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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

Politically, he just says insane things that get headlines, which distract from the real news: Covid killing hundreds of thousands under his care, dismantling of the Post Office, and other highly unpopular consequences of his presidency.

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President is not responsible for pathetic Healthcare in California and New York. I'm always amazed how every single failure of the Democratic state apparatus is blamed on the President. Same deal with police brutality.

I'd say he had 3 years to get good healthcare in and spent that time golfing instead?

As I said, it's not the President's job or power to fix broken state apparatus. That's the state's job.

Then why do we call ACA "ObamaCare"?

The White House can propose and advocate policies, and it has an effect. Trump has promised to do the former and has never done it. Why is he promising to do it if it has no effect?

> which distract from the real news: Covid killing hundreds of thousands under his care,

Nevermind that in the states the main actors responsible in times of health crises are the local State authorities not the Federal ones. Your 'under his care' is terribly loaded.

He has control over the FDA, which bungled the early response. He also controls the CDC and has appointed many inexperienced donors to important positions (many of my friends work there, and whistleblowers have come forward).

He is also influential among a large group of Americans, as is any president.

He called for Obama to resign after a single case of ebola[1] in the US. Clearly he agrees with me that the president has an effect in fighting infectious disease.

1.https://www.axios.com/trump-obama-resign-787b042d-0361-48f1-...

> He has control over the FDA, which bungled the early response. He also controls the CDC and has appointed many inexperienced donors to important positions (many of my friends work there, and whistleblowers have come forward).

Yet this has nothing to do with the fact that whether to go into lock-down or not and what kind of measures to take are taken by State actors, not the federal government. We can see that right now with the debate on school opening: the Federal government has no power.

I am not sure where you think that States play almost no role, the USA is one of the countries where the local States have the most power compared to any other Western democracy out there.

Covid killing hundreds of thousands under his care

But the US is near the middle-bottom of per capita deaths in Western countries and far behind several European countries.[1]

[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

I think you're misinterpreting that table. USA is in between Chile and Brazil, in eighth place out of 150 countries. It has the highest deaths per-capita of any country over 100M people.

You only looked at the first 13 of 150 results, huh. You can adjust the number of countries shown from the dropdown at the top right.

Among those Western countries from your chart, only the US and Brazil are still recording 1k new cases daily. Everyone else is largely done with the pandemic phase, and is working on reopening, whereas the US is only maybe halfway through this ordeal.

If we're just doing per-capita snapshots, the US is doing 8x worse than India and 20x worse than China. Both countries that are far poorer and more densely populated.

By literally any measure, it's been an indefensible performance. Total shitshow.

The US is eighth on that list. That’s not middle bottom, that’s top.

Sure, but the top 10 is mostly Western countries.

Proven wrong so you just adjust the goalposts?

Poorly worded in the first place.

I would compare the US with countries like Cambodia which aren’t doing a great job of even identifying cases.

Why would you use that as a source? It omits most countries.

A real ranking shows the US is doing far worse (orders of magnitude worse) than many countries[1].

One of the few countries doing worse is Sweden, which actively did nothing. They serve as a (flawed, but interesting) baseline.

Our own health officials are blowing whistles, criticizing the federal response in the press, and (universally) disagreeing with Trump's dismissals, false predictions, and insane medical advice.

To think the US is doing well is utter delusion. I don't know what else to call it.

1. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

>> Covid killing hundreds of thousands under his care

but, but, but... it was going to kill millions!!!

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/19/the-coronavirus-could-kill-m...

https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/03/millions-could-...

In all fairness its by no means over yet.

We're 3/4 of the way there, infections growing at the fastest rate yet, and no vaccine yet. It looks like 1 million will fall short of actual deaths by the time this is through.

oh, so now Covid deaths outside of the USA are Trump's fault too?

He deported Covid-positive people to Guatemala and has worked against the WHO, so... some of them, yes.

This comment is logically inconsistent. If the USA's handling of Covid is so awful, then by definition an infected person would get better treatment somewhere else, like Guatemala.

The USAs handling isn't awful because the treatment is poor, it is awful because infection rates are high. And yes, that is 100% on Trump.

you're a funny guy. hyperbole much?

Don't you find it exhausting trying to defend a president that is dumber than you? I don't know how you do it. Your partisan loyalty is not worth your mental health.

When did I defend Trump? All I've stated is that Covid isn't his fault. What seems exhausting to me is spinning every single thing that happens to somehow be the fault of one single person. He's not a monarch, not a dictator, and his power, by design, is quite limited. Why not get rid of governors, state and city governments, Congress, heads of CDC and FDA, postmasters general, school boards, hospital admins, etc. if they have no agency -- if all their decisions are inconsequential? You've already stated Trump is 100% to blame... therefore, everyone else must be at zero. Stop wasting mental energy on how to blame Trump (or inventing fairy tales where some alternative president would have cured it) and direct it towards something productive.

Jacinda Ardern also has limited power. But she's an actual competent leader. One who didn't fart around pretending nothing was wrong for months while competent advisors said the exact opposite. One who didn't act like they got blindsided and started shifting blame after months of doing nothing. One who didn't peddle fake cures and hold mask-optional campaign rallies that directly led to the deaths of his own supporters.

And as it turns out, by being a competent leader, you can actually do a hell of a lot without having absolute power.

Yes. Trump is 100% to blame. Hundreds of thousands of people died, whereas if we had Jacinda, maybe a couple hundred.

>> whereas if we had Jacinda, maybe a couple hundred.

Lol, no rational person believes that. The USA is not a small, remote, island nation.

https://time.com/5824042/new-zealand-coronavirus-elimination...

Yet if Trump copied Ms. Ardern's lead and postponed our national election in Nov, I'm sure you'd tell me why it was an outrageous and illegal maneuver.

This conversation serves no purpose.

Lol, New Zealand has 750 visitors per 1000 residents, and the US has 225 visitors per 1000 residents per year. New Zealand may be small, but they're not remote anymore and haven't been for a long time.

Let's not forget that it isn't just New Zealand that has utterly destroyed the idea that leaders have no influence over infection rates. Most of the entire world has done better than the US. Hell, even India has done better than the US, despite their massive problems with high population density and unsanitary urban living conditions.

No rational person thinks that the US response was appropriate, and no rational person thinks that responsibility belongs anywhere else except our dipshit in chief. But sure, keep making excuses for him.

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