Trump's inept Covid response killed about 400,000 people

It's been clear for a long time that Donald Trump caused many thousands of Americans to die needlessly because of his astoundingly inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

What's been in question is how many. 

Thanks to Andrew Akteson, a UCLA professor, we now have an answer: nearly 400,000 deaths could have been avoided if the United States had done things differently and better.

That's an astoundingly tragic number. 

Not all of those unnecessary deaths are Trump's direct responsibility. But most are, since he oversaw our country's Covid response when strong public health actions could have markedly reduced the death toll.

Here's an excerpt from a Washington Post story, "A better pandemic response might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives -- and Trump's presidency."

One year after the coronavirus pandemic began, the United States has been reshaped in remarkable ways. One of every 600 people alive at the beginning of last year has died of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Millions more have been infected with it, with some part of that group enduring lingering symptoms. Millions of people remain out of work.

The ship is turning. Multiple massive economic support packages have passed — the most recent by the Democratic-controlled Congress and White House. Millions more people have been vaccinated against the virus than have contracted it over the past several months. But there’s still the nagging question: What could have been different?

Such questions are hard to answer in real time, depending on the slow gathering and analysis of information. But we're starting to find some answers, including ones that offer a pointed political lesson.

It’s likely that the government’s response to the pandemic led to hundreds of thousands of deaths that could have been prevented. And it’s likely that the pandemic response cost Donald Trump the presidency.

The first point is a particularly contentious one. In the past, there's been analysis comparing the U.S. response to other countries, finding it lacking. Last summer, for example, researchers compared the American response to other countries, showing how their more muscular approaches tamped down the relative death toll.

More recently, research from Andrew Atkeson of the University of California at Los Angeles determined that implementation of robust efforts to halt the spread of the virus last May — widespread testing, mask mandates — could have held the country’s death toll below 300,000 in total.

His model estimates that the country will reach 672,000 deaths overall as vaccines are rolled out, one of every 490 Americans alive at the beginning of last year. That’s a gap of nearly 400,000 deaths.

Trump didn't embrace such mechanisms.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were recommending the wearing of masks as early as April of last year, but Trump declined to do so. That helped bolster a partisan response to the pandemic, with Trump advocating for states to stay hands off — largely, it seems, out of concern that reductions in economic activity would hurt his reelection bid.

Trump is the worst president the United States ever has had. Thankfully, many, if not most, of Trump's destructive actions will be undone by the Biden administration and a Democratic congress.

However, what can't be undone are the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who are no longer with us because of Trump's horrible decision to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 and failure to implement a competent national response to the pandemic.

Everyone who voted for Trump in the 2016 election also bears some responsibility for those deaths. After all, it was an open secret that Trump disdained science and had no interest in making government a better servant of the people.

So when the pandemic hit and we needed a president who embraced science and a robust government response, all we had was a man in the White House who acted like a clown.

Which would have been funnier if almost 400,000 people hadn't died for no good reason because of Trump's antics.

Comments

[Manu Kumar]

How could you hold all the voters in favour of Trump responsible?? Did they all know that pandemic of such intensity would occur?? Every one who chooses a thing at any point in time expects it to function in a better way. But what if it doesn't like Donald Trump

Only time tells how something/someone turns out to be.

[Rain Trueax]

The hatred of the left always amazes me and how they find a way, as you just did, to blame Trump for everything that went wrong. How about Fauci saying in January that the US would not have to worry about this virus? How about his saying only health care workers needed masks?

Whatever Trump said or did not, we personally started isolating and using masks by March as we were capable of reading newspapers and didn't need a nanny state to tell us what to do-- why we also both are fully vaccinated now. Will that help? Science is still debating how much.

When it comes to blame, how about Cuomo and other governors, putting Covid positive people back in nursing homes, who had no way to care for them. Most of the choices for how much to shut down was left to the states. Some killed their economies and learned when they started out again it hadn't helped. Like California where now 51% of their Covid cases are their own variant. But never mind, it's all Trump's fault because he wasn't touchy feely and telling us constantly how much he cared. We'll see how that does now that you have that touchy feely guy (sometimes with women who didn't like it much). I voted for Hillary in '16 and doubt she'd have done any better with a virus where we were lied to by China and even our experts (like Fauci) had no clue how devastating it would be and still is. Biden back then didn't want to block entry to the US-- seems more in favor of it now.

Trump did a lot of things to try and get this under control, like sending military hospital ships to NYC, which I've read they didn't even use. He ordered ramping up of testing treatments, and moving money to get a vaccine ready earlier than usual, which is why it was here right after the election as decided. Also remember the ramp up of ventilators; so hospitals had them. Yes, he didn't get it all right. It was new and he was trying to also save an economy, you know the thing that pays government salaries and pensions. To me, where he went most wrong was how he behaved like a nut after he lost the election, proving it was good he was out of office; but what he did for the virus certainly never put 400,000 deaths on his head. We can blame ourselves when we don't use reasonable sense.

[Brian Hines]

Rain, you're wrong about Trump not being responsible for hundreds of thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths. Deborah Birx, Trump's White House pandemic coordinator, says that his screwups led to those deaths. Have a read:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/27/birx-tells-cnn-most-us-covid-deaths-could-have-been-mitigated-after-first-100000/

Excerpt:
-----------------
Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator under President Donald Trump, said most coronavirus deaths in the United States could have been prevented if the Trump administration had acted earlier and more decisively.

Birx made her comments in the CNN documentary “Covid War: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out,” a clip from which the network released Saturday. The full documentary will air 9 p.m. Sunday.

In it, CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta asked Birx how much of a difference she thinks it would have made had the United States “mitigated earlier, … paused earlier and actually done it,” referring to extending shutdowns, urging people to wear masks and implementing other steps to slow the spread of the virus.

“I look at it this way: The first time, we have an excuse. There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge,” Birx told Gupta. “All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”

[Rain Trueax]

She said the states should have seen the warnings with the first 100,000 with that surge. I guess you want a dictatorship where the President rules and the states have to obey. You might get that as totalitarianism is required to make people accept true socialism. You apparently get all your news from left wing sources. That bubble should make you happy but it won't work for everybody. As far as what Birx or any of them say now-- hindsight is perfect for those who are easily swayed. You ignored all the rest of what I said. Not unexpected given your cognitive bias. I suppose you also like the proposed mileage tax as after all, it will protect you and yours and cost those who have to live far from their jobs because of housing costs. We'll see how that all works out-- especially your desire for totalitarianism. It might bite the hand that's been feeding it in the end.

[tucson]

I, as usual, agree with Rain completely.

The vaccines wouldn't have been available so quickly if it weren't for Trump.

He stopped flights from China in January 2020. Democrats said, "over reaction", "racist", "xenophobic".

CNN is dishonest.

Such BS.