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Donald Trump’s comments come at a time when the USA has become the country with the most number of coronavirus cases. Rather than presenting the country’s 1.5 million cases negatively, Donald Trump says that these cases are a reflection of his administration’s successful testing.
“I view it as a badge of honor, really, it’s a badge of honor,” said Donald Trump to reporters this Tuesday, as per Bloomberg. “It’s a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done.”
Data on Worldometers website suggests that there are over 1.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US. The country also leads the world in number of COVID-19 fatalities with 93 thousand deaths.
"I view it as a badge of honor," Trump says of the U.S. having the most confirmed coronavirus cases in the world. "It's a great tribute to the testing."
— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) May 19, 2020
The US also boasts the highest number of tests done by any country. The country has already tested close to 13 million Americans for COVID-19. The country trailing US in terms of number of tests is Russia. The North Asian country has tested more than 7.5 million Russian citizens for COVID-19.
Donald Trump’s Rationale
Trump argues that since the US has done the greatest number of tests, it is quite natural for the US to have the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. “If you’re testing 14 million people, you’re going to find many more cases,” said the POTUS.
Trump was very proud when Coronavirus deaths hit 90k. It was a ‘Badge of Honor’. It’s horrifying to think what he’ll do when it hits 100k.
— Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@NotHoodlum) May 22, 2020
Further, he stated that considering the number of tests, having the greatest number of confirmed cases is not necessarily a bad thing. “Many of these people aren’t very sick but they still go down as a case, so, actually, the number of cases — and we’re also a much bigger country than most,” Trump added. “So when we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better.”
The Big Picture
But Bloomberg also reported that the US’s rate of testing is not extraordinary. The US lags behind UK, Italy, and Germany in terms of number of tests per 1,000 citizens. The publication also highlighted that the US is still struggling with testing shortages. The reason of the shortages being delayed development and manufacture of testing kits.
