A new report in the British medical journal The Lancet points to how many deaths were caused by Donald Trump’s policies, as well as the coronavirus. As for deaths from COVID-19, the study — written by a team of more than 30 physicians and public health experts — points to the more than 450,000 deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus, and it says that about 40 percent of them “could have been averted” if the U.S. death rate matched that from Group of Seven members Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. But Trump bungled the handling of the coronavirus from its onset.
The experts make broader critiques that range from racism to climate change in the Trump era.
“Trump exploited low and middle-income white people’s anger over their deteriorating life prospects to mobilize racial animus and xenophobia and enlist their support for policies that benefit high-income people and corporations and threaten health,” the authors write, according to Mother Jones. “His signature legislative achievement, a trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and high-income individuals, opened a budget hole that he used to justify cutting food subsidies and health care.”
As for a solution, the authors say to give the wealthy another tax break to tax the rich.
Tax the rich, embrace anti-racist politics, end the privatization of health care services, and institute voting rights and immigration reform because everything affects public health.
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The Lancet, a respected medical journal, points to a range of actions by former President Donald Trump on the pandemic that have drawn widespread condemnation from experts, such as undermining messaging on masks’ importance.
“His refusal to develop a national strategy worsened shortages of personal protective equipment and diagnostic tests,” it says. “President Trump politicized mask-wearing and school reopenings and convened indoor events attended by thousands, where masks were discouraged and physical distancing was impossible.”
And in fact, Trump mocked protective face masks and held super-spreader events, so the authors’ report isn’t shocking. As president, Trump was supposed to keep Americans safe, but he did the opposite of that. The report determined that hundreds of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily due to former President Trump’s policies—even before the pandemic hit. That’s a lot of blood on Trump’s hands.
You can read the Lancet report here.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
