President Donald Trump made clear his COVID-19 strategy at a campaign rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, earlier this week.
It amounts to mass murder. Many thousands more Americans will die unnecessarily if Trump wins another term.
He has thrown in the towel, adopting a do-nothing approach pending vaccines that won’t be widely available until well into next year. “We are rounding the turn,” he said (for the umpteenth time). “It’s ending anyway. It’s happening very quickly.”
That is a gross lie. As cases spike nationwide, experts predict 160,000 to 275,000 more Americans could die by February or March if concrete steps aren’t taken. But Team Trump won’t even try: His chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said Sunday, “We aren’t going to control the pandemic.” As if there is nothing to be done.
Yet there is plenty that could be done by a new president who doesn’t play politics with COVID-19.