Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

I agree with almost all of this.

I'm not sure that all 200,000 deaths are his fault. A very significant number are, however. If we'd had a by-the-playbook response from the President, our death toll would have been similar to that of other developed countries.

We probably wouldn't have done as well as East Asia, but there's no reason we couldn't have done as well as Canada.

Canada: 243 per million pop. deaths
USA: 599 per million pop. deaths.

Denmark: 109.
Germany: 112.
Greece: 29.
Finland: 61.
France: 473.
Hong Kong: 13.
Ireland: 360.
Israel: 122.
New Zealand: 5.
Peru: 929.
Senegal: 297
Switzerland: 233.
Thailand: 0.8.
Vietnam: 0.4.
From:worldometers.info/coronavirus/#c…

It's possible that differences in testing regimens mean that some cases in, e.g., Thailand aren't picked up and diagnosed.

USA Tests per million deaths: 278,828
Canada: 162,776

Denmark: 515,478
Germany: 160,263
Greece: 108,129
Finland: 146,549
France: 153,132

Hong Kong: 370,623
Ireland: 194,301
Israel: 297,533
New Zealand: 173,536
Peru: 106,912
Senegal: 9,433
Switzerland: 136,928
Thailand: 10,728
Vietnam: 10,348

So in some places, perhaps, but certainly not all.

It's possible that the US was uniquely vulnerable because of the obesity epidemic.

World's most obese countries:

US: 36.2 percent of pop. obese/599 per million dead of Covid-19

Kuwait: 37.9/162
Jordan: 35.5/131
KSA: 35.4/122
Mexico: 26.9/548
Turkey: 32.1./83

(From worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankin… I've excluded the South Pacific countries because it's easier to protect islands from a virus.)

The US graph looks like this:

Canada's looks like this:

Germany:

So I think it's fully reasonable to conclude that a large percentage of the US death toll can be attributed to failed public health policy, and much of that is Trump's fault.

If he had clearly and consistently said, from the beginning, what he said to Bob Woodward; if we'd had a coordinated, national lockdown at the beginning and implemented a serious scheme for testing, contact tracing, and isolating the ill;

if people had behaved as if this was as dangerous as he knew it to be and universally worn masks and observed physical distancing protocols scrupulously, I'm certain at least 100,000 more Americans would be alive now.

It didn't help that governors put sick people in nursing homes; it didn't help that the CDC screwed up the initial test; it doesn't help that the FDA is so unresponsive in authorizing quick testing; it didn't help that so many public health officials destroyed their credibility--

by initially giving the wrong advice about masks, by giving conflicting and often absurd advice about which activities were risky, by scolding people who gathered to protest when they didn't approve of the protest's aim and blessing those who did when they approved:

But the person who did the most damage was the President, who failed to use the vast powers of the executive branch--and the bully pulpit--to devise a coherent and coordinated national strategy to combat the virus--

even though he knew very well, right from the outset, that it was airborne, far more deadly than the flu, and apt to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.