Trump: “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and wouldn’t lose any votes.” That assertion appears somewhat accurate. Trump’s delay in initiating mitigation actions, in the face of prior repeated warnings, is a metaphoric shooting causing 30,000-80,000 unnecessary deaths, and he apparently did not lose very many votes with his base (other than those deceased).

Three factors together support the conclusion his actions are to blame. First, recent modeling shows that the number of deaths would have been reduced approximately 90 percent if he acted only two weeks earlier and 60 percent if he had acted even one week earlier. This modeling is probably more accurate than the “going-forward” projections because the data being inputted into the models are historical data. Second, South Korea had its first virus case the same time as the U.S., but they did not delay taking action. To date South Korea has 264 deaths and the U.S. has 90,000-plus deaths. We could not handle this anywhere near as well as South Korea. Why is that? Third, the comparative data on cases and deaths makes the U.S. pretty near the worst in the world. Shamefully, his supporters are apparently okay with this.

Ronald Cummings

Madison