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Editor's Note : Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this comment belong to the author. See more opinion articles on CNNEE.
(CNN) - The United States now has the highest number of deaths in the world from covid-19, with more than 22,000 having been killed by the virus as of Monday morning. Americans will continue to die in large numbers until our country presents a consistent response to the epidemic. President Donald Trump has failed. The United States still lacks even a basic plan to control the epidemic and restart the economy.
It only takes a direct comparison of the death toll of the United States with that of Asian countries to understand the magnitude of the failure of the Trump administration. The United States now has about 62 deaths per million people. Meanwhile, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan have less than one death per million people; and China, South Korea, and Singapore each have less than 5 deaths per million. India also took decisive action, with a complete national blockade that started on March 24, when only 10 deaths had been recorded in a country of 1.3 billion people. To date, India has 9,240 confirmed cases and 331 reported deaths, or 0.2 cases per million, and hospitals are not as full of patients as it is in the United States.
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Unlike these Asian countries, Trump did not prepare for the pandemic even after the alarms sounded. He ignored the urgent warning signs. He continued despite the high risks, repeatedly saying that everything was under control.
Trump was certainly not alone. Many European countries also failed to act in a timely manner, and some have death rates per million that are even higher than in the United States. The UK, under the leadership of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, hesitated instead of acting, and now has one of the worst trajectories in Europe, while the Prime Minister was admitted to the ICU and left the hospital on Sunday. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has been in denial as the epidemic grows.
Trump, meanwhile, repeatedly fails to fail to put public health experts really in the lead. It ignores the rudiments of basic public health and appears to view the epidemic in political and electoral terms rather than in public health terms. As usual, he blames others for his own disastrous failures.
Trump's latest target for attack is the World Health Organization (WHO), which plays a key role in helping governments around the world fight this disease. This is what Trump tweeted on February 24: “The coronavirus is very controlled in the United States. We are in contact with all relevant countries. CDC and WHO have been working hard and very smart. ” Now, however, with Trump's approach as a tragic and obvious failure (except for his ardent supporters), he is attacking the WHO because, he says, "they rated him poorly."
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Its hyperparty and irresponsible allies in Congress follow suit and call on the United States to cut funding to WHO amid the pandemic. It is difficult to think of a more shameful policy that will end any aspect of America's global responsibility. These congressmen have a responsibility to their bereaved constituents, not to a reckless president. They should focus on the tragedy unfolding at home, rather than being agents of Trump's propaganda.
Attacks on the WHO are pointless. All countries had access to the same information at the same time. Why did Asian countries succeed while the United States and many in Europe failed so much? The answer is national leadership and public health preparedness, not the WHO, which reported to all countries at the same time and in the same way. An obvious truth is that WHO is only one source of information for the United States and other countries. The United States has its own experts, legions of them. It has its own intelligence agencies. It has its own epidemiological surveillance network. He was able to directly observe China's growing alarm and dramatic actions, including China's closure of Wuhan from January 23.
How much of this was so difficult for Trump to understand?
Here is the simple truth. The alarm bells rang from the end of December onwards. Taiwan, for example, began taking urgent precautions as early as December 31, 2019. US intelligence agencies wrote to Trump in alarm in early January. The director of the China Center for Disease Control personally called the director of the United States Centers for Disease Control on January 3. Trump's White House adviser Peter Navarro wrote an urgent note on Jan. 28 warning of the possible cost of the virus.
Trump said he never saw these reports and notes. I believe Trump in this. He is an absent president, apart from his demonstrations, "briefings" of reality shows and golf games. It is supported by a clique of elites on the theory that not much can go wrong if the stock market goes up and taxes are low.
Trump will continue to lash out at the WHO and China and any other targets to distract attention. However, the record is clear: China controlled the epidemic while the United States did not. China implemented a strict national closure while the United States did not. China deployed its best technologists and companies to do the job. In fact, Trump repeatedly praised China during February, only attacking and criticizing China when the situation became difficult in the United States.
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Unlike China, which turned to its public health experts, Trump turned to Vice President Mike Pence and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. As a result, thousands of Americans die unnecessarily, and we are still far from any coherent national plan. Only governors and mayors are fighting and consulting with experts in their public health systems, universities and other scientific institutions.
What would become of such a national plan? It is obvious and I have outlined it before.
Contact symptomatic individuals and quickly isolate them. Track your contacts and test them too. Use telephone applications and online records to support trace, test, and isolation processes. Examine the public for symptoms at bus and train stations, airports, and other public places. Wearing face masks in public, and hand sanitizers relentlessly. Our goal should be to identify and isolate potential cases of covid-19 as soon as possible and as quickly as possible through standard public health measures that should have been used from the start but were not used. In short, do what Asian countries have been doing to control the epidemic.
America's failure is in full view, even if Trump loyalists are blind. We are at the end of the "Wizard of Oz" story. The curtain has been raised to reveal the scammer behind it. Our choice is like Dorothy's: to go home to the country we once knew or stay in Trump's mortal dream realm.
covid-19 Donald Trump