The Uncounted Deaths
We all know that Trump’s incompetent and cruel response to the Coronavirus cost US lives. Now we’re getting a sense of just how many. During March and early April, the US recorded 8,128 deaths from COVID-19. But, and it’s a big but, there were another over 7,000 “excess deaths” during that time not attributed to the disease, but probably were. Here’s the graph:
“Excess deaths” is defined to be those deaths above the normal curve of mortality in the US. Were all these deaths attributable to Coronavirus? We don’t know because testing during that time was unavailable, and continues to be unavailable for millions of Americans. Only history will be able to tell the story of how many died in this pandemic once this crisis is over, but I think any objective person already knows the answer.
Of course they’re lying. The truth would make them look even more incompetent-if that is possible
1In Just Months, the Coronavirus Is Killing More Americans Than 20 Years of War in Vietnam.
‘The light at the end of the tunnel’ was an oft used phrase by presidents during the Vietnam war.
It was also used by the producer of this circus of death, incompetence, fraud and cruelty.
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Edit: “I pledged to seek an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We have made great progress toward that end.”
Trump has repeatedly revived the Vietnam War-tainted phrase “light at the end of the tunnel” during this pandemic and similarly claimed headway despite the increasing deaths.
article:
2https://theintercept.com/2020/04/27/in-just-months-the-coronavirus-kills-more-americans-than-20-years-of-war-in-vietnam/
The light at the end of the tunnel is most familiar to me in relation to near death experiences, so I guess it’s appropriate in some ways.
3Quite right, EJ. We know that COVID deaths are being undercounted; the way to find out the true number is to add to that official COVID total the difference between the expected and actual excess mortality, particularly for cardiovascular causes. Very glad people are noticing this already, especially as the usual suspects are loudly calling the current COVID totals exaggerated (narrator: they weren’t.).
4A couple of data sites I follow show a difference of almost 7000 deaths because one, Corvidtracking.com, only reports confirmed corvid cases. The Johns Hopkins site shows more deaths because it includes the probable numbers. The decline in the corvidtracking site could also be caused by a shortage of tests. unconfirmed deaths don’t count. No test, no confirmation.
5“That Doesn’t Do Anything”: Experts Warn Trump Plan for States to Test Just 2% of Residents Is Completely Inadequate
Edit: Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said that number is nowhere close to adequate.
“It’s about 6 to 7 million [tests],” said Jha, “and if that’s one-time, that doesn’t do anything.”
“It’s totally in our control to fix this. We should be spending $100 billion on the testing. We should just get it going. It’s just not that hard.”
“Perhaps most pathetically, it attempts to shirk obviously federal responsibilities by assigning them solely to states instead.” – Sen Patty Murray
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/28/doesnt-do-anything-experts-warn-trump-plan-states-test-just-2-residents-completely
6If a covid patients has a stoke at the evyer end, is the cuase of death attributed to covid or to the stroke? Any answers?
7The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an onrushing freight train.
8And just like polio, it appears that many of the people who survive have life long renal, pulmonary or neurological issues. FDR didn’t die from polio, but he struggled his whole life and died at 63!
9Slipstream you beat me to it.
10Since the number of deaths from auto accidents has dropped dramatically in the last couple of months, and the number of homicides has also gone down, as has the number of deaths due to seasonal flu, attributing the excess deaths to Covid-19 will actually be an UNDERESTIMATE; the true number of deaths due to Covid-19 will be LARGER than the difference between the two curves.
11When you go whole hog, don’t start squealing about it later on
Republicans made a deal with the devil — and the bill is coming due
Edit: Donald Trump’s approval ratings over the coronavirus pandemic are in free fall, having tumbled 10 points over the last month, to 39% in a new Emerson poll. This comports with the FiveThirtyEight tracking of Trump’s overall approval, which shows that after a short rally-round-the-flag response to the coronavirus, the public is starting to understand that the man who goes on TV and suggests injecting household cleaning products is a complete imbecile. That said, Trump’s overall approval numbers still aren’t dipping below his baseline of about 42%, which appears to be immovable.
That puts Republicans running in 2020, especially endangered incumbents in swing states, in quite a bind.
Yes, we’re talking about you, Susan Collins — along with other precarious GOP senators like Cory Gardner of Colorado, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Martha McSally of Arizona. To align themselves fully with the orange overlord is to alienate the possible swing voters who aren’t too keen on the “inject disinfectants” platform. But if they try to distance themselves from President Clorox Chewables too much, they risk bringing down Trump’s Twitter wrath unto them and alienating those base voters they will absolutely need to have any hope of surviving what looks to be a tough election cycle for their party.
Not that anyone should feel a moment of pity for any single Republican on Capitol Hill. Democrats gave Republicans a golden opportunity to remove Trump earlier this year, after the House of Representatives impeached the president in December on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to his blackmail scheme against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But rather than take that impeachment for the gift that it was — an opportunity to remove a chaotic presence who constantly undermines the party with his erratic behavior — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rallied his troops. With the sole exception of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, every single Republican voted to acquit Trump, avoiding the easy escape hatch of replacing him with Vice President Mike Pence, who may be a right-wing Christian dingbat but at least isn’t a chaos monkey who screws over everyone he meets, even his own political colleagues and supporters.
The conundrum Republicans created for themselves, by not dumping Trump when they had the chance, is evident in the fight between the president’s re-election campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
On Friday, Politico reported that the committee, which advises Senate candidates on their runs, issued a memo advising candidates, “Don’t defend Trump,” Instead, the memo suggested that when GOP candidates are asked by reporters or voters about Trump’s massive failures in dealing with either the coronavirus pandemic or the devastating economic fallout, they should try to change the subject and “attack China.”
From the standpoint of pure, ruthless politics, it’s good advice. Trump’s behavior has been indefensible, ages before the injecting-disinfectant debacle. Trump spent months ignoring the crisis, and even when he sluggishly began to deal with it, his major priority was to slow-walk the coronavirus testing that’s necessary to reopen the economy because he’s worried that a higher caseload makes him look bad. Trying to change the subject may be cynical and amoral, but it’s definitely a smart call for Republicans. If Collins, Gardner, Tillis and other Republicans in tough races want to get voters above that 42% Trumpian baseline, they need to portray themselves as not as incompetent as their massively incompetent leader.
A smart party leader would let down-ballot candidates distance themselves from him, if that’s what it takes to win. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is well known for telling members of her caucus they can criticize her publicly, if that’s what it takes to win a close race.
But Trump, who has no loyalty to anyone but himself, was predictably enraged by the memo and lashed out, sending political adviser Justin Clark out to threaten Republicans who tried to distance themselves from Trump by saying, “Candidates will listen to the bad advice in this memo at their own peril” and “Trump enjoys unprecedented support among Republican voters.”
That may be true, but with anyone outside the core Republican cult movement, Trump is increasingly and correctly viewed as the reason this country is falling apart. Senators like Gardner, Collins, Tillis, McSally, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Steve Daines of Montana, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and possibly even McConnell himself will need to snag at least a few Trump-skeptical voters if they’re going to win and hold onto their Senate majority.
To make it worse, even if Republicans do back up Trump’s erratic views and behavior through the coronavirus crisis, he’s likely to throw them under the bus for their loyalty.
That’s what happened to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, after all. Kemp picked up on Trump’s extremely unsubtle hints that he wanted states to “reopen” and let the virus run rampant, in the misguided belief that doing so will lead to an economic recovery. (In fact, odds are that such a reopening will just make more people sick — and make the economy worse.) Kemp also made doubly sure that was what Trump wanted by talking to the president privately and getting his support.
Then, when Kemp announced his plan to reopen Georgia, Trump — who has no shame and feels no loyalty to anyone — acted surprised by all this, saying he “wasn’t happy” with Kemp’s choices, which had clearly gone too far. It’s no mystery what Trump’s game is here: He wants to claim he’s trying to “reopen” America, but also wants no responsibility for the possible death and economic devastation that might cause. He’ll take credit for anything that goes well, of course, but anything that goes wrong is foisted on the governors.
There’s simply no winning with this guy, and Republicans should have realized that long ago. Sure, there would have been some short-term political pain as the base whined and cried about the removal of Trump, but in the long run, Republicans would have been much better off without him. Pelosi gave them the gift-wrapped opportunity they needed to rid themselves of this chaos-demon before he screwed them over in ways they legitimately may never recover from. They turned her gift down, and now they’re looking at Great Depression levels of unemployment, soaring death rates and a president who looks at this disaster and starts spitballing about how maybe the solution can be found in the household products aisle at Walgreens.
But feel absolutely no pity for Republicans. Yeah, and I mean none. They made their deal with the devil and it looks like the bill is coming due.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/republicans-made-a-deal-with-the-devil-and-the-bill-is-coming-due/
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