This week has been an extremely bad one for Americans. On Tuesday 14th, total coronavirus deaths came to 2,407, the highest daily tally since the first death was recorded on February 29th. Then yesterday, Wednesday, an even higher toll was reached – at a staggering 2,763. See chart, above.
World’s worst outcomes
That was the highest number of any country in the world yesterday, and exceeded the total deaths in Italy, Spain, Germany, Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Portugal, Belgium, Iran, Brazil, Sweden and Turkey combined.
New infections reported yesterday topped 30,000 again, marking two consecutive daily increases, after three daily declines. The country with the second-highest number of new cases yesterday was Spain, with just 6,599.
The chart of daily new cases in the USA is shown here in blue. After peaking in early April it appeared that it might start to decline. The drop over Easter seemed positive, but may just have been a reporting glitch. Time will tell.
Clearly, the USA has become the world’s new epicentre. With only 4.25 per cent of the world’s population, the USA has reported 23.5 per cent of all the world’s deaths. It currently has 39.0 per cent of all active cases. Two weeks ago, this was 28.7 per cent. Four weeks ago, it was just 6.2 per cent.
Preventative measures failed completely
It is now impossible to deny that the measures the Trump administration has tried to implement have been too little, too haphazard, too uncoordinated and far too late.
The USA has failed completely to learn anything from other countries, particularly others also geographically thousands of miles from Wuhan, China, and thousands of miles from Europe.
Comparable developed countries outside Europe include Canada, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea and Uruguay.
The average death rate in all these ten countries is 5.2 per million inhabitants. The rate in the USA is 19 times higher at 101.2 per million.
More information and more charts are available here.
Australia
The strict enforcement of social distancing by Australia’s state authorities together with federal Government guidelines appear to be effective. New infections peaked on 22nd March and except for a bad day on 29th March have steadily declined. Australia, like the USA, enjoys low population density and is a long way from Europe and China.
South Korea
Having taken decisive action early, South Korea has also curbed its infection rate and completed a near-perfect bell curve. Its peak infection rate was on 3rd March. Unfortunately, the tail of South Korea’s curve has proven to be worryingly long. But the bad days of ever-increasing new infections are over.
The United States
Both South Korea and the USA recorded their first infections on the same day – January 20th. Australia’s was four days later. There is absolutely no valid reason why Americans should be losing so many more lives per million people than in these and other comparable countries.
The cause is simply that the Trump administration has failed at every point to take the preventative action needed. It has compounded this by consistently lying to the American people:
“All of American society is engaged and mobilized in the war against the invisible enemy. While we must remain vigilant, it is clear that our aggressive strategy is working — and very strongly working, I might add.” — Donald Trump, 15 April.
That is not true. It is the opposite of the truth. Of all the strategies being applied in all developed countries, the strategy of the Trump administration is the only one not working.