Moderately Liberal: May 2020

I have spent a lot of time on social media, trying to correct misinformation about COVID-19. I often try to leave politics out of my comments. However, the topic, like most has been thoroughly politicized and I would like to organize my thoughts and include a section on the politics because it is important.

First, let me say that COVID-19 is deadly serious. COVID-19 is becoming the leading cause of death in the United States. (1) Conservatives are downplaying the death toll, claiming that it is exaggerated but it's pretty easy to figure out if COVID deaths are being over or under counted. You just look at the number of deaths every year, they're pretty steady and see how many extras you have this year. Here's an example from Spain (2) Lots of people have done these, for every country on the planet and all of the states. They all show COVID-19 deaths are under counted in the vast majority of places. (3)

Even if the death toll had been overcounted, it is not just about the death toll. A huge number of people who get COVID-19 need hospitalization. Of those 40% develop neurologic complications (4) Many develop acute renal failure (5) and need dialysis, creating another strain on the health care system (6). Many suffer serious heart injury (7)

Trump downplayed the severity as seen in this video of his statements (8) despite being warned about it at least a dozen times (9) as early as November 2019 (10) This encouraged people not to take the threat seriously and made flattening the curve harder.

Trump disbanded the pandemic response team in 2018, and ended a pandemic early warning program designed to detect and respond two months before the pandemic emerged in China (11)

Trump blamed everyone but himself (12). He has blamed China despite the fact that in January he was praising them for their response and transparency (13,14).

Trump blamed the Obama administration, despite the fact that he’d been in office for three years when the pandemic started. How long until he’s responsible for things? He ignores the facts that in 2018 he disabled the pandemic response team they left him (15) as mentioned earlier, ignored the playbook that the Obama team left for him, (16) and he allowed the stockpile of ventilators to go unmaintained(17).

Trump blamed the WHO despite the fact that they repeatedly warned the U.S. (18) as early as late 2019 (19). His supporters like to use a tweet from the WHO that says that they do not have evidence for person to person transmission, which was true at the time. They corrected the tweet within days as they got evidence, though Trump continued to downplay the risks for months.

Trump blamed congress, claiming that the impeachment made him unable to pay attention despite the fact that he had time to golf, hold political rallies, and tweet non-stop (20).

Trump failed to deliver PPE to states that needed it (21) He told that states that they should acquire PPE themselves and then seized it when they did (22). He facilitated sending PPE to China (23) while he minimized the threat here (24). You’ll remember he blamed China for the crisis at times and praised it at other times. When a nurse complained about lack of PPE Trump contradicted her (25) and once he even speculated that the lack of PPE was caused by front line workers stealing it (26).

When he had a chance to amplify the recommendation of experts Trump touted unproven cures from hydroxychloroquine to injecting disinfectant. It looks like a whistleblower who pushed back was retaliated against by the administration (27). Meanwhile Trump attacks the professionals that we need to deal with problems like these, attacking their job security and union rights (28) and cutting their pensions (29) He has left positions open despite warnings that doing so has left “gap in governmental processes and preparedness.” (30)

Conservatives in the U.S. keep wanting to reopen the economy and presents it as a choice between economic suicide and allowing the virus to run rampant until we have herd immunity. However, overwhelming our health care system and allowing tens of thousands to die is not the only way to reopen the economy. If we roll out widespread testing, contact tracing, and mandatory quarantine for those infected, as they have in many countries, we can reopen without allowing the virus to kill tens of thousands of additional people. As of the time that I am writing this (May 17) The U.S. has 4,568 cases and 273 deaths per million population. Taiwan (which has much closer ties to China than we do) has18 cases and 0.3 deaths per million population. South Korea which had its first known case the same day that we did has 216 cases and 5 deaths per million population (31). Even Kerala, India has managed to implement the strategy successfully and they are far less well resourced than the U.S. (32)

Finally, let me say this. We are uniquely poorly positioned to deal with this pandemic because we have spent decades with a party that has championed the lie that government is the problem not the solution, that put minimizing taxes at the top of its agenda, and championed the myth that if we just cut taxes on the rich enough wealth would trickle down to the middle class. The GOP positioned us very poorly economically for this crisis from resisting stimulating the economy after the great recession because they claimed to be worried about running up the deficit and then passing a deficit funded tax cut (mostly for the wealthy) in 2017 ballooning the deficit to a trillion dollars a year in good economic times. They also did their best to reduce the number of people without health insurance in this country: trying to repeal the ACA in congress and the courts, reducing the penalty for not being insured to zero, shortening the annual enrollment period, and resisting Medicaid expansion in many GOP controlled states. Uninsured people hesitate to seek testing and treatment. Opposition to paid sick leave, unionization, and other workers rights also made our position going into this pandemic worse.

Moderately Liberal

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Thoughts on COVID-19

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