More than 220 000 deaths, and well over eight million confirmed cases, one of which is the American president himself.

(But hey, don’t let that stop him enjoying a joyride outside the hospital treating him, which put Secret Service agents at risk for no reason other than an ego boost, or reshooting his ‘dramatic’ return to the White House.)

Unless you’re drinking the Trump Kool-Aid, that’s a botched response by any measure, and the US isn’t alone on that front.

After a promising start here at home, where our decisive early action was praised across the globe, the looting and ineptitude started to shine through.

We need not rehash all of that, but it is worth taking in the stinging words of the Daily Maverick’s Richard Poplak, who is never one to hide his true feelings when it comes to the country’s political shortcomings.

His latest column covers the doccie we will get to in a moment, but also lashes out at South Africa’s COVID-19 response:

South Africa needed a lockdown to save lives. We did not, however, need the lockdown we got. We required something gentler, more progressive, more human. The cruelty was underscored by the staggering corruption of the PPE procurement process, which resulted in at least 10% of the R50-billion disbursement being squandered by connected cadres.

Rightly or wrongly, South Africans will remember Covid-19 for the orgy of thieving and greed that has studded Johannesburg and Cape Town with high-end vehicles and proud new mansion owners.

Sadly, that’s true.

Any decisive, early action all but forgotten as the most heartless form of corruption came to dominate the headlines.

If there’s any scant consolation, at least our government actually believed in the threat posed by the virus, whereas many of America’s most powerful politicians were happy to play it down for months on end.

The new documentary Totally Under Control was released earlier in the week, with Poplak describing it as follows:

The film is directed by prolific documentary don Alex Gibney, along with award-winning filmmakers Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan. All three are experienced storytellers, and it shows: perhaps the most impressive thing about Totally Under Control is its narrative clarity.

The film is a ticking time bomb that tracks a linear timeline, kicking off in early 2020 as the US administration grapples with several self-made crises: the drone strike against Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleimani; the impeachment “hoax” being conducted in Congress; the Chinese-American trade war.

Disrupting this baseline Trumpian chaos, news emerges of a dangerous, novel coronavirus working its way through the supercity of Wuhan. If the reports coming out of China were correct, the newly designated SARS-CoV-2 would be the third zoonotically transferred coronavirus of the century after SARS and MERS, and the fifth major global public health crisis after H1N1 and Ebola are included.

Whilst countries like South Korea acted swiftly, drawing from the experience of those previous public health crises, the US stumbled from ineptitude to utter ineptitude, with Fox News throwing its support behind Donald Trump and spreading his lies about COVID-19 being no worse than the flu.

Don’t forget that Trump knew this was a lie all along, and admitted as much in recorded interviews with journalist Bob Woodward.

Anyway, let’s dive into that trailer for the doccie that spells this out in great detail:

[source:dailymaverick]