Typhoid Trump's COVID-19 Death Count Includes 700 Deaths from Rallies and 99,300 New Cases Yesterday

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the U.S. suffered 99,300 new COVID-19 cases yesterday. The WSJ notes that this marks a new record high. COVID marches on in the U.S. with its death toll at about 230,000. Fox News reports that number does not count total “excess deaths” suffered in the U.S. which would bring the death toll to 305,000 dead Americans.

Such numbers demand reflection and context. The COVID death toll now amounts to 100 times the number of deaths Osama Bin Laden inflicted on the U.S. on 9/11. The COVID death toll more than doubles the total U.S. deaths from the Viet Nam War, the Korean War and World War I combined. It exceeds U.S. combat deaths in World War II. All this death in only six months.

The U.S. death count per capita now exceeds 70 fatalities per 100,000 people. The U.S. death toll amounts to 6 times the deaths per capita in Germany from COVID, and 10 times the death rate in Greece. Singapore boasts at least as much diversity as the U.S. and its death toll is less than 1/100th of the U.S. per capita death rate. South Korea boasts the same 4-season climate as the U.S. and their death toll per 100,000 stands at less than 1. Taiwan with a total of 7 deaths has a per capita rate that stands at 1/2000th of the U.S. death rate. In the “US political failures have driven COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.”

For example, the Trump Administration raised the White Flag on COVID-19 in recent days and pushed the pseudo-science of “Herd Immunity” as its excuse for abject failure to control the contagion. Thus, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows stated in a live interview with CNN that: “We are not going to control the pandemic.” 

This finally explains the consistent recklessness of the Trump Administration in hosting super-spreader events, mocking the use of masks, and ignoring its own guidelines for the isolation of Administration personnel infected by COVID. In short, Trump now seeks herd immunity as cover for an out of control pandemic that now rips through our population sowing deaths beyond any war, conflict or terrorist attack.

In fact, a team of Stanford economists just posted a paper demonstrating that Trump rallies leave behind localized spikes in COVID cases and they attribute 700 American deaths to these super-spreader events. Here is the (edited) abstract:

We investigate the effects of large group meetings on the spread of COVID-19 by studying the impact of eighteen Trump campaign rallies. To capture the effects of subsequent contagion within the pertinent communities, our analysis encompasses up to ten post-rally weeks for each event. Our method is based on a collection of regression models, one for each event, that capture the relationships between post-event outcomes and pre-event characteristics, including demographics and the trajectory of COVID-19 cases, in similar counties. [W]e conclude that these eighteen rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19. Applying county-specific post-event death rates, we conclude that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths (not necessarily among attendees).

Typhoid Mary only infected 53 persons with Typhoid fever!

I urge all thoughtful Americans to read this study prior to casting a vote for Trump. The reckless disregard of U.S. citizens evinced by the Trump campaign in terms of exposing Americans to more death and disease renders Trump unfit to govern.

More fundamentally, the Typhoid Trump approach to COVID implies millions of deaths and long-term disabilities due to the 156 million cases we will need to reach herd immunity without a vaccine: “A strategy of going for herd immunity from natural infection would lead to a massive death toll—estimates suggests the result could be somewhere between 1 million to 2.5 million dead Americans. The U.S. health system would buckle under the weight of so many hospitalizations and ICU admissions.” Only our most vicious enemies could want an American massacre of such a scale!

Very recent research shows the folly of seeking herd immunity before mass vaccination: the COVID anti-bodies fade over time.

Surging COVID cases will also crash the stock market and kill small businesses with all the job losses that follow which explains the massive support of Wall Street for Joe Biden. Herd immunity spells economic devastation.

We simply cannot afford the costs of Trump’s herd immunity approach of doing nothing to control this pandemic.