Death Wish

                                                       VS

The President’s commitment fully to reopen the economy pressed on as he led a White House meeting on May 18^th focused on the restaurant industry, which has been particularly hard hit by preventative measures aimed at limiting virtually the only way COVID-19 is transmitted: close, person-to-person contact. Pretty much ignoring the preconditions and guidelines issued by his own senior White House pandemic team and all the task forces of medical doctors and PhD pandemic experts within the federal bureaucracy, goading gun-toting “open up the economy” protestors on state capitol steps demanding their “constitutional rights” to work and gather freely and without restrictions (there is no such constitutional rights, by the way), Trump wants good economic numbers by the November election and does not believe he can get there unless everybody goes back to work immediately.

After revealing he was taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative despite obvious risks, he spoke with the restauranteurs to assure them that reopening should restore their revenue flow. When he learned that Los Angeles Country was extending most of its distancing restrictions until August, he was dumfounded. “As confirmed cases of the coronavirus continue to grow in Los Angeles County, Donald Trump today crashed right into the region’s attempt to keep the health crisis under control with language straight out of Charles Bronson.

“‘That’s a death wish,’ snapped the former Celebrity Apprentice host of news from last week that the City of Angels and surrounding region could extend its safer-at-home orders until August. ‘Because there’s death on both sides,’ Trump added after using the same term as the title of Bronson’s 1974 vigilante flick in reference to coronavirus and the battered economy during a roundtable at the White House on Monday [5/18] with restaurant executives…

“‘It’s not just a one-way street,’ Trump went on to say, referring to the ‘mayor’ [which may have also referenced county officials] to the meeting’s participants. ‘And we solved a big problem, but you have to understand the other side of it too. And they don’t understand the other side of it.’” Deadline.com, May 18^th. First, let’s just note that the federal government has the absolute ability to cover financial losses from folks who are unemployed or facing business disaster by reason of the pandemic. It had no problem in 2017 creating a massive tax cut (from 35% to 21%) in corporate taxes that has already begun costs the nation trillions and trillions of dollars of lost tax revenues. This administration is all about the rich. The rest of us have to make the necessary sacrifices… which just might their lives. There actually isn’t a good argument for “the other side of it” if killing tens or even  hundreds of thousands of people bothers you.

“We can’t afford the deficit” is the rallying cry; “it will tank the value of the US dollar!” As the safety nets in Europe kick in, without the need of new legislation, as their universal healthcare systems insure everyone has medical coverage, it’s clear we were no more prepared for the economic side of this disaster any more than we were prepared for the medical realities.

Let’s start with the proposition that since this is a global pandemic, the US is not being disadvantaged by taking care of its own through borrowing. The dollar is no more vulnerable than any other currency, and interest rates are at historical lows. If there were ever a time to incur a deficit, it is now. Even when we find that vaccine (more below on that), the economy will still be in shambles. We are going to need to re-prime that economic pump, maybe with a New Deal approach to bringing the nation back while addressing its massive infrastructure needs.

But here’s what the situation looks like in the harshest light possible. People gasping for breath as lungs fail. Infection rates rising fast. Old folks dying in droves. One uncovered infected person out in the world, on average, infects four others. Some breeze through the infection; others struggle and dying agonizing deaths… or perhaps in an induced coma on a ventilator, from which about half or more never recover. Now we are watching as the virus adapts to children. The United States has more infections and more CV-19 deaths, by a wide margin, than any other nation on earth. We are already watching sharp upward spikes in those numbers within those communities that have re-opened the earliest and the widest. Corpses piling up again as an inevitable second wave – already happening in places like Wuhan where the virus probably originated – kicks in. Hundreds of thousands dead in this country alone. That, Mr Trump, is death… most of which is preventable. In significant part by YOU.

YOU can cover the financial losses with the tools the federal government has at its disposal now. Admittedly, while these efforts would solve lots of the painful part of the economic loss, they are unlikely to kick the stock market back where you want it to be, Mr. Trump; it would just help people cope and live. But “economic death” – a la Trump – is not death. Especially if you have the tools to fund Americans through this pandemic while preventing incredible human suffering of the most physical kind. So I guess your craving for political power will just keep killing.

Yeah, but Peter, the stock market exploded on May 18^th with news of good positive responses to a rising new vaccine effort. Shouldn’t we just get back to normal, knowing that is happening? Not exactly. This is a pretty normal progression in the development of vaccines for any horrific disease. But Michael Hiltzik, writing for the May 19^th Los Angeles Times, brings us back to reality: “Somewhere there are eight individuals [test subjects] who can take pride in having contributed to a nearly 1,000-point leap in the Dow Jones industrial average on Monday, as well as a nearly $5-billion one-day leap in the value of an obscure money-losing biotech company called Moderna Inc.

“Those eight are the subjects whose early results in a preliminary clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine were reported by Moderna on Monday morning. The main goal of the trial was to determine if the vaccine made the subjects seriously ill. For these eight, it didn’t; that’s good news. It also produced useful antibodies in those subjects.

“But full results for the other 37 subjects in the Phase 1 trial haven’t been reported. Nor have Moderna’s results been subjected to peer review… Still, the scant data reported by Moderna were enough for investors’ hearts to leap up, as the poet Wordsworth recalled reacting upon beholding a rainbow in the sky. Moderna shares closed Monday at $80 in Nasdaq trading, a gain of $13.31, or nearly 20%.

“One hates to be the bearer of bad news, which in this case means placing Moderna’s announcement in context, but the truth is that Moderna hasn’t announced a vaccine and the path to developing one remains long and tortuous… Whether Moderna’s early trial will result in a vaccine, or when, remains highly uncertain; most drugs that deliver promising Phase 1 clinical trial results end up failing in the final analysis. There’s no reason to expect that this one will necessarily buck the odds. Moderna’s vaccine is one of many being tested.

“Evidence that the trial vaccine produced antibodies in humans that protect against the coronavirus in the lab is encouraging. But it doesn’t yet warrant terming the vaccine a success. Much could go wrong as the drug undergoes broader testing and its actual protective effect is measured. Then there’s the challenge of manufacturing any vaccine that has been approved and distributing it broadly enough to secure widespread immunity…

“Work on possible vaccines is proceeding worldwide at unprecedented speed. In the U.S., the effort is being overseen by the National Institutes of Health, which has created a system allowing research to proceed along several streamlined paths at once.”  There are positive signs all over the place, but we are still looking at sometime next year before it is probably that there will be a widely available CV-19 vaccine.

Personally, I enjoyed reading about this unlikely area of possible progress: “A study published last week [mid-May] in the journal Cell found that antibodies in llamas’ blood could offer a defense against the coronavirus. In addition to larger antibodies like ours, llamas have small ones that can sneak into spaces on viral proteins that are too tiny for human antibodies, helping them to fend off the threat. The hope is that the llama antibodies could help protect humans who have not been infected.” The Guardian UK, May 17^th. Common sense and the realization that man cannot legislate nature need to merge in the hearts and minds of us all.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and there is often a wide gap between what we want to believe and what is real.