Nearly 1,500 Americans may have died from coronavirus while President Joe Biden waited to sign the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package.
Biden signed the legislation into law on Thursday afternoon, roughly 24 hours after the House approved it on a party-line vote. The president was originally scheduled to sign the bill on Friday, but the ceremony was abruptly moved up without explanation.
According to data compiled by the New York Times, 1,477 Americans died from COVID-19 on Wednesday, March 10. Over the past week, the virus has killed 1,536 Americans per day on average.
The Washington Post reported last week that "nearly 900 Americans may have died from the virus" in the 10 hours and 44 minutes it took the Senate to read the legislation, as requested by Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.). Regrettably, that is less than half the amount of time Biden waited to sign the legislation. The Post's calculation would put the total death toll from Biden's delay at closer to 2,000 American lives lost.
"At this moment, on this issue, time can be measured in human lives," wrote Post correspondent Philip Bump. "It's not the case that those lives would have been saved had the bill passed sooner. But it is the case that more immediate assistance for things like vaccines or bolstering people's bank accounts is better than slower relief. Again, the question isn't if the bill passes, it's when. In that context, the argument for an 11-hour delay isn't a robust one."
The Post has yet to calculate the human cost of Biden's 24-hour delay in this same context, let alone the relative robustness of his argument for waiting so long.
Nearly 120,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since Biden took office, the equivalent of two Vietnam Wars.