More Americans have died from COVID-19 under President Joe Biden than they did under then-President Donald Trump over the first nine months of the year, from 2020 to 2021, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
Though several COVID vaccines have been available throughout Biden’s term and though he ran on a pledge to handle the pandemic better than his predecessor after taking office Jan. 20, the “Johns Hopkins’ Coronavirus Research Center reported that, as of Wednesday afternoon, 353,000 Americans had died this year,” the Washington Times reported Friday.
That is more than the 352,000 who died from March 2020 when the pandemic first began, to December, when the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency authorization for the new vaccines developed under Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” program.
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During a briefing to Congress last week, Coronavirus Research Center officials noted that though the Delta variant’s cases and hospitalizations have fallen for many weeks, there continues to be some vaccine hesitancy and testing of cases has declined as well.
“So I would say the simple strategies are, first, to listen to what the concerns are and try as best as possible to understand them,” said Dr. Bill Moss, the center’s vaccinology lead. “If it’s due to misinformation or disinformation, having the right messenger convey that information to the target audience is really critical, and that’s a person who the community or individual trusts, whether that’s a religious leader or a celebrity or sports figure.”
Republicans who remember that Biden and Democrats regularly blamed COVID deaths on Trump were quick to note the Johns Hopkins figures.
“Why are Covid deaths higher this year under Biden and with a vaccine, than they were last year under Trump and with no vaccine?” tweeted Lavern Spicer, a Republican in Miami-Dade County who lost Florida’s 24th Congressional District race to Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson last year.
“Joe Biden ran his entire 2020 campaign from his basement arguing he‘d make the country safe from covid by following the ‘science.’ Yet more Americans have now died of covid in 2021 under his administration than in 2020 under Trump,” added conservative radio host and sports broadcaster Clay Travis.
“The Covid death meter crossed 700,000 with Biden in office. Where’s the once-omnipresent CNN death graphic now?” noted Fox News host Laura Ingraham who tweeted a screen grab from the liberal news network.
The Times adds:
According to Johns Hopkins, the U.S. surpassed 700,000 deaths at the end of last week, a tally that had risen to more than 710,000 deaths by Friday morning.
In a statement on the 700,000-death milestone last week, President Biden said “the astonishing death toll is yet another reminder of just how important it is to get vaccinated.”
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But the president has not commented on this week’s reports in several publications that the 2021 death toll had surpassed 2020.
Rather, Biden has continued to blame the pandemic only on unvaccinated Americans, though people who have gotten the shots are still coming down with the virus as well.
“If we raise our vaccination rate, protect ourselves and others with masking and expanded testing, and identify people who are infected, we can and we will turn the tide on COVID-19,” he said last month when he announced he was mandating businesses with more than 100 employees to require their workers to get the shots.
“It will take a lot of hard work, and it’s going to take some time. Many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are still not vaccinated, even though the vaccine is safe, effective, and free,” he added.
This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And it’s caused by the fact that despite America having an unprecedented and successful vaccination program, despite the fact that for almost five months free vaccines have been available in 80,000 different locations, we still have nearly 80 million Americans who have failed to get the shot,” he said citing the most current stats at the time.
h/t: Conservative Brief
