Death count 12,021 Tuesday

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THIS LAND OF DENIAL AND DEATH is the title of the Krugman column repeated in The Seattle Times April 1. It also may be found at https://leaders.economicblogs.org/krugman/2020/krugman-denial-death/

It began and read in part: “Death comes at you fast. Just three weeks ago, the official line at the White House and Fox News was that the coronavirus was no big deal, that claims to the contrary were a politically motivated hoax perpetrated by people out to get President Donald Trump. Now we have a full-blown health crisis in New York, and all indications are that many other cities will soon find themselves in the same situation . . .

“About denial: epidemiologists trying to get a handle on the coronavirus threat appear to have been caught off guard by the immediate politicization of their work, the claims they were perpetuating a hoax designed to hurt Trump, or promote socialism, or something. But they should have expected this reaction, since climate scientists have faced the same accusations for years.

“And while climate change denial is a world-wide phenomenon, its epicenter is clearly here in America: Republicans are the world’s only climate denialist party.”

Meanwhile, back to the coronavirus: Donald keeps enough self-defense and individual promotion distractions juggling in the air at the same time that there isn’t room to give them all page-one headlines.

On March 24, various Internet sites proclaimed “Trump says he’ll stop using the term ‘Chinese Virus’.” Which, of course, really didn’t do a lot to allay the death-sentence fears of us in our 90s. And it all seemed to me just another bit of Donald’s attempt to escape blame for his own January-March disregard for death as he struggled to force re-start of the economy.

Four days later, a March 28 story in Bloomberg News “U.S. BID TO SINGLE OUT CHINA OVER CORONAVIRUS STALLS U.N. EFFORT” made page 2 of The Seattle Times. It read: “UNITED NATIONS—A Trump administration effort to blame China for spawning the coronavirus has stalled for now at the United Nations Security Council with other countries focused exclusively on urging joint global action to fight the pandemic . . . the five permanent members of the council—Russia, China, U.K. France and the U.S.—have struggled to agree on a resolution partly due to U.S. insistence that the text include reference to the coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, and comments about China being responsible for worsening the global outbreak . . .”

As of Tuesday morning, at least 366,614 people across every state, plus Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories, have tested positive for the virus, according to a New York Times database.

By noon Tuesday (Eastern time), as this was being prepared, there were 12,021 people with the coronavirus who have died in the United States. The death toll has grown by many hundreds each day for the last week and now exceeds the number of people known to have died from the virus in mainland China (just 3,335, with cases known of only 82,665), where the pandemic started in December.

The population of China is 1,319,000,000. The population of the U.S. is 328,200,000.

While the U.S. is third in the world in Covid-19 deaths, the president is anxious to get back onto the golf case as soon as possible.

On April 2, the U.S. Secret Service signed an “emergency order” to rent $45,000 worth of golf carts in Sterling, Va., where the president owns a favorite course. The president obviously is planning to resume golf soon. The cart fleet is being rented through the end of September at Virginia’s Trump National Golf Club which he has visited 76 times since taking office. It has remained open during the pandemic, although he has not played golf since March 8.

Another little item missed by most appeared in the Wall Street Journal March 29 and is one of those bits typical of the egocentric character of Donald Trump. The story on the Internet was headlined “Trump reportedly wants to make sure his signature is on the coronavirus stimulus checks.” I call it typical that Donald’s first thought is getting implied credit for checks to millions upon millions of people stricken by poverty and illness—some by death—due in part to his own inability to function as a national leader except where industry stands to benefit.