Is It All Trump's Fault? Mostly-- But His Team Is Excruciatingly Incompetent As Well

The Economist asked why America's death toll has been so high. Watch the 10 minute video above. Tuesday began with 1,010,356 confirmed cases in the U.S. (23,196 new cases from Sunday). There were 56,797 deaths (up 1,384 from Sunday). The U.S. was showing 3,052 cases per million in the population and 17,211 tests per million and 172 deaths per million.

How does that compare with other countries? Let's look at testing first. These are the countries that have been testing most per million in their population. The higher up the chart, the better:

• Portugal- 35,321
• Israel- 34,971
• Norway- 30,310
• Italy- 29,600
• Spain- 28,779
• Switzerland- 28,343
• Denmark- 26,900
• Austria- 25,819
• Ireland- 25,785
• Germany- 24,738
• Singapore- 20,815
• Russia- 20,690
• Czechia- 20,401
• Australia- 20,277
• Canada- 19,009
• Belgium- 18,468
• U.S.A.- 17,211
• South Korea- 11,735
• Netherlands- 11,319
• U.K.- 10,605
• Sweden- 9,357
• France- 7,103

You might want to know which states are testing enough. Let's call 25,000 per million the minimum acceptable number. The U.S. is at 17,211, which is unacceptable. Only 10 states (+ DC) are doing an acceptable job at testing:

• Rhode Island- 56,941
• New York- 44,472
• Massachusetts- 37,261
• North Dakota- 33,948
• Utah- 33,638
• Louisiana- 33,572
• New Mexico- 29,509
• DC- 28,092
• New Jersey- 27,049
• Connecticut- 25,896
• Washington- 25,021

The 5 states doing the worst job at testing are all doing an inadequate job and are absolutely not ready to start thinking of opening up their economies yet. Other states that are nearly as bad-- like Georgia, Texas and Florida-- are opening up and will soon see big COVID-19 spikes.:

• Kansas- 9,657
• Arizona- 9,906
• Virginia- 10,139
• Ohio- 10,540
• South Carolina- 10,721

OK, and now let's look at those same countries with deaths per million. The number in parentheses is cases per million. Remember, all these numbers were as of Sunday night and the lower down the chart, the better:

• Belgium- 662 (4,028)
• Spain- 503 (4,907)
• Italy- 446 (3,298)
• Ireland- 3,979 (223)
• Switzerland- 3,370 (192)
• France- 357 (2,541)
• U.K.- 311 (2,315)
• Netherlands- 264 (2,232)
• Sweden- 225 (1,874)
• U.S.A.- 172 (3,052)
• Portugal- 91 (2,356)
• Denmark- 74 (1,502)
• Germany- 73 (1,895)
• Canada- 72 (1,285)
• Austria- 61 (1,696)
• Norway- 38 (1,402)
• Israel- 25 (1,797)
• Czechia- 21 (695)
• South Korea- 5 (209)
• Russia- 5 (597)
• Australia- 3 (264)
• Singapore- 2 (2,465)

Dan Balz and Scott Clement, writing for the Washington Post yesterday, reported that "Americans overwhelmingly support state-imposed restrictions on businesses and the size of public gatherings to slow the spread of the coronavirus... Americans continue to give their governors significantly higher ratings than they offer Trump, who still draws mostly negative reviews for how he has handled the crisis."

The poll shows that 66% say they find that current restrictions on restaurants, stores and other businesses are appropriate, while 16% are smart enough to understand that the restrictions are NOT restrictive enough. 17% are the hard core Republican Party Death Cult who says the restrictions are too much and should be lifted. There are similar numbers for the appropriateness of public gatherings-- 64% are satisfied, 22% are smart enough to understand the restrictions don't go far enough to flatten the curve and 14% are the psycho Death Cult.

Balz and Clements note the partisan breakdown: "About 7 in 10 (72 percent) Democrats and 6 in 10 (62 percent) Republicans say their state’s current restrictions on businesses are appropriate. Republicans are more likely to say their state is too restrictive on businesses, though fewer than 3 in 10 say this (27 percent), compared with 17 percent of independents and 8 percent of Democrats. Even in the dozen states that have begun to loosen restrictions or that had less restrictive orders in place, a majority of residents support their state’s limitations, with 59 percent calling them appropriate, 18 percent saying they are too restrictive and 22 percent calling them not restrictive enough-- the last figure being eight points higher than in the states with more stringent orders in place. Support for limitations on the size of public gatherings, which many states set at no more than 10 people, is just as strong. The poll finds 64 percent calling those limits appropriate and another 22 percent saying they are not restrictive enough. A smaller 14 percent describe them as too restrictive. These findings suggest that even as states begin to reopen their economies on a gradual basis, many citizens could be cautious about resuming activity at the level that existed before the pandemic took hold and people were ordered or asked to stay at home as much as possible."

We ran this chart yesterday, but its worth looking at again. Just 16% of the people in the country understand that the U.S.isn't doing enough to flatten the curve. That's going to mean a lot of trouble as states start removing social distancing restrictions again. Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina are going to be tragic test cases. As Elena Moore and Philip Ewing reported for NPR yesterday, testing is the key to returning to a normal life. Trump, who has utterly failed in this area and, of course, takes no responsibility for anything but the good stuff, says it's up to the states. Moore and Ewing wrote that testing is "the doorway between the disaster response mode of the pandemic and confidence about returning to work, school and life. And it's also still apparently weeks or more away from scaling to a level that will make a big difference for most people in most places."