One reason why COVID cases keep rising in the U.S.

We already know that inaction on COVID by Donald Trump and Republican governors and members of Congress has made the pandemic much worse than it had to be. The United States has just over four percent of the world’s population, yet it has 20 percent of the world’s Coronavirus deaths and an even larger portion of global Coronavirus cases. Moreover, the number of cases is going up, not down. Indeed, Trump has been caught lying to the American people about the dangers of COVID, knowing it was far worse just as he was telling us that the pandemic would soon disappear. Trump has also set a dismal example by refusing to wear a mask for the longest time (indeed mocking his political rival, Joe Biden, for wearing “the biggest mask” in public), holding mask-free COVID “super spreader” events like the recent White House reception for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and failing to undertake contact tracing even after numerous Trump administration members and Republican U.S. Senators at such events contracted COVID. To top it off, Trump himself then came down with COVID, along with his wife Melania and son Barron.

Such failures by Trump and his Republican enablers are especially harmful given what we can observe about human behavior during the pandemic. Whether intentionally or by neglect, many Americans, and others around the world, are not dutifully following basic COVID precautions, such as social distancing, proper mask wearing, and frequent hand washing.