100K coronavirus deaths marks “American carnage” on grand scale

More than 100 thousand Americans have succumbed to coronavirus in a pandemic that US President Donald Trump once predicted would “miraculously” go away. Trump once even tried to pitch 100 thousands deaths as “a very good job.” Rather than disappear, however, the virus went on to infect 1.7 million and kill over 100 thousand Americans. The grim milestone marks one of the darkest moments in US history.

The news is deeply saddening and people around the globe, including the people of China, have expressed sympathy for the victims of the virus and their families.

It took only a few months for the virus to become one of the worst public health disasters in US history. The United States has a population of 330 million, which is less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but has by far the highest case count and death toll in the world. While there are many factors at play, a key factor behind the high numbers was the Trump administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis.

With pressure mounting, Trump has tried to spin the narrative. Recently, he mentioned the grim milestone to praise his “job well done” and “quick response” to the crisis, writing, “For all of the political hacks out there, if I hadn’t done my job well, & early, we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number. That’s 15 to 20 times more than we will lose. I shut down entry from China very early!”

Trump then sought to pin the blame on China again, writing, “One person lost to this invisible virus is too much, it should have been stopped at its source, China, but I acted very quickly, and made the right decisions.”

Trump also lashed out at the media and his political rivals for spreading “a new narrative” that he responded to coronavirus too slowly.

America, the most powerful country on the planet with the most sophisticated medical technologies, did not have to lose so many lives to coronavirus. The Trump administration squandered vital time as the coronavirus spread across the country. According to a Columbia University study, the administration could have saved at least 36,000 American lives if it had imposed lockdowns and social distancing just one week earlier.

Any way you slice it, the grim milestone is a failure of epic proportions on the part of the Trump administration. In the words of The New York Times, which remembered the lives lost to coronavirus in America on the front page of the newspaper, the loss is “incalculable,” meaning it is too big to calculate. Imagine the city of Green Bay in the US state of Wisconsin wiped from the American map in about three months’ time.

In his inauguration speech in January 2017, Trump used the term “American carnage” to describe the state of the nation and vowed to stop it “right here” and “right now.” However, the coronavirus crisis shows that his administration is far from delivering on his promise of saving America.

The coronavirus pandemic was a global test of governance. The pandemic tested the current administration’s ability to govern and there is no getting around the fact that incompetent politicians and a blame-others strategy have caused unnecessary deaths, creating a disaster that will go down in the history books as a great failure.