Exactly one day and 52 years ago, a President stood before the American people, acknowledged that he had failed, and declared that he would not seek reelection even if nominated by his party. What was the nature of President Johnson’s career-ending failure? The mounting toll of the Vietnam War – then numbering about 25,000 military deaths – had turned the American public against the war, and without any apparent path to either quick victory or negotiated peace, LBJ decided to effectively resign the Presidency, for the good of his nation and his party.
Why should we settle for less in 2020? As of today the US has reported 4097 deaths from the Coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2 or COVID-19) pandemic. No matter how large this death count gets, Republicans and Trump will be sure to argue that “it could have been worse” and that we should be grateful for their one-time penny-ante stimulus...
their delayed, undersized, and lackadaisical response, and their anemic support of (and occasional reckless accusations against) public health workers. President Trump has pointed out that without any social distancing measures (including no “shelter in place” orders from any state governors), the projected death toll can rise to over 2 million. So that is their marker, their counterfactual. As for realistic estimates, Trump & Republicans acknowledge that we are likely looking at 100,000 to 250,000 deaths in the months ahead.
Democrats must push back on the narrative of Trump Administration “success” in the war against Coronavirus. 100,000 dead Americans is not success. To the contrary, 100,000 Americans dead, from an epidemic that experts worldwide saw coming months ahead of time, should mark Trump forever as the most negligent President in living memory (I would say, since Hoover watched the US and global economies disintegrate before his eyes).
Hence the Trump Coronavirus Death Count. We need a different counterfactual narrative to drive home the nation-shattering negligence – the sheer, enraging, unfettered, unremitting incompetence – of the President, his Administration, and their handmaidens in the Senate.
Construction and maintenance of such counterfactual narratives has not traditionally been a strong point of the Democrats. In this case, however, we have an excellent option available: South Korea.
South Korea and the United States detected their first domestic cases of Coronavirus on the self-same day, January 27. While South Korea immediately adopted a “war footing” to test, trace, and contain the epidemic within its borders, the United States did nothing – or if not nothing, close enough as to make little difference. A “lost month” that passed with next to no testing, tracing, or social distancing measures allowed the virus to spread silently from Seattle, to New York City, to Mar-a-Lago and beyond.
As a result of coordinated and effective government action, South Korea was able to contain the Coronavirus outbreak within their borders. Community spread is at a standstill and their death toll stands at 165. In the United States, by contrast, we have a death toll of 4097 that is rising more rapidly every day.
The Trump Coronavirus Death Count is the number of excess deaths experienced by the United States as compared to South Korea, after scaling for population. South Korea has a population of 51.7 million as compared to the United States’ 329.2 million, so the multiplier is 6.37. For 165 S. Korean deaths we anticipate 1051 US deaths given a similarly effective response. For today we get:
Trump Coronavirus Death Count for April 1: 3046
(US Coronavirus Deaths) – 6.37*(S. Korea Coronavirus Deaths)
For April 1, 2020: 4097 – 6.37*165 = 3046
The Trump Coronavirus Death Count is my proposed counterfactual narrative for Democrats during the Coronavirus Pandemic. It paints a picture of “what might have been” had the US had been graced with an effective Federal response, and it makes clear what the costs of the President’s negligence have been, for our nation and its people.
As the Trump Coronavirus Death Count explodes past the 2977 dead on 9/11 toward numbers reminiscent of Vietnam and other major conflicts, calculating and publicizing it will remind Americans of those among us who have paid the ultimate price for the negligence of their leaders.
It will put a number on the magnitude of that negligence, demonstrating that Trump and Republican leaders’ malfeasance surpasses or is comparable to that of the most detested of their forebears in office.
And maybe – as a similarly rising death count did 52 years ago – it will lead to another President resigning in disgrace, or being trounced in a landslide at the ballot box, as a result of his manifest negligence, incompetence, and failures.