Former President Donald Trump must take responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans from the Coronavirus due to the failure of his public policies and his refusal to acknowledge the extent of the problem. This according to a study made by the British medical journal The Lancet.
As of now, almost 470,000 Americans have died from the Coronavirus. The country has both the highest rate of infection and the highest rate of mortality from Covid-19 in the world. The authors of the report cited Donald Trump’s politicization and repudiation of science throughout his presidency as having contributed to what they call his “appalling response” to the crisis. This, they say, expedited the spread of the Coronavirus in America.
“Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic—compounded by his efforts to dismantle the USA’s already weakened public health infrastructure and the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) coverage expansions—has caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths,” they wrote. “His elimination of the National Security Council’s global health security team, and a 2017 hiring freeze that left almost 700 positions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unfilled, compromised preparedness.”
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According to this report, as many as 40% of the deaths in America from Covid-19 would have been avoided had the U.S. experienced the same fatality rates from the virus as experienced in other high-income G7 countries. The reason for this was Donald Trump’s refusal to even acknowledge that there was a problem and his politicizing any responses to it.
“Instead of galvanizing the US populace to fight the pandemic, President Trump publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, and eschewed international cooperation,” they explained.
“His refusal to develop a national strategy worsened shortages of personal protective equipment and diagnostic tests. President Trump politicized mask-wearing and school re-openings and convened indoor events attended by thousands, where masks were discouraged and physical distancing was impossible.”
“President Trump’s time in office brought misfortune to the USA and the planet. In 2020 alone he expedited the spread of COVID-19 in the USA,” they said. “Trump’s appalling response to 2020’s crises culminated a presidential term suffused with health-damaging policies and pronouncements.”
The authors cite all of President Trump’s policies related to health care and science from the day on which he took office, and not just what he did in his last 10 months in office, as contributing to America’s catastrophic response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the authors may have politicized their assessments. They spend as much time decrying general political policies in America, from taxes to deregulation, as they do dealing superficially with how Donald Trump handled the Covid-19 crisis. The report digresses at times into assessments of political trends and public policies in the United States over the last fifty years. The authors have revealed their own political biases in their words which will surely be used by some to dismiss their conclusions.
Yes it is true that all of these things must be taken into consideration when attempting to understand why the United States reacted as it did during the crisis. But this should have been tempered by explanations of how American cultural attitudes affected how individuals responded, as well as showing how Americans differ from region to region.
The separation of powers in American government, with each of the fifty states having its own policies and laws, with their own forms of legal sovereignty apart from the Federal government, also played a major part in the difficulties America experienced in the past year. Some states shut down completely while others took little or no actions.
The Lancet began as an independent, international weekly general medical journal founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley. Since its first issue (October 5, 1823), the journal has strived to make science widely available so that medicine can serve, and transform society, and positively impact the lives of people.
