Unfortunately, yes. We do have Covid-19-deniers in Germany, anti-maskers (Maskengegner), libertarians of the far right crazy sort (Reichsbürger)… you name it. The difference is in the percentages (lower), the guns (fewer and mostly illegal) and the media (even the worst of the Springer Presse is a paragon of liberalism in the good sense of the word compared with Murdock).
And now the Robert Koch Institut reports 1,188 daily deaths in Germany, which according to your 1:4 ratio would be equivalent to ~4,500 daily deaths in the USA. By which I am in no way defending tanTrump, just pointig out that the situation is evolving and difficult to analyze and compare. My gut feeling would be that tanTrump is responsible for 50,000 - 75,000 additional deaths in the USA.
The mere existance of Trump in the White House meant that lots of states overrode their own cities and districts using all sorts of challenges to prevent them from implementing effective control - this was all done because the Trumpists politicised the Pandemic and the control measures in an effort to stoke up nationalism.
What it meant was that any and all pandemic control measures were portrayed by the right wing fascists as anti-American and an attack on presonal freedom and liberty.
It is absolutely inconceivable that this would have happened under a Democratic President and highly unlikely under any other Republican President.
The anti pandemic theme emanated from the white house, and at the behest of Trumpists - interestingly Trump can largely walk away from the blame here because that is exactly how he operates, he gets others to do the things they know he wants, and if it goes wrong he throws them under a bus and walks away.
So in summary, Trump is massively to blame for the inneffective response, and this was done because he thought it was in his political interests to stir up his fanbase and drag the Republican party with it with the aim of making the Republicans even more dependent upon him.
Yes he is a mass killer - murder is a very strong word but his actions certainly caused these deaths, and will continue to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands - even when Biden takes office he has to face the anti-vaxxers and Covid denialists, the seeds for which were expertly cultivated by Trump and his supporters.
No matter what Biden does, the effects of Trumps self aggrandisement will cause many more deaths, Biden could have a team knocking on every single household with vaccine in hand, there will still be a significant number who will refuse the vaccine based only upon the lies of Trump supporters, all of which have been encouraged and given comfort by Trump - this will result in deaths
This is one of the many things Trump did wrong. One of the many.
I’m not so sure about that. If anything, a Democratic president issuing such orders might have been perceived even more as an attack on personal freedom and liberty, although a Democratic administration would have probably still handled the pandemic better.
Out of 4 approaches, there is only 1 that leads to mask-and-restriction compliance by Trumpers:
a) A Democratic president orders, “put those masks on” = Trumper defiance against masks
b) A Democratic president says, “no need to put those masks on” = Trumpers don’t wear masks (why should they?)
c) A Republican president orders, “put those masks on” = Trumpers comply
d) A Republican president says, “no need to put those masks on” = Trumpers don’t wear masks (why should they?)
I’m too lazy to search up the thread, but I posted elsewhere that if the Russians dropped an 800kT hydrogen bomb on downtown Atlanta, it would only kill about 167,000 people. Compare that to the COVID death toll.
So yeah, I think we’re definitely in the neighborhood of mass murder, if not actually sitting on the front porch.
Also bears mentioning that many Trumpers believe COVID was a hostile enemy action. So we really do have people suggesting we do nothing after an adversary triggers an attack that’s the equivalent to a nuclear strike.
In what way does that moderate the responsibility of Trump who did rather more than not try, or try and get ignored.
The answer is, it does not moderate his responsibility one jot, but we are sure of one thing, every word and deed related to Trump and Covid was failure to set an example - even having been exposed and infected, and that is actually very charitable indeed
Given that Trump has supported and encouraged mask denial, minimizing the disease, politicizing the vaccine, and eschewing social distancing, and that his followers are the stupidest, most wretched assholes on Earth… never?
When are the dumb hicks that live and breathe Trump gonna start masking, social distancing, and vaccinating? When are the people terrified of Trump’s casual evil who don’t trust the vaccine because he’s been hyping how he’s personally responsible for it?
He’s such an incompetent clot of filth, he not only fucked up the response, he made it more difficult to fix his fuckup. In answer to your question, I dunno, a year, two? Long enough for the adults in the room to carry the burden while his stupid hicks keep it alive among themselves?
You left out when he told his followers to descend upon the Michigan governor to try and get lockdown orders overturned.
Spot on.
And, frankly, what a missed opportunity for a modern, almost gamified motivation/community-building process. That concept of fighting “World War Flu”, considerately implemented, could have had legs and be a crowning achievement of both public health and marketing for any government. Too bad so sad.
Early on, possibly before there was a single death in the US from COVID-19, I remember hearing expectations along the lines of 100,000 - 250,000 deaths in the US. Well, the deaths have been in that neighborhood (I have very big neighborhoods), so let’s say that this represents a well-organized response. I have no problems with blaming Trump for every death above 175,000 (the average of the two numbers above).
I think Roman Mars states the case very well, when discussing his father’s death due to Covid-19. From the What Trump can teach us about con law podcast.
He died because of politics, so I don’t think his death is out of bounds when it comes to talking about politics, because there is no medical, scientific, or rational reason why you wouldn’t take COVID on, except for political reasons. Therefore I think the politics of Trump, were a direct contributer to my father’s death and everyone should speak about it in this way, in my opinion.
I think it is very clear there is a cause and effect here, and we have a nation that represents 5% of the population and, I don’t know, 25% of the COVID cases. I mean that is not something that just happens. That happens because of neglect, and a lack of what government should do, and if there is one thing government should do it is the type of things that we can’t do individually. It should organize logistics and planning around things like pandemics, and building roads, and bridges, and stuff, that no company or person can do. They failed so dramatically in the past four years, and the result has been a quarter of million deaths, including a person close to me.
It’s weird how that horrible thing is now background noise to the extent that I completely forgot it.
We can make a ballpark estimate comparing deaths per million to a decent-but-not-perfect response such as, say, Canada. That’s 1107/M US v 441/M Canada. My not-great math puts that at 147,000 deaths to incompetence at the top.
From here:
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You’re neglecting the PPE issue. The federal government had the power to be the single source of PPE and distribute it to the states, but instead Trump told the states to compete against each other for it, and even stole some from them.
Trump didn’t use the authority he did have, and certainly didn’t try to get any more.
He listened to the wrong people. Like Hannity and Atlas.
You are correct, that is another one of his failings.
Biden probably won’t hold mass rallies where no one wears masks just to bolster his personal support
Yup. It has been a firehose of lies, horrors, and corruption.
Speaking of “decent-but-not-perfect” responses, as of a few days ago Canada had managed to get just over 0.5% of its population vaccinated against Covid-19, compared to 1.6% of U.S. residents.
I don’t like Trump, but claiming that he’s responsible for even a single Covid death is ridiculous. The people who died in the recent riot on the other hand…