According to a poll conducted over the weekend by YouGov, about 3 in 10 Americans think the number of deaths from the coronavirus so far is...okay: That’s 1 in 10 Democrats, and a majority of Republicans believe the current Covid death toll is “acceptable.”
From the Washington Post:
When the ball in Times Square began dropping on Dec. 31, 2019 — the day on which the novel coronavirus first came to international attention — there were a bit over 330 million people living in the United States. Over the eight-plus months since, one out of every 1,900 of those people has died of covid-19, the disease the virus causes.
By early November, researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimate that an additional 50,000 to 120,000 people will have died of covid-19, bringing the death toll to somewhere between 225,000 and nearly 300,000 people — or as many as 1 in [every] 1,111 Americans.
The number of deaths between now and Election Day depends on what Americans do between now and then. The number of lives saved after Election Day depends on how we vote.
It’s a very simple thing (you’d think) to understand and execute: an elementary calculation.
If we all wear masks every time we leave the house = The number of deaths will slow.
If we instead broadly ease mandates aimed at containing the virus = Death’s will accelerate.
Tribally, the constant in the political calculus of coronavirus casualties could be abstracted as:
R+{a2}AL = D2
(Not an accurate way to write the formula for this equation, but I think you get the gist.)
Republicans Plus Apathy [to] American Lives Equals Deaths Squared
When the Trump White House first called for a shutdown of some American economic activity in March to slow the spread of the virus, they produced a graph showing how containment measures could mitigate the death toll.
If nothing was done, coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx explained, there could be more than 1.5 million deaths.
With effective containment measures, the total would be somewhere in the 100,000 to 240,000 range. That projection was over the course of the pandemic and assumed that daily case totals would rise and then fade.
Instead, the number of deaths each day rose, fell, rose again and then stayed flat. The current IHME projection has more than 240,000 American deaths of covid-19 by the time Election Day arrives.
According to a Washington Post article:
“Nearly two-thirds of Republicans think that the number of deaths is lower than what’s been reported, an idea fostered by allies of Trump and personalities on Fox News.
“That’s inextricable from the other reason Republicans are so sanguine about the death toll: They understand that the question was inherently a question about Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
“Some Republican supporters of the president see all of this as blown out of proportion and also think Trump has, as he asserts, done everything possible to address the pandemic.”
These poll numbers are a function of Republican skepticism regarding all the known Covid death toll numbers: Republicans believe that all the tallies are inaccurate — “Fake News.”
Nearly two-thirds of Republicans think that the number of deaths is lower than what’s been reported, an idea fostered by allies of Trump and the “newstainment” personalities on Fox.
The Republican mistrust of our coronavirus death toll numbers is inextricable from the other reason Republicans are so sanguine about the death toll: They understand that the question was inherently a question about Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
Some Republican supporters of the president see all of this as blown out of proportion and also think Trump has, as he asserts, done everything possible to address the pandemic.
Probably because Fox, right-wing radio, OANN, and Trump say so.
The announcement that containment would result in no more than 240,000 deaths established that as the mark of success for the administration. It prompted people such as Trump superfan Bill Mitchell, a right-wing radio host, to declare that a death toll under 200,000 would mean that Trump was “the greatest president of all time.” Mitchell would later transition into a position of denial about the number of deaths the virus was causing.
“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities”
— Voltaire
If you analyze the subsets of the 4 in 10 Republicans who see the death toll as unacceptable you’ll probably find some portion of that group who likely blame people besides Trump for the number of deaths: state governors, for example, or other government officials, usually Democratic ones.
(Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to not approve of the job done by the government’s chief infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci.)
And while Republicans think the Covid death toll is far smaller than what is being reported, last week the New York Times reported that the number of deaths in the United States was already about 200,000 above where it would normally be.
This number gives a sobering sense of how many deaths from Covid-19 have gone uncounted, along with the number of deaths from other causes that have increased due to the pandemic’s impact which strains the capacity of our hospitals and health care system.
In other words, for most Republicans, there isn’t a line in the sand past which the death toll is too high, the mask issue is a microcosm of Trump’s presidency.
Trump supporters have regularly been asked to reject or to wave away questions about his tweets or his actions or his comments or other new negative developments. Grimly enough, the death toll of the virus is simply another thing in that swollen universe.
Much of Trump’s base, like him, are simply living in the “Kingdom of Magical Thinking” where the only use for a facemask is to hoist it upon one’s petard in the delusional hope, “thoughts, and prayers” that things don’t get much worse. That the pandemic “will magically go away,” during what is now the rapidly approaching flu season.
Meanwhile, the rest of us “science-lover libz” are masked-up and holed-up in the harsh reality of life and death in “You’reOnYourOwnistan.”
Most Republicans don’t believe the numbers from any health organization that tracks the totals of deaths in the United States from Covid-19.
They don't believe in the science which demonstrates that the universal wearing of masks could bring the R-factor down low enough so that we could safely re-open our schools and the economy.
Republicans only believe in Donald Trump.
And Trump’s belief is that wearing a mask in public is an assault on personal liberty.
At this juncture, Republicans don’t believe Fox, or even believe any of the right-wing conservative press that wearing a mask could save a life (and reset the pandemic so we can re-open the country.)
And if they don’t believe them...perhaps they should go ask Trump-supporting, proudly maskless Herman Cain…
...oh, they can’t.