The Trump White House doesn’t think the pandemic can be contained, but South Korea shows it is possible. Rather than learn from its example, President Trump and his officials choose to lie about the country. That’s hurting a key alliance while undermining our own fight against covid-19.
Trump has been jealously maligning South Korea for months. He has claimed South Korean President Moon Jae-in called to praise his handling of the pandemic, gloated when its infection numbers went up and lied about how much more testing the United States has conducted. He seems bitter that people often point out that while both countries discovered their first covid-19 cases on the same day, today South Korea (population 52 million) has 25,836 total confirmed cases and 457 total deaths, compared with at least 8.7 million cases and at least 225,000 deaths in the United States. That translates to a proportional mortality rate that is 78 times smaller in South Korea than here.
