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Forget Greatness: Just Being as Good as Canada Would Have Saved 100K American Lives

Published 2020-09-09 by Cory Allen Heidelberger

Leadership matters. Competence matters. The bully pulpit matters. Elections matter.

In 2016, we elected a self-absorbed, ineducable celebrity whose shoddy businesses repeatedly went bankrupt to lead the United States of America. For four years, that celebrity has demonstrated no leadership or competence. He has perverted the bully pulpit from Theodore Rooseveltian ideal to Biff Tannenite disgrace.

And because we elected an incompetent bully, over 100,000 Americans are dead who would not be if we had elected competent leaders like those piloting other civilized nations through the coronavirus pandemic:

  • If the US had the same death rate as the European Union overall, nearly 84,000 Americans wouldn’t have died from Covid-19 (out of the nearly 190,000 who have died so far).
  • If the US had the same death rate as Canada, nearly 109,000 Americans wouldn’t have died from Covid-19.
  • If the US had the same death rate as Germany, more than 152,000 Americans wouldn’t have died from Covid-19.
  • If the US had the same death rate as Australia, more than 179,000 Americans wouldn’t have died from Covid-19.
  • If the US had the same death rate as Japan, more than 185,000 Americans wouldn’t have died from Covid-19 [German Lopez, “If the US Had Canada’s Covid-19 Death Rate, 100,000 More Americans Would Likely Be Alive Today,” Vox, 2020.09.09].

This mass death was not inevitable, Kristi. You’re traipsing about the country campaigning for the man who bears responsibility for many of those unnecessary, avoidable deaths:

…a lot of this is on Trump. As cases climbed in the US, the president abdicated problems with testing to local, state, and private actors; pushed states to reopen way too early to supposedly “LIBERATE” their economies; spoke negatively about masks while refusing to wear one himself; and backed unproven and even dangerous approaches to treating Covid-19, including injecting bleach. Each of these failures compounded and led to the current US death toll — and local and state governments, as hard as some tried, simply don’t have the resources to fight a pandemic on their own.

Compare that to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. These are leaders all over the political spectrum, but they took the pandemic seriously — building up testing, advocating for mask-wearing, encouraging social distancing, or all of the above. And their countries are much better off [German, 2020.09.09].

Elections matter. If you adopt some lazy false equivalency to excuse yourself from voting for imperfect new leaders this November while you wait for some fantasy ideal leader, this Biff Tannen Administration continue its reign of error, and more of our friends and neighbors will die from causes we can prevent.

Forget greatness; replace deadly viral incompetence in the White House with simple goodness.

Published in national

14 Comments

  2. Steve

    More intellectually dishonest blogging.

    2020-09-09
  3. jerry

    More ignoring the facts Steve. Your boy trump lied and 200,000 Americans died.

    2020-09-09
  5. jerry

    So then, trump lied and China didn’t. So why are we rattling the pots and pans and beating on war drums against them when it was us, the US who crapped the bed. China told everyone who would listen and then we told everyone else that this covid was real and dangerous and yet we failed to heed our own warnings…Except for one guy, just one wack a doodle guy in the White House, Peter Navarro. The dumbest arse on the block said that this was gonna be bad

    ” Trade Adviser Warned White House in January of Risks of a Pandemic
    A memo from Peter Navarro is the most direct warning known to have circulated at a key moment among top administration officials.” New York Times

    Damn, we are incompetent when we have republicans in positions of power.

    2020-09-09
  7. Robin Friday

    That’s what so many of us tried to tell him in the beginning and since the beginning. You can’t ignore science, and you can’t bury it. It will come back to show you when you’re wrong. Better to learn from it and learn with it than try to bury it.

    2020-09-09
  8. mtr

    Hopefully the President will make like a tree and get out of here.

    2020-09-09
  9. jerry

    At the airports, nothing. America has given up. The Covid19 has been the gnat that has defeated a giant. Now we wait until January to get a president that knows how to fight, until then, buckle up.

    “International travel looks vastly different this summer, especially for American fliers. One of the biggest differences, according to U.S. travelers who have flown abroad amid the pandemic: COVID-19 screening protocols are much more effective at airports in other countries. Josh Yearian is one American passenger who noticed the discrepancy when he traveled between Chicago and Dubai at the end of July.” https://www.cntraveler.com/story/covid-19-screenings-at-us-airports-remain-inconsistent

    Remember, Chicago and Dallas are International hubs whose flights come into South Dakota. Looks like it’s gonna be a long fall, not only seasonal.

    2020-09-09
  10. jerry

    Pssst, does anyone think that now that we know the truth about trumps lies, that we should now ask, how much did he and his family make on the side with the PPE production. Instead of going into making what we needed for the states, including little old South Dakota, trump and his family did private deals to private company’s that charged many times over what was the going rate.

    “The Trump administration has so far resisted calls to use a Cold War-era law to help fill gaps in medical supplies that are badly needed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

    Many governors and health officials have been pleading with President Trump to use his authority under the Defense Production Act to get the federal government more directly involved in the buying and distribution of items like ventilators and face masks — items that have been in short supply, with states competing for them.” https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/821285204/trump-sends-mixed-messages-about-invoking-defense-production-act

    How about Sanford and the fakey tests they did that everyone and their damn brother knew was a waste of time, money and resources? Yeah, death did not take a holiday when Covid came to town, it was the chaos needed to line many political pockets.

    2020-09-09
  11. Debbo

    Remember when little Jerod said the national stockpiles were his? And they hijacked various state’s PPE shipments?

    Yeah, those nefarious acts led directly to deaths, especially of medical pros.

    A long prison sentence is too good for the trump Crime Family.

    2020-09-10
  12. Cory Allen Heidelberger

    Steve, I lie to neither myself nor anyone else.

    Please elaborate: do you contend Trump as shown leadership or competence?

    Do you contend that Trump does not bully people with his insults?

    Do you contend the actions German lists in the quote I pull from Vox did not exacerbate the pandemic?

    Do you contend that other nations do not have lower rates of death from coronavirus?

    Do you contend that the actions of other nations’ leaders have more effectively mitigated the spread of covid-19?

    Intellectual dishonesty, Steve, is pretending that a cheap one-line response negates facts you find unpleasant.

    2020-09-10

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