Donald Trump, the President of the United State, is ignoring the truth about COVID-19. In so doing, he puts not only Americans at risk, but the entire human population. Europe and the United States are experiencing the extreme effects of the COVID-19 disease. The only way to “fight” the virus is to use non-pharmaceutical interventions (Neil M. Ferguson, 16 Mar 2020, Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand). As the authors of this much quoted British study explain, the global impact of COVID19 has been profound. Its greatest impact is on the health care systems of most countries. In Western countries, the spread of COVID19 is increasing exponentially. Italy, topping 8,000 deaths, now has more than any country in the world. The United States has exceeded all countries by have more than 81,000 confirmed cases.

The map at the top of this page is the location of active cases in the US as of March 26, 2020. The map is from Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

Except for a few countries, namely China and South Korea, most countries have not been able to control the daily increase of coronavirus cases. Figure 1 and Figure 2 are designed to compare the daily cases reported in China with those reported in the United States.

In the United States, the COVID-19 disease is infecting more and more people each day. In China, after dealing with the disease for a month and a half, the number of cases has diminished, with very few new cases each day.

I referred to the British study at the top of this post. China carried out an extreme version of what the British scientists have said is the only way to mitigate and control the disease is by non-pharmaceutical methods. Essentially, the contact rate among the population must be reduced. This will reduce the transmission of the disease throughout the population. China did this by by locking down the hot spots in the country. The first location locked down was Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus.

Trump Is Not a Leader in a Crisis

The Trump administration was too late responding to the COVID-19 disease. Trump continues to babble about wanting to reduce the stay-at-home orders that have been recommended by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, governors, and local officials. He’s actually said that he wants these actions relaxed, and send people back to work by Easter.

This is an absurd idea. Trump, the poster child of science denial, is putting Americans and people in other countries at risk. Although Italy has a different cultural mores than the United States, we should not ignore what is happening there. The number of deaths in Italy due to the coronavirus has skyrocketed beyond 8,000, 5,000 more than China. In pockets of the United States, the rate of growth of new cases is profound. New York is experiencing a breakdown of its health care system.

And what does Trump do to help? Nothing. He appears on TV simply to put his face out there, but ignores what is really going on the country.

Trump is ignoring the truth about COVID-19. He’s dangerous. He needs to stop talking, and let the experts talk and show us the data.

This chart shows the daily increases of coronavirus in China from January to late March, 2020.  Notice that there have been very few new cases of COVID19 since the beginning of March.  

This graph shows the daily increase of the coronavirus in the United States since mid-February.  COVID19 is increasing at increasing rates.  In early March, there were less than 100 cases per day.  At the latter part of March, the daily increase is more than 12,ooo cases.