With election season in full swing, so-called medical experts have been making a last-ditch effort to discredit President Donald Trump's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Tuesday's CNN Newsroom, English medical journalist Seema Yasmin claimed that at least 90 percent, or about 200,000, Americans who died due to COVID-19 might still be alive had Trump responded better to the pandemic like several other developed nations, including France, South Korea, Japan and Australia.
Host Poppy Harlow began by leading Yasmin with a contradictory statement. “Mark Meadows says it's like the flu so you can't get rid of it. You just have to look at South Korea, for example, as evidence that you can control it.”
Rather than point out the marked difference between controlling transmission of the virus and getting rid of it altogether, Yasmin led with her own statement. “We have the worst epidemic in the world,” she said. “[Sadly], the U.S. has the highest [COVID-19] death rate of any developed nation on the planet.”
But this disingenuous claim shows clear information bias on Yasmin's part. For one, the U.S. does not have the “worst” epidemic in the world. That title has gone to Europe in mid-October when COVID-19 cases surged. In fact, Europe has outpaced the U.S. for the first time in terms of reported daily infections.
Included among the list of European nations battling their third wave of the disease is France, which Yasmin cited as an example that the U.S. ought to have followed in terms of COVID-19 response. But it seems as if she could not have chosen a worse example.
France has been reporting record numbers of new COVID-19 cases over the past week, forcing authorities to impose new lockdowns. Hospitalizations have also been climbing with no sign of letting up. In fact, 2,936 of the 19,248 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in France remain in intensive care.
Meanwhile, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and the U.K. have also been reporting daily infections in excess of 250 per million people. This figure is higher than what the U.S. was reporting during its July peak.
Trump's COVID-19 response saved millions of lives
Far from the picture of failure that Yasmin and other left-leaning health experts have painted, Trump, with his swift and level-headed COVID-19 response, has saved more than two million American lives.
For one, the U.S. has a lower COVID-19 mortality rate than many developed European nations, such as the UK, Belgium, Italy and Spain, according to a recently released fact sheet from the White House.
Furthermore, the U.S. has among the lowest case fatality rates of any developed country. In fact, 99.997 percent of people aged 19 years and younger who contract the virus make a full recovery, as per the best estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Additionally, 99.98 percent of people aged 20–49 years who contract COVID-19 make a full recovery and 99.5 percent of those aged 50–69 years who contract the disease are able to fully recover. These figures correspond to some two million lives saved in total.
Data would also show that the U.S. has been on track with other developed countries that Yasmin cited. For instance, Trump has deployed point-of-care testing equipment, millions of rapid test kits and critical personal protective equipment (PPE) to nursing homes across the country to protect highly vulnerable groups.
Moreover, Trump has mobilized extra beds and personnel to prevent hospitals nationwide from overcrowding. His administration has also prioritized sending ample medical supplies to aid healthcare workers.
These are just a few of the several strategies that Trump has used to control the spread of COVID-19 and which Yasmin has disingenuously left out.
Several states report more than half of their COVID-19 deaths occurred in long-term care facilities
Yasmin's selection bias in detailing how Trump failed in his COVID-19 response was also made clear when she failed to mention the thousands of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes across the U.S., all of which added to the figures in July when the pandemic was at its peak in the U.S.
In fact, 18 states reported that more than half of their total COVID-19 deaths were in long-term care facilities. Nursing home residents also accounted for more than 75 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the states of New Hampshire, Minnesota and Rhode Island.
But these trends are no coincidence. As early as April, COVID-19 cases in nursing homes have been surging in several states, with investigators suspecting neglect on the part of the state.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for instance, has been dogged by criticism for months over his March advisory directing nursing homes in the state to accept COVID-19 patients as long as they were medically stable.
Not long after, New York and many other states began reporting record-high numbers of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. To date, Cuomo has only publicly acknowledged nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 inside their residences and not those patients who were taken in as per his advisory. (Related: Coronavirus outbreak strikes Massachusetts veterans’ nursing home.)
Read the latest articles about the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. at Pandemic.news.
Sources include:
Blog.PetrieFlom.Law.Harvard.edu
Please contact us for more information.