Nobel Prize winner pinpoints the Trump tweetstorm that marked start of America's defeat by Covid-19

'We lost because Trump and those around him decided that it was in their political interests to let the virus run wild'

Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, has pinpointed the exact date the US began losing its war against the coronavirus pandemic.

He argues that 17 April marked the turning point, when President Donald Trump voiced his support for protesters demanding an end to lockdown laws brought in by states to stem the spread of Covid-19.

The president declared in a series of tweets that morning: “Liberate Minnesota!”; “Liberate Michigan!”; and “Liberate Virginia, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”

In an editorial for The New York Times, Mr Krugman says that the Democratic governors targeted by the president in those tweets did not back down.

However, Republican governors in other states — he specifically cites Arizona, Florida and Texas — began to lift stay-at-home orders and allow businesses to open up again.

The states that opened earliest are now the frontline of a new surge of Covid-19 cases. Florida is seeing daily new infection numbers not seen since the peak of the New York outbreak.

Professor Krugman says that the president’s “willingness to trade deaths for jobs and political gain has backfired”, given that even as there was a rebound in jobs in May and June, his poll numbers continued to slide.

He concludes: “America’s defeat at the hands of the coronavirus didn’t happen because victory was impossible. Nor was it because we as a nation were incapable of responding. No, we lost because Trump and those around him decided that it was in their political interests to let the virus run wild.”

On 17 April , there were approximately 700,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US. By 6 July that figure had risen to just under 3 million.