After 210,000 Americans Die the Coronavirus Catches Up With Donald Trump

Trump Hugging Flag

By Makheru Bradley

October 8, 2020 1:30PM
Makheru Bradley
Bradley

Arrogance has its limitations: The chickens finally came home to roost

During the evening of October 1, President Donald Trump received a positive test for the coronavirus. He proceeded to do an interview with Fox News, but did not inform the American public of his test results. Trump supposedly waited for a more thorough test, before announcing at 12:45 a.m. that he and his wife had tested positive for coronavirus.

On October 2, the 74-year-old president was rushed to Walter Reed Medical Center after experiencing a fever and a sudden drop in his oxygen levels. Those symptoms don’t usually show up that early in cases of coronavirus, which suggests that Trump was probably positive for several days before his announcement.

Trump’s disregard for COVID safety guidelines was on full display at the White House event for his SCOTUS nominee

While the September 26 event was held in the Rose Garden, a reception was held afterwards inside the White House. Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, said that guests were told they did not need to wear face masks after testing negative. Over 150 people were in close contact during the reception, which had all of the trappings of a COVID-19 super spreading event. Jenkins subsequently tested positive for coronavirus. As of October 5, Trump and at least 13 others, including Senators Thom Tillis, Mike Lee and Ron Johnson have tested positive. This is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

One of the best-known "super-spreader" events was a wedding in Millinocket, Maine, where 65 people were in attendance. Over 175 infections have been connected to the wedding, and seven of those people died.

Trump’s utterly reckless and neglectful behavior has finally caught up with him. If that recklessness and neglect only affected him, it would be a private family matter. However, Trump’s crass ineptitude and colossal ignorance towards COVID-19 has impacted the health and well-being of American citizens who’ve suffered 7.5 million cases and 210,000 deaths from the coronavirus as of this writing. Between the first confirmed US coronavirus case on January 22, 2020 and June 2020, US workers filed 36 million unemployment claims. Although U.S. employers brought back 661,000 workers in September, many major US corporations continue to announce layoffs including 28,000 at Disney and 31,000 between American Airlines and United Airlines. Unlike jobs, the lives lost are permanent. Trump’s failure to act was an absolute dereliction of duty, worthy of being fired under normal circumstances.

Stat News inquired, “Had American leaders taken the decisive, early measures that several other nations took when they had exactly the same information the U.S. did, at exactly the same time in their experience of the novel coronavirus, how many of these Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented?

That isn’t a hypothetical question. And the answer that emerges from a direct comparison of the fatalities in and policies of the U.S. and other countries — South Korea, Australia, Germany, and Singapore — indicates that between 70% and 99% of the Americans who died from this pandemic might have been saved by measures demonstrated by others to have been feasible.”

Afrikan Americans have suffered disproportionate infections and deaths from COVID-19

Afrikan Americans who comprise 12.4% of the US population have experienced 21.5% of all deaths where the race is known. When APM Research released their September 15 report, 39,718 Black people were known to have lost their lives to COVID-19. That was an increase of 3,786 deaths among Blacks compared to their previous report four weeks earlier. Based on over 900 Afrikan Americans dying per week our total dead as of September 24 would have been over 40,000.

The report stated: For each 100,000 Americans (of their respective group), about 98 Blacks have died from the coronavirus, the highest actual mortality rate of all groups—above Asians (40), Whites (47), Latinos (65), Pacific Islanders (72) and Indigenous people (82). This is an enormous tragedy which is the result of centuries of economic and health disparities in the United States and Trump’s dereliction of duty.

101 years ago President Woodrow Wilson downplayed the Spanish Flu then it struck him. Does that sound familiar?

During the last months of World War I, in 1918, a disease called the “Spanish Flu" began to sweep across the world. Just like President Trump during the early outbreak of COVID-19, President Woodrow Wilson downplayed the significance of the disease. Presidential historian Tevi Troy said, “The federal response to the influenza outbreak in 1918 can best be described as neglectful. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died without President Wilson saying anything or mobilizing nonmilitary components of the U.S. government to help the civilian population.” For his gross negligence, Troy calls Wilson “the worst U.S. president in terms of handling a disaster.”

(Note: The “Spanish Flu” killed an estimated 675,000 Americans --28% of the US population.)

President Wilson contracted the illness shortly after arriving in Paris, in April 1919, for the peace talks. That news was initially hidden from the American public. Six months later, Wilson suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and blind, and effectively incapacitated as president. He died in February 1924, three years after leaving office.

We don’t know what the future holds for President Trump, who has been given an aggressive regimen of experimental coronavirus drugs. What we do know is that most of the death and damage could have been avoided with common sense approach to the crisis. Whether Trump survives and learns or not, the rest of us have to take this disease seriously at all times.

For more from the author, follow his blog Makheru Speaks.

Support Black Business
Kwanzaa Charlotte Business Directory
advertise here