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WHY AMERICA HAS THE WORLD’S

MOST CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES

Jeffrey D. Sachs

n Thursday, we hit a grim watershed. The US overtook Italy
Oand China as the country with the highest number of con-
firmedCovid-19cases. This is a dire crisis and an extraordinary
failure of President Donald Trump. Americans are suffering and
dying because the Trump administration failed to act quickly and
decisively to prevent the virus› spread. The US has now seen about
1,195 deaths and the number is rising rapidly.
On Thursday, the US saw an increase of more than15,000 case-
sin one day—a shocking surge that can be explained by both the
spread of the virus and increased testing after weeks of shortages—
pushing the total number of confirmed cases over82,000. China, in
comparison, has reported 81,285 cases.
There is a fundamental difference between China and the US.
China has broken the spread of the virus with a lockdown that first
started in Wuhan on January 23 and is now being lifted in stages;
only a few dozen new cases are allegedly confirmed each day, and
most of these are apparently introduced from abroad. The US has
not broken the epidemic. And if Trump has his way, easingguideli-
nes to stay at home by Easter, we will fail to stop the epidemic and
millions more will be infected. Even with active control, we might
be facing around 81,000 deaths by July according to anew detailed
analysisfrom the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the
University of Washington in Seattle.

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