Reel Entropy

Images courtesy Focus Features.

3/10 In early 2020, a nightmare virus – highly contagious for up to two weeks before symptoms start to show and triggering an agonizing, potentially deadly pneumonia in a significant percentage of its victims – made its way to the Pacific Northwest. Despite several months advance warning as this virus overwhelmed Chinese and European hospitals and despite having been specifically trained on emergencies of this nature, President Donald Trump’s government spent months in denial, trying to avoid shutting the economy down because he thought it would increase his reelection chances. Despite knowing full well that the disease is on essentially a two-week delay, several decisions that were always seen as eventualities were made weeks, sometimes a full month too late, leading to dramatically inflated loss of life.

As of this Independence Day, an estimated 132,000 Americans have died of the virus out of an estimated 525,000 deaths worldwide. This means the U.S. has accounted for more than 25% of global deaths despite representing just over 4% of the total global population, and that ratio is only going to get worse as cases continue to spike in several states long after the rest of the world has gotten the virus under control. An estimated 70-99% of these deaths could have been prevented if Trump had simply taken the precautions that other countries had already proved effective.

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