QOTD: Trump's COVID-19 Delays Cost Lives

The 70 day period beginning in January that was squandered by raging narcissist and sociopath Donald "The Chosen One" Trump to fight the coronavirus pandemic's spread here in the U.S. was precious lost time. Using data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, epidemiologists Britta and Nicholas Jewell look at the cost in deaths of Trump's failure to push social distancing earlier:

"On March 16, the White House issued initial social distancing guidelines, including closing schools and avoiding groups of more than 10. But an estimated 90 percent of the cumulative deaths in the United States from Covid-19, at least from the first wave of the epidemic, might have been prevented by putting social distancing policies into effect two weeks earlier, on March 2, when there were only 11 deaths in the entire country. The effect would have been substantial had the policies been imposed even one week earlier, on March 9, resulting in approximately a 60 percent reduction in deaths." (our emphasis)

 Among other things, their work supports the common sense opinion that Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed last Sunday, much to the anger of Trump and his reckless cult:

"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives," Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" when asked if social distancing and stay-at-home measures could have prevented deaths had they been put in place in February, instead of mid-March.

"Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated," added Fauci, who is a key member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force. "But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then."  (our emphasis)

Of course the key force pushing back was the Very Stable Genius himself, backed by his craven and avaricious "advisors" on the economy. November can't come soon enough, and tragically people have died and will continue to die as a result of Trump's catastrophic delay.

BONUS:   Here's the visualization of how many lives could have been saved had Trump acted just 2 weeks sooner --

New epidemiology estimates that 90% of US death could have been prevented by just acting 2 weeks earlier. The estimated number of deaths falls sharply with earlier interventions - th US delay cost thousands of lives. #COVID19 https://t.co/FdSfUp6cck pic.twitter.com/rpIntyyCww

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) April 15, 2020