Trump got huge numbers of Americans killed
By 
While the news about the vaccine testing finally suggests there might be someway out of here, COVID-19 is a horrible disease and starting from the top of the federal government American policy was mostly to just give up. (The possibility of 15 million doses of an effective vaccine being available by the end of the year makes the decision to just go ahead and open the Cheesecake Factories even worse; a lot of lives could have been saved with some patience.)
Sarah Jones has a beautiful essay about the death of her grandfather from COVID-19:
He tried. He lingered for several long days until the virus had its way. From the evening I got the call that he was sick until the moment my mother told us that he’d died, he fought. But he was 86 years old, which made him a high-risk COVID patient. His health had been declining, gradually, for months. The virus attacked his lungs, and then his heart, with lethal precision. In the end, he was no match for it.
That is a fact. I admit it. I write it out syllable by syllable, a ritual to exorcise grief. But the exercise fails me now, as it has failed me for weeks, because grief isn’t all that haunts me. My grandfather’s death, six months into the pandemic, is more than a tragedy. His fate is as political as it is biological. And I am furious.
In the corner of southwest Virginia where my grandfather lived, mask wearing is far from universal. In the reductive stereotype perpetrated by outsider journalists, the area is Trump country. My grandfather’s memorial service — small, socially distanced, masks required — could have inspired a David Brooks column: Trump voters mingled with the deceased’s Bernie Sanders–supporting grandchildren in Appalachia.
Later, when I walked into Kroger and saw all the middle-aged men without masks on, I almost approached them. I wanted to know: Did one of you kill my grandfather? But the men were a distraction. They were taking a risk, yes, and putting others at risk, but they weren’t the real problem. That problem is larger than a few men without masks, or the president who encouraged them. Trump served as a vessel for widespread ideas — and as an apologist for older sins.
Meanwhile, the Trumps-avant-la-lettre in Texas are just allowing the pandemic to retroactively turn a lot of prison sentences into capital ones:
The report, by Michele Deitch & Alycia Welch of @TheLBJSchool looked at covid deaths in Texas jails and prisons. pic.twitter.com/Y7p4ba0aCv— Keri Blakinger (@keribla) November 9, 2020
Also, Texas has had more COVID infections and more COVID deaths than any other prison system, including the feds.
To be fair – TDCJ is a lot bigger than all the other prison systems except the feds. So the raw numbers aren’t the most informative here. pic.twitter.com/rBNWtAUeqK— Keri Blakinger (@keribla) November 9, 2020
And when you look at the deaths as a rate, Texas ties for third worst: pic.twitter.com/JeV3Ta41gb— Keri Blakinger (@keribla) November 9, 2020
Getting Trump out of office is a major first step, but Republican governors (and judges) will remain around to endanger their citizens, and you have to worry about them complicating a vaccine rollout in their states too.