Trump turned US into ‘number one' coronavirus epicenter in world: Analyst

US President Donald Trump’s response to the new coronavirus - characterized by denial, missteps and denigration - has helped turn the United States into the “number one" epicenter of the global pandemic, says an American political analyst.

“The US in particular had plenty of lead time to handle this pandemic in a much better way,” Dan Kovalik, an author and political commentator in Pennsylvania, said in a phone interview with Press TV on Sunday.

“First of all, we have to go back to the fact that in 2018, Trump dismantled our pandemic response unit. Apparently, the United States had the best pandemic response team in the world and Trump, in order to save a few pennies, got rid of it,” he added.

“So, by the time the pandemic starts to roll around, we’re already disarmed and when the pandemic starts in China, the US is given a good solid six weeks to respond here to try to minimize the deaths, to minimize the disruption to our economy and our lives, and Trump did nothing, downplayed it, denied that it was happening and we lost critical time,” Kovalik underlined.

Kovalik went on to say that, “By the time Trump admitted that something was happening, there were major cities in the US which were already getting pummeled by the virus; so here we are, the US has the most COVID-19 cases in the world, it would quite possibly have the most deaths from the COVID-19 in the world. This is the richest country on earth, this is the country that prides itself on being number one and it will be number one but probably not in a good way.”

The coronavirus pandemic continues to cause mayhem in the US, with the overall death toll exceeding 8,400 and the confirmed cases standing at more than 312,000. The Trump administration has come under fire from medical experts and Democrats for downplaying the threat and mishandling the crisis. 

US 'wasted' months before preparing for virus pandemic

The Trump administration squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment.

Kovalik made the remark while commenting on a recent interview by renowned American scholar and political activist Noam Chomsky who slammed the US's handling of the virus.

Chomsky said the coronavirus crisis could have been prevented because there was enough information available to the world, also warning that once the pandemic is over, two critical challenges will remain — the threats of nuclear war and global warming.

Describing the US president as a "sociopathic buffoon," Chomsky said while the coronavirus was serious, "it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching. We are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's happened in human history.”

"Donald Trump and his minions are in the lead in racing to the abyss. In fact there are two immense threats that we're facing - one is the growing threat of nuclear war ... and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming," he underlined.

Coronavirus reveals, exacerbates US inequality

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown millions of workers in the United States off the payroll and into poverty.

The coronavirus, which causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19, jumped from wildlife to people in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year and is currently affecting more than 200 countries across the globe. It has so far affected more than 1,225,000 people and killed over 66,000, according to a running count by worldometers.info.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.

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