The death toll in the United States has doubled in less than 4 months after the 100,000 benchmark, and as autumn approaches, there is little chance of containing contagion, experts say.
Last March 22, 2020 at 4:46 CEST
Donald Trump attended one of his briefings on the coronavirus at the White House on April 17 and, in a rare moment of candor, spoke brazenly about his projections about how many Americans might die from the disease.
“Right now we’re probably headed for 60, maybe 65,000,” he said, adding, “One is too much. I say, there are too many. “
If a coronavirus death is too much, then the president of the United States has much to explain. Its projection of a total death toll of 60,000 surpassed on May 1, just two weeks after its completion.
At the end of this month, the grim milestone of the 100,000 dead and now, less than 4 months later, the death toll has doubled again, with the virus reaching the mark of 200,000 with a windy abandonment.
Covid-19’s American delight has groundhog Day quality. In March, there was a public outing that, under Trump, protection equipment was lacking to remain on fitness personnel, tests for the coronavirus were woefully inadequate, and black Americans were dying in grotesquely disproportionate numbers.
Today, six months later, we hear precisely the same regrets. “Here’s a topic,” said Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in San Diego. “Recreate the crime. We keep doing it over and over again. »
With autumn on the horizon, when colder weather is likely to bring millions of people inland, where the virus can spread more easily, and with the return of schools acting as disease incubator giants, America is about to wake up abruptly. There is simply no possibility of containing contagion as new cases continue at around 35,000 a day.
In March, the Guardian asked Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy researcher at the Center for Global Development, to lead the US government’s reaction to the U. S. government. But it’s not the first time Ebola in 2014, which would provide its views on how the pandemic is being handled. “one of the biggest messes of fundamental governance in fashionable times. “
We returned to Konyndyk to ask him how he sees it now as the country crosses the devastating 200,000-death mark. “I think my research went very well, ” he said. ” We’re on our way to having a quarter of a million Americans dead through the end of the year with no explanation as to why it happened. All this can be prevented. So yes, it’s a leadership failure of astonishing proportions.
When the number of coronavirus infections began to increase in the United States in March, the Trump administration’s inability to temporarily mobilize a national reaction caused a severe shortage of protective devices across the country. Hospital staff and other essential staff were exposed to -Public danger after inadequate stocks of masks, gowns and disinfectants ran out, which led some medical staff members to improvise the PPE from piles of handkerchiefs and led nurses to demonstrate outdoors in the White House.
The scarcity of PPE has been a major factor in the tragic loss of life among fitness personnel. Guardian’s assignment with Kaiser Health News, Lost on the frontline, met 1,150 medical staff members who died from Covid-19 and who were the virus at work.
Despite such tragedies, America is still remarkably ill-prepared. The president of the American Medical Association, Susan Bailey, said last week that critical shortages of PPE persist, “and in many tactics things have gotten worse. “
In many hospital systems, by adding Scripps Health in San Diego, where Topol is headquartered, the form of maximum effective protection, N95 masks, is still rationed.
“Why the Trump administration, which has spent billions of dollars rescuing businesses, hasn’t invested in protecting Americans with the coverage we can afford, it’s a mystery to me,” Topol said.
The United States has had trouble providing sufficient diagnostic evidence for the virus since the onset of the pandemic. From the outset, Trump was reluctant to engage with the federal government on a national crusade to obtain evidence on a scale that could simply involve the disease.
As a result, U. S. testing remains insufficient to this day, with no sign of any attempt by Trump’s leadership to resolve the issue; in fact, the number of tests is declining, from more than 800,000 tests consistent with the day of July to approximately 600,000 tests today.
Daily testing is well below the capacity of 20 million tests, according to the day Harvard’s Edmond Safra Center has estimated to be mandatory for an effective reopening of the economy.
Individual parts of a coronavirus checkup are also scarce. “There aren’t enough swabs, there aren’t enough reagents, we haven’t invested in the quick checkup you had now,” Topol said.
The scarcity of evidence may be directly similar to Trump’s opposition. The president of the United States has opposed more evidence, arguing that this leads to a higher number of cases shown, which is bad for his political position.
In fact, clinical understanding is the opposite: if you increase tests, it will allow you to decrease the number of cases, and the number of deaths, by allowing you to identify and isolate those infected.
Trump has imposed his resistance to testing at the country’s most sensible public fitness agency. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), led by its director, Dr. Robert Redfield, replaced their official recommendations after having the support of White Home.
The new rules imply that other people who don’t have Covid-19 symptoms don’t want to get tested, which opposes clinical thinking: asymptomatic Americans are exactly the ones who want to get tested to the fullest because they can infect others undetected. .
“It’s mind-blowing, ” Konyndyk. No I have no idea how Redfield has yet resigned. He adhered to absolutely indefensible policies. “
Public fitness experts fear that a consistent and transparent message is imperative in fighting a pandemic. Trump’s message is at least largely consistent, but also fatally misleading.
From the outset, the president downplayed the severity and danger of the virus and denigrated undeniable strategies to reduce its spread, adding mask, refusing to wear a mask in public until July 11 and predicted that the coronavirus would miraculously disappear, a claim he repeated. in bureaucracy until last week when he declared that the United States was “turning the corner. “
We now know that Trump’s reassuring speech is a lie to the American people. Recorded interviews published through journalist Bob Woodward for his new book, Rage, record Trump in February, admitting that he knew full well that the virus was “something fatal” and that he minimized it “because I don’t need to panic. “
Not creating panic is one thing. Not acting to prevent the deaths of thousands of Americans is another.
One of the most distressing facets of the Covid crisis in the United States has been that the disease has disproportionately affected African-Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities.
Knowledge recommends that, nationally, blacks are two to three times more likely to die of Covid-19 than white Americans. In some parts of the United States, the Gulf is even more pronounced, and Minnesota Latinos test positive for the virus. seven times higher than the white population rate.
Trump’s leadership has tried to rule out racial inequality from Covid’s effects by blaming the underlying comorities such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. Health experts, however, have called for a closer look at what lies behind these comorities, which flourish in poverty.
Minority teams are more likely to live in tight homes where the virus can spread smoothly, and frontline minority personnel are disproportionately forced to continue fleeing the house even in times of increased contagion. Americans have equivalent access to medical tests and treatments.
Although these racial disparities were revealed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Trump administration turned out to have done little to verify them. CDC has been criticized for not recording complete and up-to-date records of Covid-19 instances. and deaths of racial organizations.
The only domain in which the federal government has been very active in reaction to the pandemic has been to press for immediate approval of any coronavirus vaccine. Trump introduced Operation Warp Speed in May and has since continually promised early access to a vaccine, predicting that he would possibly even be in a position, conveniently, before the November 3 presidential election.
Trump’s use of a vaccine’s prospect as an election tool has raised fears that he will policy the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal firm that will in the end have the strength to approve or reject any new vaccine, Topol said. fda commissioner Stephen Hahn has already committed two basic violations of clinical protocol.
He granted an emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine after Trump falsely declared it a “miracle drug. “Hahn also gave false data for which he later apologized at a Trump press convention calling for a “historic breakthrough” in the recovering plasma.
“We have an FDA that is complicit in issuing false and reckless approvals. This is a smart foundation for taking the biggest public aptitude resolution in generations: whether to pass a vaccine,” Topol said.
Any wrong step in Trump’s leadership in managing the launch of a vaccine can have dramatic consequences. Concerns about the protection or effectiveness of a vaccine are already high, with 35% of Americans in a recent Gallup vote saying they would disagree to be vaccinated even if the product is loose and fully FDA approved.