• An honest look at what a single lunatic has caused.

As emergency rooms once again overflow with Covid patients and hospital systems in several areas near their breaking point, I cannot help but think about blame. There is plenty to go around, beginning with elected officials at every level and going right up to god. But I do not believe that we have all fully reckoned with just how much death is directly attributable to Donald J. Trump himself. There is a compelling argument to be made that he has achieved the remarkable feat of having personally caused hundreds of thousands of people to die.

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It is fair to guess that, compared to even a semi-competent but not deranged Republican president, America has suffered hundreds of thousands more fatalities during this pandemic than necessary. We could have quite easily had a president who was racist, who protected the rich at the interest of the poor, who was just as bad as Nixon or George W. Bush, but who was not irrational enough to think that there is a reason to doubt that a mask can help stop the spread of infectious droplets expelled from human mouths. We could, today, be wrapping up the vaccinations of just about everyone. Instead we are still mired in a disaster. Donald Trump’s hands are small, but they hold an entire war’s worth of dead bodies.

Source: Hamilton Nolan, inthesetimes.com/article/donald-trump-covid-pandemic-deaths-masks-vaccines