The whole world is watching America's failure

[Zorro]

It’s remarkable to think that for all the damage President Trump had done to America’s image in the world before the beginning of this year, he could wound it even further. But has he ever.

As The Post’s Rick Noack reports, people in other countries are simply gob smacked at what a terrible job the United States is doing in controlling the novel coronavirus pandemic:

As coronavirus cases surge in the U.S. South and West, health experts in countries with falling case numbers are watching with a growing sense of alarm and disbelief, with many wondering why virus-stricken U.S. states continue to reopen and why the advice of scientists is often ignored.

“It really does feel like the U.S. has given up,” said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand — a country that has confirmed only three new cases over the last three weeks and where citizens have now largely returned to their pre-coronavirus routines.

Trump likes to say that after he was elected, respect for the United States was restored, but the truth is precisely the opposite. Even before the pandemic, Trump couldn’t have done more to degrade America’s standing than if that was his explicit goal. Not even George W. Bush, whose disastrous invasion of Iraq drew condemnation across the globe, did as much to undermine our image abroad.

Just the fact that the United States would elect such a vulgar, ignorant, corrupt buffoon was bad enough. But now our government’s incompetence is helping cause the bodies to pile up — and, it would be reasonable for other countries to worry, potentially affecting their own efforts to contain the virus. While international travel has been drastically reduced, it won’t be shut down forever. If you were watching what’s happening in the U.S. — where we have 2.2 million cases of covid-19 and almost 120,000 deaths, more than twice as much as any other country on both counts — would you be eager to welcome U.S. visitors?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/19/whole-world-is-watching-americas-failure/

[soothsayer]

1. They're going to have to ban us

[jayschool2013]

2. Yep.

I've been convinced for some time that COVID-19 and gun deaths are going to occupy the same "nothing-we-can-do-about-it" space in our public health conversations. We are an ungovernable mess of nihilists and conspiracy theorists hell-bent on destroying the gains made in civil society over the last century, possibly longer.

In short, we have become a cult of death that has elevated fetuses and white-collar criminals to deity status.

Who wants viral Americans invading their countries?