Here’s the coronavirus death toll through August 27. It was pretty tough listening to Donald Trump brag last night about how he was practically a hero of the pandemic. Right now the COVID-19 death rate in the US is about three per million. That’s far higher than any peer country, all of whom adopted measures that eventually crushed the death rate nearly to zero. The only rich country that didn’t is us, because Trump couldn’t bring himself to wait one more month before reopening everything. One month. That’s all it would have taken.
If Trump had had the guts to do that, we too would have a death rate near zero. Tens of thousands of lives would have been saved. Kids would be going back to school—cautiously, carefully, but without fear. A huge number of small businesses and restaurants would have been saved from bankruptcy.
But Trump wouldn’t do it, and now we’re paying the price. Under the circumstances, you’d think he might at least be willing to get his party to agree to further aid for families who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic, but no. He’s not even willing to do that. He’s a monster.
The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.
