That's just about like wiping a Billings, MT off the map...or a Davenport, IA...or a Sparks, NV.
Think about that.
And it sure didn't have to be this way.
I read an online article at theintercept.com that stated America's first confirmed case of COVID-19 was made public on 1-20-2020. That same article said that Vietnam saw its first case of the disease three days later.
Vietnam still has yet, as of 5-24-2020, to record its first COVID death.
Yes, yes, yes...Vietnam doesn't have as many people in it as the US; the 2020 edition of "The World Almanac" states that Vietnam has 97.9 million people in it compared to America's 327.2 million people (a 2018 estimate).
Now take a look at the world's most heavily-populated country, China.
Not counting Hong Kong or Macao, China's population is 1.39 billion people. Billion.
If you go right now to worldometers.info, you'll find that the latest figures show that 4,634 Chinese have died from COVID.
Nope. That's not a typo.
As far as I'm concerned, it all comes down to the White House's totally inadequate and completely halfhearted response to the coronavirus pandemic.
And yes...it's an utterly racist response.
Maybe you've heard that deaths from the disease have been disproportionately Black and Brown...the two biggest ethnic groups America's Republicans love to defecate on.
If you're thinking about cutting out on this post, just understand that the same article from theintercept.com yielded a quote from HHS Secretary Alex Azar: "Unfortunately, the American population is...very diverse."
That's Azar trying to justify the world's highest COVID casualty total.
Remember: Azar is part of the first White Supremacist administration in Washington since Woodrow Wilson slept at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Republicans- especially those in the White House- made this whole coronavirus pandemic political. They, not I.
To them, it's all about winning on 11-3-2020. The Con Artist in Chief knows that the fewer people out there casting ballots this year, the better his chances of staying in the Oval Office.
And to The Adolf...oops, I mean The Donald, the pandemic is just another weapon in the GOP arsenal. Just like the call to keep the country's meatpacking facilities running, labeling meat as a vital item.
A significant percentage of immigrants and non-White people works at those plants.
And too many of the employees at those plants have complained about the lack of coronavirus (or any other kind of) protection at too many of those facilities.
Listen, if protein's the issue, cookinglight.com lists 21 other sources of protein.
Okay...is social distancing the issue?
I get that millions of us are chafing to Get Back to Normal...even if it's not going to be all that simple. Millions are chafing to hear the nation's cash registers "KA-CHING!" at the same rate as when 2020 began and we were looking forward to a whole new decade.
Coming back to the article from theintercept.com, epidemiologists Britta L. Jewell and Nicholas P. Jewell said that about 90% of America's COVID-19 deaths could've been prevented if social-distancing policies had been put into effect on 3-2-2020.
At that time, only 11 Americans had died from the biggest global pandemic since the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918-20.
In response to COVID, social spacing finally got placed into effect on 3-15-2020.
Think where we'd be right now if the United States had REAL leadership at the top...instead of the con job that commenced on 1-20-2017.
For now, let's think about saving lives first.
Then we can worry about saving the economy.
