I am writing to highlight some facts about the pandemic that are contained in public records but haven’t drawn much attention from the press.

The United States is the richest and arguably most technologically advanced country in the world, yet we have more COVID-19 cases and more COVID-19 deaths than any other country in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. There are countries whose governments, unlike ours, took immediate action such as testing, tracing, distancing and masking and continue those practices today, and whose number of deaths from COVID-19 is literally hundreds of times smaller than ours.

For example, South Korea’s first reported case was the same day as ours, in January. Because of their consistent action to date, they have experienced fewer than 450 deaths from COVID-19. We have over 200,000 deaths: more than 400 times their numbers, despite having only seven times their population.

Taiwan started precautions before they even had their first case, while in the United States, the White House ignored warnings of the coming pandemic and in fact disbanded the pandemic preparedness unit. Taiwan has had seven deaths – we’ve had 30,000 times that number. Similar stories could be reported for other countries like Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and others.

If we are to avoid another 200,000 needless deaths, it is vitally important that the press, the White House and we the people acknowledge these facts and act to rectify them.

Fred Moore
Scarborough