The Privilege of Idiocy: How the Trump Administration Bungled the Coronavirus Response
As the global number of coronavirus cases tops 800,000, the head of the IMF has declared the world economy to be in a recession that could hit harder than it did in 2008. People are scared. Centers of power and wealth in North America and Europe are struggling to brace for the impact atop the exponential curve. The United States, a country whose president dismissed the press’s fear about the virus as “hysteria” and proclaimed it would “disappear” like a “miracle,” is now the world’s epicenter of the outbreak. The number of Americans filing for unemployment surged to a record 3.28 million last week as New York, accounting for roughly one-third of the deaths and one-half of the known cases in the nation, watches its hospitals rapidly overflow with patients, some of whom now have to share ventilators due to a shortage of basic equipment. This is the richest country in the world. COVID-19 has killed over 2500 people in the US so far, and the number will continue to rise. ...