Death Toll Associated With Trump Administration Goes Beyond Covid-19, Says Lancet Report
Bruce Y. LeeThe Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era has just come out with an assessment of Donald Trump’s impact on the health of Americans while he was U.S. President. And, spoiler alert, it wasn’t positive.
That’s assuming that you find many more deaths to be a negative health impact. According to the report, Trump’s policies or lack thereof contributed to the deaths of around 461,000 Americans in 2018. In 2019, about 22,000 deaths resulted from Trump’s dismantling of environmental protection measures alone, based on the Commission’s analyses. And of course, there was 2020, when the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic hit. Many have written about the Trump administration’s failure to mount a scientifically appropriate response to the pandemic. The Commission determined that 40% of Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented had the U.S. only had the same Covid-19 death rates as those of other Group of Seven (G7) nations, namely Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Of course, these numbers are not exact. It’s not as if the Commission members used a time machine made out of a DeLorean or the quantum realm to jump back in time, installed something else in Trump’s place as U.S. President such as a cinder block, and then observed what happened in an alternate reality. Time travel is not a thing yet. Plus, it would have been difficult to fit all 33 members of the Commission into a DeLorean. Moreover, The Lancet probably didn’t have those suits that the Avengers wore for each of the clinical medicine, public health, epidemiology, health policy, community medicine, economics, nutrition, law, and political experts from the U.S., U.K., and Canada who comprised the Commission.
Instead, the Commission, which was formed in April 2017, determined how many fewer deaths the U.S. would have had if the U.S. had had death rates comparable to those of other G7 countries. This graphic from The Lancet illustrates the growing gap between the U.S. and the rest of the G7 over the past four decades:
Death Toll Associated With Trump Administration Goes Beyond Covid-19, Says Lancet Report
A Lancet report detailed the devastating health effects of Donald Trump’s presidency but indicated that simply going back to pre-Trump days will not be enough.
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