Name: Lancet Study Finds 40 Percent of U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Could Have Been Avoided
Brand: slate.com
SKU: slate-com-236
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Lancet Study Finds 40 Percent of U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Could Have Been Avoided

preview

AdvertisementAdvertisementThe British medical journal the Lancet, on Wednesday, published a of Donald Trump’s presidency and its impact on Americans’ health, that 40 percent of the nearly 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. over the past year were avoidable. The journal came to the conclusion by comparing the U.S. health outcomes on the coronavirus—the country leads the world in COVID deaths and confirmed cases with more than 27 million—with the weighted average of other G-7 nations. So it’s not a wildly abstract conclusion to draw: the U.S. could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives if it had just performed similarly to its economic peers.AdvertisementThe report assailed Trump for his response to the pandemic, but emphasized that the disastrous response to the virus’s spread was the result of years of destructive public policy decisions on health that extended well beyond the Trump years. From the Lancet:AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementMany of the cases and deaths were avoidable. Instead of galvanizing the U.S. populace to fight the pandemic, President Trump publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, and eschewed international cooperation. His refusal to develop a national strategy worsened shortages of personal protective equipment and diagnostic tests. President Trump politicized mask-wearing and school reopenings and convened indoor events attended by thousands, where masks were discouraged and physical distancing was impossible.AdvertisementA&nbsp;daily email update of the stories you need to read right now.Thanks for signing up! You can at any time.The result, the Lancet notes, is more than 450,000 deaths where “about 40 percent of which could have been averted had the U.S. death rate mirrored the weighted average of the other G7 nations.” But the trajectory of the U.S. falling behind G-7 nations in life expectancy is nothing new, and the gap has grown over the past decade even before the coronavirus exacerbated existing deficiencies in the U.S. health system. The number of excess deaths in the U.S. when compared to similar countries in the G-7 already stood at more than 450,000 in 2018 alone—a number that has been climbing for decades. Most of those unnecessary deaths in the U.S. are in people under the age 65, such that, “if U.S. death rates were equivalent to those of other G7 nations, two of five deaths before age 65 years would have been averted,” the Lancet notes. “To put this number in context, the number of missing Americans each year is more than the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the USA in all of 2020.”AdvertisementAdvertisement

AdvertisementAdvertisementThe British medical journal the Lancet, on Wednesday, published a of Donald Trump’s presidency and its impact on Americans’ health, that 40 percent of the nearly 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. over the past year were avoidable. The journal came to the conclusion by comparing the U.S. health outcomes on the coronavirus—the country leads the world in COVID deaths and confirmed cases with more than 27 million—with the weighted average of other G-7 nations. So it’s not a wildly abstract conclusion to draw: the U.S. could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives...

public

Staff Writer @Slate. Previously covered India for @NPR  & @TIME.

Elliot Hannon

A daily magazine on the web. Listen to Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade, @ApplePodcasts  Show of the Year 2022.

slate.com

Credible

Speculation

Anecdotal Evidence

Generalization

Stacking the Deck

Appeal to Authority

Straw Man

Slippery Slope

Emotional Appeal

Red Herring

False Dilemma

Illogical

Moral Equivalency

Ad Hominem

Correlation w/o Causation

Semantics

Begging the Question

Faulty Analogy

Non Sequitur

Bandwagon

Dogmatism

Failing Occam's Razor

Biased

Pure Opinion

Hit Piece

Racial Bias

National Bias

Religious Bias

Financial Incentive

Political Agenda

Gender Bias

Misused Image/Video

Study Misinterpreted

Mistake

Misused Term

Science Misrepresented

Factual Error

Satire

Surface Level

Lack of Reliable Sources

Sensational

Not Credible

Investigative

Balanced

Well Sourced

Great Context

sports

entertainment

U.S.

international

business

technology

science

culture

politics

media

health

Lancet Study Finds 40 Percent of U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Could Have Been Avoided

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS