Yale epidemiologist: Trump's response to COVID-19 'close to genocide by default'

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Friday May 08, 2020 · 10:19 AM MDT

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I’ve always suspected Donald Trump would be far more upset if someone screwed up his McDonald’s lunch order than if, say, millions of promised (and necessary) coronavirus tests failed to materialize by a self-imposed deadline.

After all, Trump can lie about the tests, but he can’t pretend he has an invisible McRib and fries in front of him.

So a day after the Trump administration indicated it would wind down its coronavirus task force — and before it suddenly reversed that shit-for-brains policy when millions of lucid human beings heard about it — Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale University epidemiologist, said what many of us have been thinking. What Trump is doing — or, more precisely, not doing — amounts to criminal negligence.

Gregg Gonsalves ✔ @gregggonsalves

How many people will die this summer, before Election Day? What proportion of the deaths will be among African-Americans, Latinos, other people of color? This is getting awfully close to genocide by default. What else do you call mass death by public policy? #COVID19 #coronavirus

Gregg Gonsalves ✔ @gregggonsalves

 · May 6, 2020

So, what does it mean to let thousands die by negligence, omission, failure to act, in a legal sense under international law? #COVID19 #coronavirus

Gregg Gonsalves ✔ @gregggonsalves

And I am being serious here: what is happening in the US is purposeful, considered negligence, omission, failure to act by our leaders. Can they be held responsible under international law?

Yup.

Reopening the economy with no real plan to do it safely — i.e., without testing and contact tracing — is essentially murder.

But Trump knows that he needs a much stronger economy to give him any shot at reelection. America has to be “back” before Election Day or Trump will have nothing to run on but racism, xenophobia, and a bunch of shitty right-wing judges.

So he’s gambling with our lives. If things miraculously work out, he’ll look like a strong leader who guided us through this crisis. If not, well, what’s a few hundred thousand dead Americans to him? This guy had no compunction about tearing innocent children away from their mothers and tossing them in cages. Why the fuck would you ever think he’d care about you?

Trump likes to pretend he’s a wartime president fighting an “invisible enemy.” Well, maybe we can convict him of war crimes. Deliberate mass murder qualifies, right?

The saddest part of this saga is that the Republican Party has exposed itself as pure evil.  They'll do anything to stay in power even if it means drinking Trump's Kool-Aid as Americans die.