COVID19 Update - Day 190

US Tests: 88,574,524*

US Cases: 6,597,783*

US Deaths: 188,802*

Worldwide Cases: 29,730,140*

Worldwide Deaths: 938,575*

* - Numbers are a lower bound.  True numbers are being suppressed by the Trump administration

Love Trump, or drop dead.  It is undeniable that everything Trump says and does publicly is motivated by politics.

The President of the Red States of America. pic.twitter.com/CCzBRBpWoy

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 16, 2020

Of course, Trump's statements never intersect with the truth unless it's by accident --- and this case is no exception:

For what it’s worth, we are not below 240,000 deaths substantially. Instead, the country has seen at least 193,000 deaths, a figure that is probably an underestimation. For example, there have been 263,000 more deaths in the United States in 2020 than would have been expected based on the past several years. If those are attributable to the novel coronavirus, we’ve already moved out of good-job territory.

. . .

It is true that the early surge in deaths was heavily weighted toward states that had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. New York and New Jersey in particular recorded hundreds of deaths a day in April, quickly contributing to the country’s total number of fatalities.

Over time, though, the percentage of total deaths that have occurred in blue states has dropped. The most recent data, through Tuesday, indicates that about 53 percent of deaths have occurred in blue states — meaning that 47 percent have occurred in red ones.

In other words, more than 90,000 deaths have occurred in red states. If that were the country’s total, we would have seen the second-most number of deaths globally, trailing only Brazil. The United States would still be responsible for 11 percent of global deaths, despite constituting only about 4 percent of the world’s population.

It is, of course, abhorrent that a president not only views a pandemic in terms of the states which largely support him versus those that do not, but that he says so publicly.  However, this is not the first time we've learned that the red/blue divide stands foremost in Trump's mind even in a crisis.  Recall the revelation in late July that Trump and Kushner trashed a planned coronavirus response because of:

. . . a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

If you support Trump, then *maybe* you will only be damaged as badly as the folks in Georgia or Florida.

Oppose him, and he literally doesn't care if you die.