The world wide covid death toll now tops one million souls with 340,000 of them being Americans. How does 4% of the world’s population generate better than a third of the fatalities to come from this disease?

Trump failed to prevent so many American deaths but these days that’s not a deal breaker to his cult members. I’m guessing not even a million more American deaths would matter to them.

The more deaths the more trump fans would say no one in the US could have prevented such carnage. Yet he did use that word in his inauguration speech. Now we know why.

American carnage caused by a sociopath’s incompetence.

I just wish the president had stopped a lot of interstate travel and for those still permitted to travel have strict rules. People pour into my state spreading the virus. They bring it back home with them from my state too.

I wish masks were promoted from the beginning. This is a failure not just of Trump.

I’m not so sure Trump deeming it a states rights issue is the problem. If everything was being done at the federal level what would be the rules? Trump would be making the orders across the board? There wouldn’t be no mask order in any part of the country probably. The initial stay at home and lockdown would have happened, but everything after that would have been open full force.

I feel like Democrats forget that if the president had been in total control there would likely be fewer orders across the country unless states were allowed to go stricter than the president.

Democrats also complain Trump is authoritarian and yet he allowed states to handle COVID fairly autonomously. Probably, he didn’t have much choice. The president can only do so much legally I’m guessing.

This is part of the Trump strategy: Make America Die Again.

First he killed all sorts of trade deals that make America a world leader.

Then he fucked up various treaties which made the US a laughingstock.

Now he wants to kill Americans.

What a great president (sarcasm).

I suppose it is due to the fact that you can’t trust death counts from China or Russia. Also in the USA death counts are inflated as included are people dying in accidents, murders or so weak, old and feeble that they were ready to die for any reason.

Oh forget all of that. It’s all Trumps fault of course!

^^ If the situation was reversed, you’d be screaming the loudest that it was Biden’s fault for hiding important info from the American public

I think part of it has to do with the culture of the U.S. where we do not like to sacrifice for the greater good; so an order to wear a mask or give up social activity and “normal life” for a while was bound to be defied. We don’t like being told what to do as a nation; for better or for worse, individual freedom comes before public safety. This would be the case regardless of president. I also agree that the tendency of this nation to regard itself as a federation of 50 mini-nations that can have wildly different laws and guidelines negatively affected our chances. We’re also in an era where significant percentages of the population are primed to believe conspiracy theories and view the pandemic as a lie or a scheme to get Trump out of office.

In other words, I think a lot of this was inevitable.

@Demosthenes A reasoned argument. But in view of the facts you list regarding the disparate dispositions and attitudes of the citizenry, what would you regard as the proper role for a President concerned for the national interest?

@SEKA I know that I’m biased. But I also know that everyone is biased. Even our own so called main steam news media can’t be trusted. About all we can be sure of is our own personal miss fortune.

A reasonable person can see that China and Russia can’t be trusted for much.

Yet 45 was snuggled up in Putin’s bed while praising Xi’s regime!!!

We get around more and have more opportunities to congregate.