According to Johns Hopkins University’s data on COVID-19 deaths, since Jan. 1, there have been approximately 353,000 deaths from the pandemic. This is about a thousand more COVID-19 deaths than in all of 2020.
That is to say, more people have died from COVID-19 under President Joe Biden than under former President Donald Trump.
There are some important details to take into account, however. Trump lacked the benefit of vaccinations until the last month of his presidency, whereas Biden had them from day one. Biden, on the other hand, has had to deal with the surge of the delta variant, which spread throughout the country, even among the vaccinated.
Then again, under Biden, the COVID-19 seven-day fatality rate in September was higher than last September.
“The coronavirus doesn’t really know what year it is,” noted Dr. David Dowdy, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “And the death has largely come in waves.”
In reality, these numbers should not be surprising. The history of pandemics shows that there are multiple waves and variants that frequently lead to a lot of people being infected and dying. Biden never had any business promising he could beat the virus.
It is amusing how, in year one of the pandemic, every story about the virus was a “blame Trump” story. Absolutely nothing Biden has done is working, yet Biden really never gets blamed for anything.
Sure, Trump said a lot of wacky things, but Biden has told many falsehoods about the virus as well. He stated, for example, that “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the ICU unit and you’re not going to die.” And then, shortly after those comments, Biden contradicted himself and added that even if vaccinated people do “catch the virus,” they are “not likely to get sick.”
Further, when discussing the delta variant, Biden stated that vaccines “cover” the delta variant insofar as people will not contract the virus if vaccinated. “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” Biden said.
Presidents should be given some leeway when they talk about pandemics. They are just relaying information from “experts” who seem to be either wrong or oversimplifying as often as not. That said, if Biden were held to the same standard Trump was, he would be exposed for his lies and incompetence.
