As the pandemic progresses, The US will become its epicenter. Because of the criminality/incompetence/mental illness of our leadership, not only will many more die here than had to, but many more will be infected too. And since we don’t have the billions of test kits we will need to first determine who is infected or not, and over time, it would make sense for other countries in the world that have managed the outbreak far better than us to require that any US entrant self-quarantine.
America is becoming the global epicenter of the pandemic, and will remain a hot spot for as long as we are unable to determine who is shedding the virus and who isn’t. That will of course have a continuing economic effect.
But I want to talk about potential loss of life here. By bungling things in the US, Trump is every day making reinfections more likely down the road outside the country. The rest of the globe would do well to treat us like the lepers we would be; nonetheless new outbreaks will come sooner and in more places around the world in the years to come because of Trump and his delusional cult followers.
What few talk about is that the estimates we are seeing are for The First Wave of a pandemic that will still leave 97% of Americans uninfected, and vulnerable for the next wave, and the one after that and so fourth until we either find a vaccine or achieve herd immunity. The latter would yield a maximum death toll, since it would require a very larger percentage of the planet to be exposed. Epidemiologists estimate that the novel coronavirus will eventually infect 40-70% of the planet. A vaccine, if we can develop one, and before the virus has worked itself into every corner of the globe, is crucial.
Trumps diseased response has meant that rather than let’s say 1% of the population exposed in that first wave, we have instead 3%, and we don’t know who they are. All this has potentially shortened the window for developing a vaccine, and pushed us all towards a “herd immunity” outcome.
Herd immunity would mean a lot of people will die to achieve that. The world needs to tell us to remove the Trump Regime, if only out of self-interest.