Week 178 - Most Deaths in the World

This week, nearly 12,000 Americans died of the  coronavirus. The U.S. became not only the country with the most cases by  a factor of three, but also the country with the most deaths in the  world. As American bodies piled up, Trump was obstinate and refused to  change his approach, instead continuing to tweet grievances and holding  daily campaign rallies masquerading as task force briefings, some  lasting hours long.

It became clear this week that neither Trump nor  our federal government would have a plan or much of a role to play in  stopping the growing outbreak — unthinkable in the history of our  country. Instead, states were left to fend for themselves, and Americans  learned to count on one another to stay home and volunteer to help.  Trump’s short-lived bump in the polls disappeared, and approval of his  and the federal government’s handling of the outbreak fell considerably.

This week Trump pushed the unproven drug  hydroxychloroquine as his game changer, amplified by Fox News — taking a  page from the Roger Ailes playbook of casting Trump as a hero bringing  hope, and the “other media” and Democrats as villains who downplayed the  drug to get back at Trump. Fox News and Trump allies also pushed other  conspiracy theories, including that the death count was overstated.

As the week came to an end, Trump seemed on  unfamiliar ground, unable to deploy his typical strategy of casting  blame and making it stick and redirecting as Americans were dying, and  dying alone — and the virus developed new hot spots in major cities and  rural America.