In the middle of pretending he didn’t lose the election, President Donald Trump resumed his attempts to put a rosy spin on his disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now killed more than a quarter of a million Americans, on Friday morning.
Trump retweeted a chart from a Twitter account named “Hydroxychloroquine News” showing that the U.S. had a smaller “case fatality rate” on October 9 than six other countries.
“I have seen the claim that the United States has a higher fatality rate from Covid-19 than other wealthy nations. This claim appears to be entirely false and perhaps politically motivated,” the account, named after the antimalarial drug Trump falsely touted as a miracle cure for COVID-19, tweeted.
However, the U.S. indisputably has the highest COVID-19 death toll in the world, and even the description of the chart Trump retweeted notes that its data is a “poor measure of the mortality risk of the disease.”
Trump also tweeted that “[t]here will be no lockdowns other than those done by certain Democrat governors!” indicating yet again the President’s refusal to take a firm hand with the pandemic.
As part of his refusal to recognize his electoral defeat, Trump has blocked President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team from accessing the government’s material on COVID-19, including plans for distributing the vaccine.