More Than 1 Million Americans Afflicted With COVID-19

Some more sobering news.

More than one million Americans have been afflicted with COVID-19. That is double the figure a mere 18 days ago. Nearly 300,000 of those cases are here in New York State accounting for 28.8% of that total. If we combine the figures in New York and New Jersey it accounts for nearly 40% of the total. One out of every three COVID-19 cases in the world are here in the United States. Of the million plus Americans afflicted with COVID-19, 56,500 Americans have succumbed to the virus.

Yes, COVID-19 originated in China and the Chinese government did a great deal to conceal its contagiousness and casualties. But President Trump was perfectly happy to make excuses for the Chinese government and more significantly downplayed the risks it posed to Americans consistently suggesting we had it very much under control. On February 26th, two months and two days ago, Trump stated at a White House briefing, "And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."

Some job.

Meanwhile, even as states plan to reopen (or have already reopened in Georgia with Alabama soon to follow) COVID-19 testing capacity isn't where it needs to be. For his part, Trump was dumbfounded proclaiming nobody could have foreseen this coming. Well, his two predecessors certainly weren't of that view. If the Trump Administration hadn't disregarded the outgoing Obama Administration's pandemic playbook or acknowledged the pandemic plan put out by President Bush nearly 15 years ago I do not believe more than a million Americans would now be inflicted with COVID-19.