US, Brazil, Russia are COVID-19 hotspots due to anti-science leaders - Business Insider

The US, Brazil, and Russia have the highest numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases in the world.

Public-health experts say it's not a coincidence that the coronavirus outbreaks in these countries spiraled out of control, while warning that the cavalier attitude these leaders continue to exhibit toward the pandemic could lead to even more cases and deaths. .

The fact that these three leaders are highly nationalistic and have a history of rejecting science and discounting expert advice played a major role in COVID-19 running out of control in their countries," Gostin added.

Trump minimized the threat of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, for weeks in the early part of the US outbreak, even as top public-health experts said cases would rise and the country should prepare for "severe" disruptions to daily life.

In late April, Trump controversially and dangerously suggested disinfectants might be injected as a cure for COVID-19, prompting uproar from public-health experts and warnings from the manufacturers of cleaning supplies against injecting or ingesting their products. .

Anthony Fauci have emphasized the need for a robust testing system to get a handle on the virus, Trump has from the beginning signaled that he's more interested in keeping case numbers down for the sake of optics.

I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault," Trump said in a Fox News interview at the time.

The US is now the center of the coronavirus pandemic, with over 1.6 million confirmed cases and nearly 99,000 reported fatalities, according to the latest numbers from Johns Hopkins University.

Experts have contributed this stark difference in case numbers to the seriousness with which South Korea approached the outbreak from day one.

Both leaders have misleadingly likened the virus to the flu, even as experts say COVID-19 is far deadlier based on the available evidence. .

Even as infections rise in Russia, and the Kremlin continues to face allegations of underreporting the numbers of cases and deaths from COVID-19, Putin on Tuesday said that the outbreak had passed its peak as he ordered the country's annual World War II victory parade, postponed because of the pandemic, to be held next month. 

There's a "certain amount of luck involved" in terms of how countries fare during public-health crises, Gostin said, but he added that "overall these leaders have cost tens of thousands of lives in their countries."