If history is going to pin a name on this period during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, it ought to be Red COVID.
The current viral surge is in red states, or more specifically, red counties – as opposed to blue ones.
Republicans and their Propaganda Ministry, Fox News, have made vaccine resistance and opposition to masking a point of cultural pride for the MAGA crowd. In the process, they have condemned many of their own followers to death.
Once this is all finally over, we need to take a serious look at the history of the response to the pandemic the way the 9/11 Commission investigated the September 11th terrorist attacks. We need to learn from the grievous mistakes made early on as the pandemic was spreading through the US.
With 706,522 Americans now dead because of COVID-19, we are within sight of the death toll for the US Civil War which has been estimated at 750,000.
Donald Trump was not treated as badly as Abraham Lincoln (who was assassinated) – as Trump once bizarrely claimed. But we’re closer to the point when we can statistically say that Trump treated the US worse than any other president thanks to his incompetent and highly politicized pandemic response.
