To the editor:
Let’s update the interim scorecard for COVID-19. According to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 dashboard, on August 27, 2020, America had 5,719,841 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 177,332 COVID-19-related deaths, and Canada had 125,969 cases and 9,090 deaths. America has 9 times as many people as Canada, but on an equivalent per capita basis, Canada has had 80 percent fewer COVID-19 cases and 54 percent fewer COVID-19-related deaths than America.
This comparison of the numbers shows that we could have done much better in America. President Trump was handed a health crisis, and his response has been to mismanage and politicize it. He has failed his basic duty to keep us safe, not only from the virus, but also by making us look weak and incompetent in the eyes of our foreign adversaries.
Trump was handed another crisis with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. His only response to the resulting protests has been to fan the flames by proclaiming law and order. Maintaining law and order can be code words for maintaining white supremacy, and it deflects us from the cause of the protests which is police brutality against Black Americans. Trump is incapable of confronting white supremacy because it has been bred deeply into his bones. White supremacy also makes us weak as a nation. Trump is not my America.
Stephen Freeman
Presque Isle
