American carnage: What we are now learning about Trump's nightmarish mishandling of COVID

[marmar]

American carnage: What we are now learning about Trump's nightmarish mishandling of COVID
Despite his desire to be seen as the man who single-handedly created the vaccines, Trump just got people killed

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
PUBLISHED JUNE 30, 2021 10:01AM


(Salon) There are a lot of books coming out over the next few months that chronicled the final days of the Trump administration and it's pretty clear there are a lot of stories to tell. Of course, there is also a burning desire on the part of some members of Trump's entourage to buff up their severely tarnished reputations.

Michael Wolff of "Fire and Fury" fame has a new book coming out about the post-election period called "Landslide" that sounds as though it will be as lurid and gossipy as his previous Trump book. ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl's book called "Betrayal" (which I referenced in this piece about Bill Barr on Monday) appears to take a look at the same period as another new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender called "Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost." It makes sense that there would be a number of books about the election, Trump's Big Lie and the subsequent nsurrection. The assault on democracy is the biggest political story of our time and it's still unfolding.

But I think the most serious story of the Trump administration and granted, it's hard to choose, has to be the massive, overwhelming failure to deal with the COVID pandemic that's killed over 600,000 people and counting. I still can't quite wrap my mind around that number or the fact that the leadership of the United States of America was so inept. According to yet another new book, aptly entitled "Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History," it was all actually much worse than we even thought.

The authors, Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, tell the coronavirus story from the perspective of the science advisers as well as the political people around Trump who were desperately trying to get him to take the problem seriously. We knew from Bob Woodward's earlier reporting that Trump had consciously made the decision to "downplay" the virus, ostensibly to keep people from panicking. Nobody really believed that, of course. It was obvious that he was "downplaying" the virus because he was afraid that the stock market would panic and that the ensuring economic turmoil would cost him the election. It seemingly never even occurred to him that mass deaths might be a bigger drag on his campaign. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/06/30/american-carnage-what-we-are-now-learning-about-trumps-nightmarish-mishandling-of-covid/

[Left-face]

1. Too many simply don't care.

He's still banking on enough people to not care about 600,000 deaths and counting and it seems they really don't care. I have personally heard several people say it is a necessary culling of the herds despite the fact that many of the dead are their own family members and friends. The human capacity to not care about cruelty of this scale isn't exactly without precedent.

[CrispyQ]

2. Good read.

This:

This book reinforces the story that we already knew which is that the death toll in the U.S. from the pandemic is so high largely because the president of the United States at the time was an incompetent narcissist who was incapable of handling the crisis. So instead he said it was all bad press and poor optics and tried to happy talk his way out of it. It ended up killing people. A lot of people. Despite his desire to be seen as the man who single-handedly created the vaccines and saved the world, his followers heard him "downplay" the virus and they believed him. Now many of them are refusing to get the shots and Trump's American carnage continues to this day.

[EYESORE 9001]

3. '... never even occurred to him that mass deaths might be a bigger drag on his campaign...'

He thought COVID-19 would eliminate those who would vote against him, seeing that minorities were affected disproportionately.

[liberalmuse]

4. Any time I hear the Covid death and disability number

I’m filled with incredible rage. The US had the capability of being the world’s leader on this and could have helped to alleviate suffering and deaths. But the criminal GOP and their ridiculously evil and self-absorbed puppet willingly made things worse and are culpable in at least a half million deaths in this country. And yet tens of millions of Americans wanted this reign of utter corruption and malfeasance to continue.

[WA-03 Democrat]

6. It was premeditated murder

He knew it would kill people. He did not want it to effect his power. COVID deaths should have been under 50k.

He was wrong. He could shoot 600,000 fellow Americans and people would still vote for him.

It was genocide. His pea brain thought it would kill Democrats in the urban areas. He bet with the virus. I predict that bet for death or Donald will be the end of the republicans. Their tribe is going to suffer. Just like a boomerang on a cartoon. I have no glee is seeing any one suffer or die.

Remember, the big lie can never admit it was wrong ever.

Trump is our Stalin/Hitler/Mao/Pol Pot all in an ill fitted suit with a red tie tied incorrectly.

[LastDemocratInSC]

7. Your final sentence is a gem.

And it's also true.

[liberalmuse]

5. Any time I hear the Covid death and disability numbers

I’m filled with incredible rage. The US had the capability of being the world’s leader on this and could have helped to alleviate suffering and deaths. But the criminal GOP and their ridiculously evil and self-absorbed puppet willingly made things worse and are culpable in at least a half million deaths in this country. And yet tens of millions of Americans wanted this reign of utter corruption and malfeasance to continue.

[bahboo]

8. blood is on his fucking hands....

he should have been Mussolinied....

[halfulglas]

9. And the COVID cases are actually undercounted.

Despite the RWs that claim the numbers are inflated, the truth is the number of cases and the number of deaths of COVID are undercounted. I use myself as an example in that last July I had 11 days of high fever and severe headache that as soon as the meds wore off I could actually feel the fever rising again, the throbbing top headache plus other symptoms. I knew I had it but since I'm retired I didn't have to report to anyone and didn't want my kids exposed just to take me for a test. I wasn't about to go to the ER as I didn't have severe respiratory issues. I had a good friend leaving ice tea and other liquids at my door. How many other people did the same? I never did have the test so I don't show up in the statistics. In most areas deaths from COVID are not counted as COVID unless there was a positive test or hospitalization.

I had a Lyft driver who told me his wife, a nurse, had had COVID and he never had any symptoms. His wife asked him during his last visit with his doctor for something else to ask for a COVID antibody test and he was surprised (but she wasn't) to show he had had COVID some time in the previous months.

But Trump and his administration's sheer incompetence in handling COVID convinced many people to vote against Trump. My good friend who has voted Republican all her life because her family was Republican and actually voted for him in 2016, voted for Biden in 2020 because he was so incompetent. Unfortunately she will probably vote R next year because she doesn't believe the whole tribe is sick and we almost never talk politics.

[marmar]

11. Absolutely. ......

..... Think about how many people who had it, but were able to manage the symptoms at home and never sought care or testing, and of the number of asymptomatic carriers who were never tested.

[BigmanPigman]

10. How can we successfully try him for genocide?