Megadeath

In his paralysis in the face of a crisis expanding outside of his control and his sociopathic indifference to human suffering, Trump was merely giving particularly perfidious expression to the response in nearly every country to the pandemic.

Less than 24 hours earlier, German chancellor Angela Merkel told a dumbstruck group of lawmakers she expects 60 to 70 percent of the German population to become infected with the deadly disease.

Merkel’s declaration was less a statement of fact than of policy. She was saying, in effect, that no serious measures would be taken to prevent the outbreak from becoming a mass casualty event in her country.

Earlier in the week, a visibly distraught World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom warned that a “moral decay” was taking hold in capitals throughout the world.

Shocked at the seeming rapidity with which governments were giving up on any serious effort to contain the disease, which he attributed to its disproportionate effect on the elderly, Adhanom insisted that “any individual, whatever age, any human being matters.”

Adhanom stated: “Whether it kills a young person or an old person or a senior citizen, any country has an obligation to save that person. So that’s why we’re saying no white flag, we don’t give up, we fight. To protect our children, to protect our senior citizens, at the end of the day it’s a human life. We cannot say we care about millions when we don’t care about an individual person.”

"Trump’s coronavirus address: Ignorance, xenophobia and helplessness" by James Cogan and Andre Damon

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Behind closed doors, Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of the US Congress and Supreme Court, informed the senate staff that he expects a staggering 70 to 150 million people in the United States to become infected with COVID-19, according to NBC.

In Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stated a similar figure, that up to 70 percent of Germany, some 58 million people, could become infected.

The report from NBC came amidst data showing a sharp increase in total cases worldwide to at least 126,000 and more than 4,600 deaths—a 50 percent increase in new cases internationally, compared to a 30 percent increase the previous day. The number of cases outside of China has increased 13-fold in the past two weeks to more than 40,000, and the number of countries where infection has been reported has tripled.

At the current rate, there will be a million cases outside of China by the end of this month and one million cases in the United States alone sometime during the second week of April.

Monahan’s comments were made public just hours after the World Health Organization (WHO) formally declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic and cited “alarming levels of inaction” by governments to prevent the spread. At the same time, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that it wasn’t just some countries lacked “capacity” or “resources” but that “[s]ome countries are struggling with a lack of resolve.”

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Even if the quarantine measures implemented in China were imposed on the US population today, the number of infected would likely rise to between 150,000 and 200,000 by early April. Upwards of 30,000 will require serious medical intervention in order to live. There are not enough hospital beds in the country to provide life-saving care for such a number of critical cases, much less the millions predicted by Monahan.

While the United States was not explicitly named, the total inability of the US health care system to meet the demands of the coronavirus were spelled out near the end of yesterday’s WHO briefing.

Executive Director Dr. Michael Ryan stated: “Some countries clearly, and you’ve seen this through the infection of health workers, have not yet got in place necessary measures to stop infections transmitting. Our hospital systems are designed to deliver at 99 percent efficiency. They don’t have any space to deliver more.”

"Congressional doctor expects up to 150 million Americans to contract the coronavirus" by Bryan Dyne