The Tyee has published my article: Deadly Donald Trump and 40 Years of Health Failures. Excerpt:
Four years ago, in the early weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, I wrote an article describing him as an Ebola-level global health threat.
That was obviously a gross under-estimate. And Ebola was the wrong comparison. The outbreak that began in 2013 in West Africa, the worst in history, took about 11,000 lives. (Another outbreak has just started in Guinea, but now it can be fought with experienced health care workers and vaccine.)
Compared to the lives Trump is responsible for shortening or ending, Ebola was a rounding error. In a recent article, science writer Laurie Garrett charged him with pandemicide. But COVID-19 is only one factor in the deaths caused by Trump and a 40-year attack on American public health.
Soon after I wrote my 2017 article, The Lancet, a major British medical journal, established one of its commissions. Unlike its other commissions that look at the impact of this or that disease, this one was to focus on the impact of Trump and his policies.
That commission has now published “Public policy and health in the Trump era,” an indictment not only of Trump but of the 40 years of neoliberal policies begun by Ronald Reagan. It may take another 40 years to repair the damage.
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