**NEW REPORT & EXPLAINER VIDEO**
Protect Our Care’s Coronavirus War Room is releasing a new report and explainer video today detailing how Donald Trump’s failed coronavirus leadership allowed the virus to spread extensively across America, resulting in tens of thousands of avoidable deaths and forcing the economy to fully shut down.
Trump is now making the crisis even worse by demanding that states reopen without the necessary safeguards, leading to a spike in cases across the country and an ever-increasing death count.
“Trump likes to claim he has no responsibility for the coronavirus disaster, but if he hadn’t spent weeks downplaying the threat of the virus, pushing junk science, and demanding that states reopen against the advice of medical experts, thousands wouldn’t have had to die, and millions wouldn’t have to be hurting,” said Coronavirus War Room Director Zac Petkanas in the explainer video. “America could have looked a lot more like South Korea, where leaders took decisive action and as a result never experienced as many deaths or had to fully shut down. Trump likes to claim that he’s not responsible for the coronavirus disaster, but the facts speak for themselves — and if he’s looking for someone to blame for our current situation, he only needs to be looking in a mirror.”
See below for a transcript of the video:
Donald Trump likes to claim he has no responsibility for the coronavirus disaster.
That he’s blameless for the fact that more Americans have died from the virus than died during World War I.
That the US is in a recession and that tens of millions of Americans have filed for unemployment and that 100,000 small businesses have had to shut down.
But the truth is that Trump is responsible. His failure to prepare and respond to the crisis has led to the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and an economic disaster not seen since the Great Depression.
Here’s why:
First, Trump downplayed the crisis and refused to listen to experts when he should have been taking decisive action to stop the virus.
Second, he contributed to shortages of medical supplies at hospitals.
Third, he endangered people’s lives by pushing junk science contradicted by medical experts.
Fourth, he allowed the US to fall behind on testing. For example, South Korea tested nearly ten times more people than the US in the first 8 weeks of the crisis.
This allowed the virus to get out of control in the United States and experts say this was the main reason our country was forced to shut down, costing millions of Americans their jobs.
Dr. Jha: “Testing Was The Fundamental Failure That Forced Our Country To Shut Down.”
In other words, much of the economic turmoil we are experiencing today could have been avoided if Trump had simply listened to the experts begging him to take decisive action to stop the spread of the virus early on.
In fact, the conservative American Enterprise Institute released analysis showing that the more Covid-19 Infections A Country Has, The Worse Its Economy Performs.
The US leads the world in the number of coronavirus infections. We make up only 4% of the world’s population but more than 25% of reported cases.
That’s one of the reasons why the IMF projects that South Korea’s GDP will only contract by 1.2 Percent In 2020 Compared To 5.9 Percent for the US.
And the unemployment rate in the European Union is less than half that of the US.
The bottom line is: our economy is doing worse than other countries because Donald Trump failed to get the virus under control.
Fifth, Trump is making things worse by rushing states to reopen against the advice of medical experts.
A Columbia University study already showed that 83% of deaths — that’s more than 8 out of every ten — could have been avoided if social distancing had started two weeks before Trump issued social distancing guidelines on March 16.
But instead of heeding this warning, Trump is forging ahead to resume his big, indoor rallies that will spread the virus and he’s demanding we go back to business as usual.
This is not only irresponsible. It’s prolonging the crisis. And will lead to even more avoidable death and economic disaster.
That’s why if Donald Trump is looking for someone to blame for our current situation, he only needs to be looking in a mirror.