The dreadful "Trump Death Clock" is now online. This tally of unnecessary deaths estimate the number of Americans and other people in the United States being killed every minute by President Donald Trump's relentless bungling and inaction during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
It was created by critically acclaimed and award-winning American director Eugene Jarecki. The two-time winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Emmy, and Peabody Awards argues the world must know how many Americans were killed by Trump's recklessness and by his constantly downplaying the severity of the pandemic.
Jarecki said the Trump Death Clock displays both the number of people in the U.S. that have died from COVID-19 and an estimate of that portion whose lives would have been saved had Trump acted just one week earlier. Trump continues to be harshly criticized for acting too late to stem the pandemic by peddling fake good news so as not to damage his chances for re-election in November.
The Trump Death Clock constantly tallies the number of American lives lost as a result of Trump's failure as a leader. It showed 45,404 deaths in the U.S. as of 14:19 GMT Thursday. This number represents 60% of the total number of lives lost at this time, which stood at 74,881, according to real-time data site Worldometer.
The Trump Death Clock was developed using a simple mathematical calculation based on 60% of total deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. The 60% ratio was derived from a study by two prominent epidemiologists, Britta Jewell of Imperial College, London and Nicholas Jewell, a professor of biostatistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Writing in the New York Times last month, the Jewells advanced the theory that if Trump had introduced the social distancing guidelines on March 9 and not March 16, a 60% reduction in the expected final death count might have resulted given the exponential spread of the coronavirus.
"I am seeking accountability for reckless leadership," said Jarecki in explaining why he created the Trump Death Clock. "We have meticulously isolated just that portion of the U.S. death toll where one can see a specific line between the president's decisions and actions and the loss of life."
Jarecki said his clock is based on credible scientific thinking of top public health experts and epidemiologists. If anything, the Trump Death Clock is a conservative estimate of the deaths Trump has caused, argues Jarecki.
"I believe we need a national measure of the cost of the recklessness of the president's pandemic response," according to Jarecki. "He was advised multiple times by the intelligence services and his own public health experts of the significance of this pandemic and the need to take mitigating action, and yet those warnings were not acted upon."
