COVID19 Update - Day 95

US Tests: 23,040,304

US Cases: 2,063,789

US Deaths: 109,249

Worldwide Cases: 7,786,042

Worldwide Deaths: 430,128

While America is focused on systemic racism and/or the pandemic, the Trump administration is busy rolling back environmental regulations:

President Trump signed an executive order that calls on agencies to waive required environmental reviews of infrastructure projects to be built during the pandemic-driven economic crisis. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a new rule that changes the way the agency uses cost-benefit analyses to enact Clean Air Act regulations, effectively limiting the strength of future air pollution controls.

Together, the actions signal that Mr. Trump intends to speed up his efforts to dismantle environmental regulations as the nation battles the coronavirus and a wave of unrest protesting the deaths of black Americans in Georgia, Minnesota and Kentucky. They will also help define the stakes in the 2020 presidential election, since neither effort would likely survive a Democratic victory.

Ironically, rolling back these environmental regulations will likely worsen the effects of the pandemic:

By reducing emissions of the tiny, lung damaging particles known as PM 2.5, clean air rules that are primarily aimed at controlling different pollutants can have the effect of saving thousands of lives by lowering rates of asthma and lung disease. And, last month, researchers at Harvard released the first nationwide study linking long-term exposure to PM 2.5 and Covid-19 death rates.

“At a time when more than 100,000 Americas have died from Covid and we know about this connection, the Trump administration is going to put in place some analytical techniques that will make it easier for them to kill more Americans,” said Richard Revesz, an expert on environmental law at New York University.

In sum, if you want a cleaner environment, vote for Biden.  If you want to be protected from a pandemic like COVID-19, vote for Biden.

And I guess if, for some reason, you want polluters to freely pollute without any fear of punishment, and for disease to spread unchecked across America, then vote for Trump.