Thursday, October 1, 2020
The Politician and the Pandemic
— Aristophanes, Knights (424 B.C.)You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
The coronavirus affects people differently, even when they have no direct contact with it. Some people come up with new insights, others see historic parallels, and yet others hallucinate. It is, of course, impossible to comment on all the responses that have been evoked by the entry of the coronavirus into our lives. The reactions of three politicians, however, were striking not only for their substance, but for their sources. The first came from the Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick.
Mr. Patrick spoke on Fox News in April, several months before the coronavirus began feeling its oats and demonstrated that, left alone, it could ,in a relatively few months, kill more than 200,000 people in the United States. In the April interview Mr. Patrick justified comments he had made in March. He said the country should not have been locked down in response to the initial attacks by the virus because: “There are more important things than living, and that’s saving this country for my children and grandchildren and saving this country for all of us.” He expressed gratitude that Texas was beginning to open up because “it’s long overdue.”
At the time Mr. Patrick spoke, approximately 466 Texans had “avoided worse things than dying” by dying, assisted by the coronavirus. As of September 19th, 15,840 Texans had, by dying, escaped the worse things to which the Mr. Patrick was referring in his April interview. In addition, 771,000 Texans had cases of the virus. (The families of those who died would probably like an explanation of what worse things were in store for them as survivors, that their family members had prudently escaped by dying.)
In the case of the Attorney General of the United States, the effect of the virus and its consequences triggered an historical reference that some found bizarre. In mid-September, Attorney General William Barr did not suggest, as Mr. Patrick had, that dying was preferable to other undefined events that might afflict the living. Instead, he put the attempts that had been made by many states to control the spread of the virus in an historical perspective and one that only a man with the keen intellect of William Barr might have conjured up to give perspective to governmental actions in connection with the virus’s, activities.
In the question and answer session that followed an address he gave at Hillsdale College during its “Constitution Day Celebration,” he gave vent to his frustration with attempts made by some governments and entities to control the spread of the virus. He said that the idea of imposing “national lockdown” or “stay at home” orders on the nation in order to halt the spread of the virus was, “other than slavery the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.” But for Mr. Barr and his followers, few would have thought orders restricting activities in order to protect lives was the equivalent of treating an entire race of people living in the United States like property and keeping them in servitude for reasons having nothing to do with protecting their health.
Mr. Barr was not the only administration official to react in a bizarre way to efforts to control and ultimately defeat the coronavirus. Another was Michael Caputo.
Mr. Caputo, now on indefinite leave, is assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS.) He was described by HHS as “a critical, integral part of the president’s coronavirus response, leading on public messaging as Americans need public health information to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic.” On September 13, 2020, Mr. Caputo produced a live video talk on his Facebook page in which he said that “deep state” scientists were dealing with publicity about the coronavirus in such a way as to insure that America would not “get well until after Joe Biden is president.” He further stated that government scientists were engaging in “sedition” in how they were handling the pandemic. Offering insights into his own thinking he said his physical health was in question and his “mental health has definitely failed.” As if to prove the point, he said: “I don’t like being alone in Washington.” He described “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.”
We can all relate to Mr. Caputo’s feelings albeit for different reasons. So long as the trump is in the White House, there will be shadows on the ceilings of all our houses and the shadows will indeed be long. The trump’s continued presence there is a greater threat to the health of the nation than the coronavirus in its wildest dreams, could ever hope to be. There is, however, one bright spot. Unlike the coronavirus, the trump threat to the nation’s health can be cured on one day in November.
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Ignorance is Bliss
” — John Adams in his successful defense of British soldiers charged with murder in the Boston Massacre.Facts are stubborn things, whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion.
After almost four years of being ruled by the trump it should come as no surprise. But it does. For years as children, we all subscribed to the bizarre notion that “what you don’t know can’t hurt you.” The trump has now explained to his subjects that even though we thought with adulthood we had learned that what we don’t know CAN hurt you, he has now explained on numerous occasions that ignorance is indeed bliss and what you don’t know can’t hurt you. It’s all thanks to the pandemic.
Starting in early May the trump explained that what seemed like the terrible consequences of the pandemic on those living in the United States, the consequences were not nearly as bad as was commonly believed. Starting a mere 6 weeks after the scope of the pandemic became common knowledge, the trump began offering reassurance to his subjects that the reason we thought the pandemic was a really bad thing was because of facts disclosed by the testing that was being done in this country.
On May 6, less than two months after the United States entered a lock down period in order to curb the pandemic, the trump attributed the number of deaths and illnesses being caused by the pandemic to the testing being done that, he explained, “makes us look bad. The media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”
Since that is a concept some find hard to understand, in a subsequent conversation with Iowa Governor Tim Reynolds, he explained that we don’t have more cases than other countries but by doing all of the testing “we’re going to have more cases because we do more testing. Otherwise you don’t know if you have a case. I think that’s a correct statement.”
The scientific side of the trump continued to manifest itself just as did the consequences of the pandemic. At the pandemic spreading event that he sponsored in Tulsa in late June, he said he had asked his people to “slow the testing down, please.” Earlier he had explained to reporters that “When you test, you create cases.” The pandemic was oblivious to the trump explanation and according to one report, in 26 states that reported an increase in cases from mid-May to mid-July, the increase was attributable not to increased testing but to the pandemic’s ability to spread on its own.
Trump’s enthusiasm for attributing the increased numbers of dead and afflicted not to the disease, but to the results of testing has carried over into his political campaign and his dislike of certain parts of the country over which he presides as president. In a mid-September interview with USA Today, he blamed the “blue states” for increasing the nation’s coronavirus death rate. He explained that if you ignored the number of deaths that have taken place in what the trump describes as the “blue” states the death rate in the United States compared with other countries would put the United States efforts to battle the pandemic in a much better light. He said that it was the blue states that made the United States look bad because they had “tremendous death rates.” Explaining further he said: “If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level but some of the states-they were blue states, and blue-state managed.”
The trump as is well known, is introspective by nature and it was, therefore, not surprising to learn that in an interview with Fox News that took place on September 21, 2020, he thoughtfully evaluated his performance during the time leading up to his interview. He candidly admitted that he did not give himself good marks for how he dealt with public relations, acknowledging that he deserved no more than a D in that arena. However, he gave himself high marks for how he has handled the crisis brought on by the pandemic. Referring to that he said: “On the job itself, we take an A+.” He gives himself an A+ even though the United States has less than 5% of the world’s population but more than 20% of the deaths reported during the pandemic worldwide. Victims of the pandemic in the blue and even the red states, would probably give him a somewhat lower mark-so would many of the rest of us. He wouldn’t care. Facts, for the trump, are at most minor inconveniences that can always be overcome by rhetoric.
Thursday, September 17, 2020
The Haves and Have-Nots
Self-interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of roles, even that of disinterestedness.
— François Duc de La Rochefoucauld,Reflections
It was a disappointing headline, but it didn’t come as much of a surprise. It appeared in the Wall Street Journal on September 1, 2020. It was short and to the point. “Nations With Wealth Tie Up Vaccine Doses.” That which could be considered a harbinger of the headline, insofar as the United States is concerned, had occurred almost four months earlier.
On May 18, 2020, the trump told the World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, that if the WHO didn’t make “major substantive improvements” within 30 days the United States would permanently withhold future funding and withdraw from the organization. Always eager to follow through on threats, and by nature, impatient, the trump concluded he could not wait the full 30 days. On May 29th he announced that he was terminating the relationship with the WHO immediately and was withholding all future funding. He did not address what arrangements he planned to make for the United States to pay the $203 million it owed for 2020 and previous years.
Although this was not addressed in the withdrawal announcement, we have now learned that in addition to saving money by no longer participating in the WHO, the trump is declining to participate in the WHO’s efforts to find a vaccine to treat the pandemic. One hundred seventy-two nations have signed up to be part of a global effort led by the WHO to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a coronavirus vaccine known as the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) Facility. The critical word in that description is “equitable.” The undertaking is a joint effort and when a vaccine is found that is effective and safe, all the participants in the project will be promised enough vaccine to cover 20% of their populations. The vaccine will first be distributed to the high-risk segments of the population of each participating country. It is hoped that there will be 2 billion doses available by the end of 2021.
The WHO project is important for all the participants, but it is especially important for the small nations that are unable to develop or acquire a developed vaccine on their own. By not permitting the United States to participate, the trump is depriving the WHO effort of funding it desperately needs to develop the vaccine. It is also letting it be known that since it is a project of the WHO, the trump doesn’t care what happens to those who will suffer if the project sponsored by the WHO is unsuccessful because of its lack of funding.
The trump refusal to participate is not, as one might suppose, the result of mindless truculence. His refusal was eloquently explained by a spokesman for the White House who said: “The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.”
By taking this approach the trump is betting on the United States coming up with its own vaccine before those working with the WHO. Should the WHO win the race, the United States would not be entitled to share in the vaccines developed by the WHO. That is not terribly worrisome for the trump. That is because the trump, the European Union, Japan and the UK have already entered into contracts with Western drug makers to purchase 3.7 billion doses of vaccine even though the vaccines have not yet been developed. The purchase agreements include options to buy additional doses. The assumption is that the companies which have contracts will be successful in developing vaccines before the consortium led by the WHO.
Developing countries have reason to be concerned as the WSJ headline suggests. If the consortium led by the United States beats the WHO to the punch, the less developed countries will be left out. As the assistant director-general at the WHO said, when discussing the upcoming competition to develop the vaccine: “Next year is a year of scarce resources. Whatever we have, it won’t be enough to vaccinate everyone. It is in everybody’s self-interest to collaborate globally because we need this pandemic controlled in all countries.” The trump and his cronies are oblivious to this need. In a press briefing in June, an administration official said: “Let’s take care of Americans first. To the extent there is surplus, we have an interest in ensuring folks around the world are vaccinated.” As with so many trumpian statements and actions, the trump and his cronies have shown us yet another way the trump is making America great again. And it gives us all the rest of us cause to pause and consider whether we want to continue to live in a country the greatness of which is being defined by a man of no character and puny intellect.