
Republicans told you they were “pro-life.” They told you “All Lives Matter.” But now that 500,000 Americans are dead from Covid-19, they are pretending the Trump Genocide didn’t happen. Even as it’s still happening.
500,000 are dead and, “each death has left an empty space in communities across America: a bar stool where a regular used to sit, one side of a bed unslept in, a home kitchen without its cook,” writes Julie Bosman in The New York Times. “The living find themselves amid vacant places once occupied by their spouses, parents, neighbors and friends…”
As Bosman also notes: “No other country has counted so many deaths in the pandemic. More Americans have perished from Covid-19 than on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined.”
It Didn’t Have To Happen.
When I interviewed Alex Goldstein, who runs the @FacesOfCovid Twitter account in December, he told me: “The only thing that was inevitable was that the virus was coming—what we did to respond to it was entirely within our control.”
From the beginning, Trump and his Administration’s response to the pandemic was utterly incompetent. By the end of February 2020, I wrote that we were already at the point where, “trusting the President could cost you your life.” On March 7, 2020, I wrote that America was facing a “Worst President Scenario.” On March 8, I began compiling a list of Trump’s most idiotic statements about the virus. It was a list that grew and grew as the year went on and the death toll mounted.
Trump lied. He failed to test. He failed to manufacture the PPE that frontline workers needed. He promoted “fairy tale” cures. He abandoned the nation’s nursing homes. He went golfing as the death toll hit 100,000 over Memorial Day. By June, it was obvious that he was knowingly committing “mass murder on a national scale.”
Trump’s Big Lie about Covid.
Through it all, Trump repeated one Big Lie about Covid. He said he, “shut it down coming from China.” As I tweeted last March, that was like watching a horror movie in which we already know the killer is inside the house, even as the dad keeps reassuring his family, “don’t worry, I’ve locked all the doors.”
Trump’s Big Covid Lie was repeated so religiously by his acolytes that Steve Scalise and others were still trying to push it at the GOP Convention in August. As I wrote at the time: “America leads the world in death from COVID-19 precisely because Trump failed to shut it down coming in from China.”
How Many Deaths Did Trump Cause?
We knew early on that Trump’s failure on testing and contact tracing had allowed the virus to “seed” in New York and spread across America.
Studies in the first months of the pandemic showed that, had Trump acted just days or weeks earlier on social distancing measures, a large number of America’s early infections and deaths could have been avoided.
But now, a simple comparison with other industrialized nations conducted by the Lancet Commission makes clear: Because of Trump’s “inept and insufficient response,” America doesn’t just lead the world in death. It leads the world in preventable deaths.
About 40% — 200,000 — of America’s Covid deaths “could have been prevented.”
Just making an apples-to-apples comparison vs. similar countries, the Lancet Commission concludes that 200,000 Americans would be alive today if Trump, leader of the world’s richest country, with access to all the scientific, medical and manufacturing resources America has on hand, had simply been as competent as an average G7 leader.
Instead, these 200,000 Americans are now dead because Trump lied, pretended this wasn’t happening, focused on fake cures and petty political paybacks. Because Trump put his own selfish re-election needs over the safety and well-being of the American people.
200,000.
That alone is a death toll higher than any other country in the world, except for Brazil.
200,000.
That’s like a city the size of Salt Lake City, Utah… or Grand Rapids, Michigan… or Huntington Beach, California… or Amarillo, Texas… or Des Moines, Iowa… or Rochester, New York.. or Little Rock, Arkansas being wiped off the map.
200,000.
That’s how many chairs in American homes will be empty tonight because of Trump .
200,000.
That’s how many people died unnecessarily in the Trump Genocide.
And that’s unforgivable.
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