How many needless Covid-19 deaths were caused by delays in responding?

Most of them

By ISAAC SEBENIUS and JAMES K. SEBENIUS
StatNews, JUNE 19, 202

EXCERPT...

To compare each country’s responses to the pandemic on a consistent basis, we turned to the work of an Oxford University team that has constructed a stringency index based on 13 policy responses (lockdowns, border closings, tests, etc.) to measure how strongly each country responded over time. The Oxford index shows that 14 days from the date of the 15th confirmed case in each country — a vital early window for action — the U.S. response to the outbreak lagged behind the others by miles. The U.S. stringency score of 5.7 at that point was 25% of Australia’s (23), 23% of Germany’s (25), 18% of Singapore’s (32), and only 15% of South Korea’s (38).

Related: Rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations underscore the long road ahead
Due to exponential viral spread, our delay in action was devastating. In the wake of the U.S. response, 117,858 Americans died in the four months following the first 15 confirmed cases. After an equivalent period, Germany suffered only 8,863 casualties. Scaling up the German population of 83.7 million to America’s 331 million, a U.S.-sized Germany would have suffered 35,049 Covid-19 deaths. So if the U.S. had acted as effectively as Germany, 70% of U.S. coronavirus deaths might have been prevented.

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https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/19/faster-response-prevented-most-us-covid-19-deaths/

Trump and Kushner must be prosecuted for crimes against humanity

Written by David Atkins / Washington Monthly August 1, 2020 Commentary

EXCERPT...

But the latest report from Vanity Fair implicates both Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner of an unspeakable horror orders of magnitude greater. Instead of implementing a comprehensive and aggressive national testing plan the pandemic team originally recommended, Kushner scuttled it. The president and his son-in-law were instead content to allow tens of thousands of Americans die as long as they were mostly people of color, and hailing from Democratic states and counties. Not only that, they saw it as a political opportunity to both cull the numbers of opposing voters and lay blame on Democratic governors at the same time:

Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.

SNIP...

We even lack the vocabulary to even describe it. “Gross negligence” doesn’t reach the level of the crime. “Murder” is lurid, but frankly not a comprehensive enough word to describe the death of 140,000. “Treason” comes to mind when considering that the President of the United States knowingly allowed 140,000 Americans to die because they were mostly his political opponents–but despite his Russia entanglements, there is no direct evidence he did so on behalf of a foreign power.

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https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/01/trump-and-kushner-must-be-prosecuted-for-crimes-against-humanity/