Trump: We're Turning a Beautiful Corner on Coronavirus (and more)

A day after US President Donald Trump said his country was "rounding the corner" on COVID-19 during the final presidential debate, new figures have emerged contradicting the US leader's view of the pandemic.

The number of new COVID-19 cases reported in the US on Friday was the highest on record, beating a midsummer peak, according to a Reuters analysis.

With 84,218 new cases on Friday, the news agency said the United States had eclipsed its one-day record high of 77,299 new cases on July 16.
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Asked about his handling of the pandemic as part of the presidential debate earlier on Thursday, Mr Trump predicted a reversal to the crisis that has killed more than 223,000 people in the US.

"We're rounding the turn, we're rounding the corner ... it's going away," Mr Trump said.

In a pig's eye. Trump has been saying that "we're turning the corner" for the last month-and-a-half. We're not rounding any corner, except maybe one that leads to more cases and more people dying. Cases are climbing, with no sign of that trend reversing. They are going up in the states where the governors went full-on-Trumpist, aided and abetted by the idiots in local governments who are abdicating their responsibilities.

Let's face facts: Trump wants people to die. He especially wants minority and poor people to die. The CDC wants people to wear masks while taking public transportation, Trump said no. Even the most causual observer would have to conclude that Trump is indifferent, at best, to the suffering of the American people, unless it affects him in some way.

If Trump had mobilized the American people by saying things like "let's fight this foreign invader, everybody mask up, keep your distance and wash your hands", where would be we on this? It's possible that 3,000 people would have died.[1] Maybe that's too much to have hoped for, but it could have been kept at a level that would have killed less than 40,000 people.[2] Even if all we had done was wear masks, maybe 100,000 people would have died. Not 230,000. Not the half-a-million projected for the end of the year.

But no. Instead of trying to unite the American people, Trump seized on countermeasures as a way to stoke yet another culture war. The result was a death rate of 62.2 per 100,000, which, for a large country, is one of the highest rates of death in the world. He is complicit, if not directly responsible, for the deaths of well over 100,000 Americans to date. Trump has been responsible for the deaths of more Americans than Prime Miniser Tojo of Japan.

And, Dear Reader, if you have been one of the Covid deniers, if you haven't been wearing a mask, if you've been one of those demanding that everything go back to the way life was in January, then this is on you, too.
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[1] South Korea's death rate has been 0.85 for every 100,000 people. But they are pikers compared to Taiwan, which has had a death rate of 0.03 per 100,000 people.
[2] Germany's death rate has been 11.72 for every 100,000 people.