‘Trump Death Clock’ counts preventable virus deaths

NEW YORK: A newly erected billboard in New York´s Times Square shows the number of US coronavirus deaths that its creator says could have been avoided if President Donald Trump had acted sooner — and it´s called the “Trump Death Clock.

Created by filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, the “clock” was installed on the roof of a Times Square building, empty due to the pandemic. As of Monday, the counter showed more than 48,000 deaths out of a total of more than 80,000, by far the highest tally in the world.

The “clock” ticks on the assumption that 60 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the United States could have been prevented had the Trump administration implemented mandatory social distancing and school closures just a week earlier than it did, on March 9 instead of March 16, Jarecki explained in a post on Medium.

The New York-based filmmaker, who has twice won awards at the Sundance Film Festival, explained that 60 percent was a conservative estimate calculated by specialists following remarks made in mid-April by leading US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci. Fauci, who has become the trusted face of the government´s virus response, had said that if “you had started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives.

“The lives already unnecessarily lost demand we seek more responsible crisis leadership,” Jarecki wrote in his Medium post. “Just as the names of fallen soldiers are etched on memorials to remind us of the cost of war, quantifying the lives lost to the president´s delayed coronavirus response would serve a vital public function.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, warned on Tuesday that “the consequences could be really serious” if cities and states reopen the U.S. economy too quickly.

More COVID-19 infections are inevitable as people again start gathering, but how prepared communities are to stamp out those sparks will determine how bad the rebound is, Fauci told the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee.

“There is no doubt, even under the best of circumstances, when you pull back on mitigation you will see some cases appear,” Fauci said.And if there is a rush to reopen without following guidelines, “my concern is we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks,” he said. “The consequences could be really serious.”

Fauci was among the health experts testifying Tuesday to the Senate panel. His testimony comes as President Donald Trump is praising states that are reopening after the prolonged lockdown aimed at controlling the virus’s spread.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, chairman of the committee, said as the hearing opened that “what our country has done so far in testing is impressive, but not nearly enough.”Fauci, a member of the coronavirus task force charged with shaping the response to COVID-19, which has killed tens of thousands of people in the U.S., is testifying via video conference after self-quarantining as a White House staffer tested positive for the virus.With the U.S. economy in free-fall and more than 30 million people unemployed, Trump has been pressuring states to reopen.