I think we’re f****d. Five months into this pandemic thing and we are right back where we were in March and April. I have good friends and neighbors who remain supporters of the president, and honestly as I have said before I understand the initial attraction to someone whose political persona evolves around being a disruptive populist. But man, I gotta tell you now is the time for this guy to pull his head out of his ass. The disruption has taken a frightening turn into callous turmoil, and unecessary suffering and death.
I joke about Trump a lot with one of of my neighbors, and let’s face it the president is a garish gift box of satirical opportunity. But it’s difficult to keep extracting humor from this ever deepening pit of infectious chaos. We might casually argue about the president’s racism, corruption, mysogeny, character, but we can no longer ignore his incompetence in handling this virus. We have become the world’s joke. There is no reason the country that leads the world in all things instantly gratifying, supposedly has the best health care and scientific R&D, and has economic power unmatched by any nation on earth, should be leading the developed world in pandemic morbidity statistics.
Elsewhere in the world, where there was universal government leadership, society is getting back to normal. Not here. Leadership Counts
What went wrong? During his 2016 campaign, Trump boldly stated he was the only guy who knew how to fix all things. A handful of evangelical leaders proclaimed he was divinely placed amoungst our midst to shephard the nation. The truth is it’s not what went wrong. What’s wrong is what has always been. His central governing flaw is a total lack of governing experience. What makes it worse is he has no interest in learning how to properly do the job, and instead of advisors with expertise he has surrounded himself with spineless sycophants.
Of course someone like Fox New’s Laura Ingraham doesn’t help either. She callously suggested we should all just learn to live with covid 19, supporting I suppose Trump’s position that the virus will one day just go away. That is not a totally invalid assumption. The Bubonic Plague did just go away at one point but came back in the 14th century for four years and killed 200 million people. This is the 21st centruty. We have scientific knowlege at our disposal to help prevent sickness and death. We should utilize it.
Personally I think Trump is an asshole. But being an asshole does not preclude competence. There have been some assholes throughout history that have been effective leaders. But the reality is Trump is an asshole AND incompetent, and unfortunaetly it has taken this health crisis to expose the depth of his ineptitude. He diddled away precious time when he could have taken positive mitigating steps, absolved himself of all resposibility for doing next to nothing throughout the crisis, and then all of a sudden it dawned on him that kids have to go back to school.
The president’s plan so far to accomplish this is being taken right out of his governing playbook- to deflect and blame others. Astonishly but not at all surprisingly, he has even blamed President Obama for stopping goverment covid testing.Back to the Future
The most appaling of his deflections is the politicization of science. Attacking Dr. Fauci’s credibility and that of our public health institutions has vaulted our national covid discusion into the relm of some sort of bizzaro world. People are doing just the opposite of what needs to be done. Without dedicated involvement of public health expertise, this crisis might very well continue it’s jaggedly accelerated course for months. This is a new, heretofore unknown, extremely contageous virus. Science has discovered a lot concerning it, but is far from knowing all there is to know about it. It’s a transformative learning curve. We are absolutly screwed if the Trump administration keeps interjecting politics into an evolving health crisis. Opposition Research The last sentence of this article is telling: “He (Fauci) looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view.” Ironically embarrassing for the the person responsible for the quote, that is a precise description of his job.
Everyone wants the economy and our lives to get back to normal. We were once tracking in the right direction, but Trump himself undermind all early gains by counterintuitively encouraging governors and citizens to ignore his own administration guideleines. His carelessness fueled public impatience which resulted in openings of uncircumspect businesses like bars and restaurants and now the nation is faced with gut-wrenching decisions about school attendance. Paul Krugman wasn’t far off when he wrote the country might have drank away our children’s future. We are so far behind in taking control of this pandemic there is no way schools can open safely on time unless we have a total national shut down. Of course Trump is not about to let that happen.
We are waist deep in the shitter here. Extracting ourselves in time for schools to open seems like a long shot. But maybe, just maybe, if the president quickly utilizes the knowlege science has provided we could at least attempt a late start, like October. Geezuz do something. Almost anything would help. This craziness about slowing the virus down by slowing down testing is, well, craziness. The only thing logical about it is it absolutely emphacizes the fact that the president is only worried about how this virus affects him.
No parent is going to feel safe sending their child to school unless covid is generally under control and testing is generated on the scale of that avaiable at the White House and the NBA. Testing in the U.S. remains disjointed. It should have been federaly coordinated from day one. And in many places where needed personal protective equipment is still not readily available. After five months of this, those are unforgivable failures. Why the president decided to politicize the simple act of wearing a mask is beyond compresension. Why would anyone, especially Trump, not want to do everything possible to protect public health and in so doing, the nations economy. We could probably cut infection numbers in half with enforced use. Trump could do that. He finally wore one so you have to believe he is aware it helps. Just say the word. True, we are an undicipled people, But Mr. Trump. Your believers will follow you. That’s all you would have to do to show some leadership.
Parents are not going to want their children attending school until their local or regional health department confirms that covid 19 is under control. Some basic requirements for that are a comprehensive viral positivity rate under 10% and accurate, readily available testing with reasonably rapid results. We have to be well prepared to contact trace and be well suplied with PPE in schools as well as in the health care domaine. We need to stringently follow basic public health guidelines like social distancing and wearing masks. We need a federally coordinated effort from the president to get these things done.
Surprise us all. Replace “MAGA” with “Mask Up For America.” “MUFA.” It just might be the catch phrase that kick starts the economy and puts kids back into school.