Close to 200,000 Americans have lost their lives because Trump ignored early warnings, refused to listen to experts, and to this day has not outlined a plan to deal with the coronavirus. The reality is that it did not have to get this bad, but Trump’s failures have taken a toll on almost every aspect of American life.

Trump has still not done enough to respond to the coronavirus as cases continue to surge across the country. 

Axios: “Coronavirus cases increase in 17 states”

CNN: “A deal for 150 million rapid coronavirus tests the White House promoted last month as a potential game-changer in battling the pandemic fails to fix the lack of an overarching strategy for a new phase of testing the nation needs to embrace, multiple health experts and state and local officials say.”

NPR: “Since the coronavirus pandemic began, President Trump and industry officials have talked a lot about the need to ramp up domestic manufacturing of critical protective gear. But six months on, there are still shortages of all kinds of PPE, like N95 respirator masks, while face shields are easy to find. … The disconnect can be traced, in part, to the lack of a coherent national plan.”

Wall Street Journal: “A more-robust federal response is needed to manage the Covid-19 crisis in nursing homes, including broader efforts to provide personal protective equipment, access to testing and help with staffing, according to a report from a commission convened by the Trump administration.”

Tens of millions of Americans are out of work and struggling to get by and coronavirus continues to drive joblessness in the United States. 

Fox Business: “The latest jobless claims figures from the Labor Department, which cover the week ending Sept. 12, show that 860,000 workers sought aid last week, pushing the total number since the shutdown began to nearly 61 million.”

Washington Post’s Heather Long: “**There are nearly 30 million Americans receiving some form of unemployment aid**”

Associated Press: “COVID-19 danger continues to drive joblessness in US”

Trump’s handling of the coronavirus lags behind the rest of the developed world. 

Brookings: “Both U.S. employment and health outcomes during the pandemic have been worse than what we find in virtually all other high-income countries around the world.”

Black and Latino Americans have been disproportionately impacted by the virus, and are far more likely to become infected and to be hospitalized.

Mayo Clinic: “Research increasingly shows that racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States. According to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native people had an age-adjusted COVID-19 hospitalization rate about 5.3 times that of non-Hispanic white people. COVID-19 hospitalization rates among non-Hispanic Black people and Hispanic or Latino people were both about 4.7 times the rate of non-Hispanic white people.”

Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have increased faster among children and teens than the general public, with Black and Latino children being at most risk for dying of coronavirus, per the CDC. 

New York Times: “As some schools begin in-person classes, data compiled by the American Academy of Pediatrics from the summer show that cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus have increased at a faster rate in children and teenagers than among the general public.”

Bloomberg: “Of around 190,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the U.S., 121 of those who died by July 31 were under the age of 21, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three out of four were of Hispanic, Black, American Indian or Alaskan descent, the agency said in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.”

Over 100,000 small businesses across the country have shut down permanently, and less than half the jobs lost during the pandemic have returned. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has given more than a billion dollars in federal loans intended for small businesses to large corporations.

New York Times: “Researchers at Harvard believe the rates of business closures are likely to be even higher. They estimated that nearly 110,000 small businesses across the country had decided to shut down permanently between early March and early May, based on data collected in weekly surveys by Alignable, a social media network for small-business owners.”

Associated Press: “Employers added 10.6 million jobs from May through August, but that’s still less than half the jobs lost in March and April.”

Washington Post: “Public companies received $1 billion in stimulus funds meant for small businesses”