Dr. Ashish Jha, the Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said that the coronavirus death toll 100,000-200,000 that Trump is celebrating is horrible.
Dr. Jha said on MSNBC, “And those are grim numbers. And 100,000 to 200,000 Americans dying from this disease, it was completely unnecessary, but here we are and looking forward. If we do a good job moving forward, and that requires social distancing finally getting our testing up and running and getting our hospitals ready, yeah, that is within the sort of range of what we might experience. No one should feel solace that that’s great, a great job done. That is a completely horribly high number.”
Jha also said that the deaths were avoidable, “Oh, it was completely avoidable. And, look, we all know that for two months our government didn’t take it seriously. We know that. That’s been sort of — that’s a well-known, well established. Even in the last few weeks as the reality has become very, very obvious to most Americans, there are still political leaders who have not taken it seriously. We still had spring breakers in Florida who probably have now spread those infections across the country. We still haven’t gotten our hospitals ready. So I’m hoping that this press conference marks a turning point where everybody begins to take it seriously. I think a majority of Americans have, but there have been too many political leaders who have still been acting like this is not a serious problem.”
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Dr. Ashish Jha, the Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, shot down Trump's claim that only 100,000-200,000 coronavirus deaths was a good job. He called the spread of the virus in the US totally preventable. pic.twitter.com/DhdxbhZmtD
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) March 29, 2020
Trump’s claim that if only a few hundred thousand people die in the US from coronavirus it means that he did a good job was a joke because the US had ample warning and resources to cut down the spread of the virus from the beginning, but Trump spent those critical early weeks calling the virus a hoax and giving US supplies to the Chinese.
None of this had to happen. With proper early testing and distancing, the death toll could have been exponentially lower.
Trump bungled the response and now he wants credit for potentially killing hundreds of thousands of Americans with his incompetence.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
