Trump Death Clock: Times Square billboard counts avoidable US coronavirus deaths to protest Trump's inaction
A giant billboard in New York City's Times Square shows the number of deaths that have occurred in the US due to coronavirus. The board has been called the 'Trump Death Clock'. The billboard was created by a Peabody filmmaker Eugene Jarecki and some of his friends. The 56-ft LED screen had been created to protest POTUS Donald Trump's response to coronavirus.
The billboard reads, "Starting in January 2020, President Trump and his administration were advised that urgent measures were needed to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The President declined to act until March 16th. By then, a crucial chance to contain the virus had been missed. If mitigation measures had been implemented even one week earlier, by March 9th 2020, approximately 60% of US deaths would have been prevented," the board states. Speaking to The Daily Beast, Jarecki said that the installation had been inspired by the US Debt Clock that keeps track of US government borrowing. The piece has received a lot of attention in NYC.
On Wednesday, May 13, Jarecki revealed that he wants the clock to inspire copycats and also set it up in other major US cities. "We want to see people copycat it in small towns and big cities across the country. And hopefully, people will find out what we found out, which is that billboard space right now goes for a song because nobody is outside," Jarecki shared. "It will be much easier for people to make their communities aware. If people want to have it in their community, they can reach out to us at deathclock2020@gmail.com and we will help them bring it there — whether it's projecting it on your house or placing it on local billboards," he added.
"We want people across the country to understand this," he continued. The numbers on the clock have been based on the work by two epidemiologists- Britta Jewell and Nicholas Jewell.
The two had written an opinion-based article in The New York Times where they shared, "An estimated 90 percent of the cumulative deaths in the United States from Covid-19, at least from the first wave of the epidemic, might have been prevented by putting social distancing policies into effect two weeks earlier, on March 2, when there were only 11 deaths in the entire country. The effect would have been substantial had the policies been imposed even one week earlier, on March 9, resulting in approximately a 60 percent reduction in deaths."
We had earlier reported that the Trump administration came under harsh criticism by a professor of epidemiology and law at Yale University and an AIDS activist, Gregg Gonsalves. He called out the Trump administration on how they had handled the pandemic and dubbed it as "awfully close to genocide by default."
Celebrities like Howard Stern have also slammed Trump for how he has dealt with the coronavirus crisis. Howard Stern took to his Sirius XM's show, saying US President Donald Trump should resign over his comments regarding injecting disinfectants to cure the deadly coronavirus that has gripped the world.