COVID-19’s Indirect Victims – Wildlife

Combine supply reductions/price increases in the food supply chain, dire poverty where marginal jobs are disappearing, explosive rises in COVID-19, particularly where cheap contract labor is housed in crowded dormitories, with totally inadequate governmental safety nets, treatment facilities or even systems to cope with mass disasters at any level. Throw in the cutbacks in game park enforcement as developing nations run out of revenues. Add nearby forests and wildlands, where threatened and endangered species already face decimation from climate change and the huge contraction of their natural habitat, add a few starving, income impaired and desperate poachers, and watch the horrors as precious wildlife are ruthlessly hunted and trapped in the cruelest contraptions imaginable. Tortured to death as they struggle, futilely, try to escape… Some willing to lose a leg to shake free… if they don’t bleed to death first or aren’t killed by predators in their weakened condition.

The acceleration of poaching during the pandemic is terrifying. In South American jungles and in African and Asian rainforests. “A camera-trap photo of an injured tigress and a forensic examination of her carcass revealed why she died: a poacher’s wire snare punctured her windpipe and sapped her strength as the wound festered for days… Snares like this… set in southern India’s dense forest have become increasingly common amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as people left jobless turn to wildlife to make money and feed their families. Authorities in India are concerned the surge in poaching could kill not only endangered tigers and leopards but also species these carnivores depend upon to survive.

“‘It is risky to poach, but if pushed to the brink, some could think that these are risks worth taking,’ said Mayukh Chatterjee, a biologist with the nonprofit Wildlife Trust of India… Since the country announced its lockdown, at least four tigers and six leopards have been killed by poachers, Wildlife Protection Society of India said. But there were numerous other poaching casualties: gazelles in grasslands, footlong giant squirrels in forests, wild boars and birds such as peacocks and purple moorhens.

“In many parts of the developing world, coronavirus lockdowns have sparked concern about increased illegal hunting that’s fueled by food shortages and a decline in law enforcement in some wildlife protection areas. At the same time, border closures and travel restrictions slowed illegal trade in certain high-value species.

“One of the biggest disruptions involves the endangered pangolin. Caught in parts of Africa and Asia, the animals are smuggled mostly to China and Southeast Asia, where their meat is considered a delicacy and their scales are used in traditional medicine. In April, the Wildlife Justice Commission reported that traders were stockpiling pangolin scales in several Southeast Asia countries, awaiting an end to the pandemic.

“Rhino horn is being stockpiled in Mozambique, the report said, and ivory traders in Southeast Asia are struggling to sell the stockpiles amassed since China’s 2017 ban on trade in ivory products. The pandemic compounded their plight because many Chinese customers were unable to travel to ivory markets in Cambodia, Laos and other countries.” Associated Press, June 23^rd.  To their credit, a number of African countries have deemed park rangers as “essential personnel,” having a dramatically positive impact on preserving wildlife. But that’s not the story outside of the designated parks or in nations that not long can afford enforcement.

“Emma Stokes, director of the Central Africa Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society… has heard about increased hunting of animals outside parks. ‘We are expecting to see an increase in bush-meat hunting for food — duikers, antelopes and monkeys,’ she said…

“[Ray Jansen, chairman of the African Pangolin Working Group noted that] said bush-meat poaching was soaring, especially in southern Africa. ‘Rural people are struggling to feed themselves and their families,’ he said.

“In Southeast Asia, the Wildlife Conservation Society documented in April the poisoning in Cambodia of three critically endangered giant ibises for meat. More than 100 painted stork chicks were poached in late March in Cambodia at the largest waterbird colony in Southeast Asia. ‘Suddenly, rural people have little to turn to but natural resources, and we’re already seeing a spike in poaching,’ said Colin Poole, the group’s regional director for the Greater Mekong.” AP When you think that some species are down to under one hundred known survivors, these losses are a precursor to extinction.

In the end, the message is clear, but it is not a message our federal government is either willing to hear or acknowledge: when it comes to any global pandemic, we – the people of earth – are all in this together. That we represent 4% of the planet’s population but account for 20% of COVID-19 infections and mortality on earth tells you what an abysmal failure at preparedness and reactive support the United States has become.

If we were sure that COVID-19 were the last pandemic we are like to face for 100 years, maybe… But we are almost 100% certain that is not the case. What will be the next coronavirus or Ebola outbreak and when? And precisely what do we do with the existing pandemic that sure looks as if it will inflict an even more horrific second wave as economies reopen with little concern for social distancing and requiring masks? And speaks for animals with no vote in this matter at all?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and I continue to be appalled at the dithering incompetence, the out-and-out willingness to allow and even encourage super-spreader gathering, from out most senior government officials… from the top down.

Wasted Opportunities/Shooting from the Hip

On June 25^th, the New York Times reported: “American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.” That caused a massive stir. 

Huge news reporting everywhere. Two days later, on June 28^th, Trump tweeted that “Nobody briefed or told me” or Vice President Mike Pence or chief of staff Mark Meadows about “the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians.”

Let’s assume the above Russia report is totally false; we actually do not know yet. After all, Congress also claims it was not so informed. Why would the first reaction from a sitting president of the United States be a denial that he knew anything about this report? You would think that, before making any statement, he would first ask his senior intelligence and military what they knew, and if they too had no corroborative information, to investigate. Instead, it was all about Donald Trump. Denial and shunting responsibility. Wow! But that’s what’s you get when the President’s policies are primarily his gut reaction to a crisis or information of the moment… unless Fox News has a suggested response. But what if the report is true?

“Democrats including Trump’s prospective presidential rival, Joe Biden, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sharply criticized Trump’s seeming indifference to the explosive report in Friday’s New York Times… Neither Trump nor other administration officials have specifically denied the report, which has since been confirmed by several other news organizations… On Sunday [6-28], Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming joined in the criticism, saying that if the information was genuine, the White House needed to explain why Trump was not told and why the administration has done nothing in response.” Los Angeles Times, June 29^th. Embarrassing? Unpresidential?

Daily briefings for the President began in 1946 under President Harry Truman and have been given continuously ever since. Generally, these are coordinated by the president’s most senior intelligence advisor. Every US President since then has relied heavily on these detailed summary documents. Except Donald Trump, who seldom even looks at them, and when he does, they have too much information to hold his concentration for long. He readily admits this practice, even though the devil is in the details. “President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.

“Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings…  Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred ‘style of learning,’ according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

“The arrangement underscores Trump’s impatience with exhaustive classified documents that go to the commander in chief — material that he has said he prefers condensed as much as possible. But by not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned.” Washington Post (2/9/18). Which explains why Trump has been so dramatically under-prepared for every major international conference, treaty or trade negotiation, international trip or meeting with a head of state since his inauguration. He trusts his instinct over preparation. And his instincts are usually wrong.

Trump predicted a quick nuclear arms treaty after meeting North Korean Kim Jung-un. Wrong. He predicted normalized US-Russian relations after meeting with Vladimir Putin. Wrong, and Russia has taken advantage by a full-on assault on our elections and by embracing our enemies in the Middle East. He said he would negotiate the “best trade” agreement ever with his newfound buddy, China’s Xi Jinping. Wrong again. Sino-American relations have not been this bad for almost half a century. Trump made a mid-course pivot to blame as much as he could on China. He also told us that the pandemic was almost gone, and it has gotten worse every day since… and he still won’t change his projections even after 125,000 Americans have died from the disease.

Sanctioned by the big economic powers comprising the G-8 (now G-7) for violating a treaty by invading and annexing Crimea, Russia now has Donald Trump’s sole support for rejoining that august body. Even as Russia mounts attacks on Ukraine with annexation as a goal. Despite unanimous findings by his entire intelligence community to the contrary, Trump continues to believe Putin’s inane assertion that Russia never interfered with US elections. Having terminated arms limitations agreements with Russia, before trying to fix the problem, the President now has to negotiate ground zero treaties with a much smarter and better-prepared Vladimir Putin.

Trump has declared that the future of US international relations will no longer be multinational treaties and organizations, instead relying on bilateral negotiations and agreements. He has pulled out of WTO arbitrations, defunded international global coordinating entities (like the UN and the UN’s WHO), pulled out of the clearly functional Iran nuclear accord, rejected multinational trade agreements only to watch them close without and to the absolute detriment of the United States and almost uniformly failed at closing his most important bilateral negotiations as noted above. But the issues that matter most – the pandemic, climate change, trade and arms control – are all global issues. They simply cannot be addressed bilaterally.

Even with the largest military on earth (we still spend 41% of the total global military budget), as a result of all of the above, Donald Trump has single-handedly so diluted American power and influence in the world to the point that both our enemies and allies either ignore Trump entirely or figure simple work-arounds to counter his policies that they simply disagree with. China’s President Xi is watching what was once the most powerful nation on earth flail, make lots of noise, and lose credibility on a daily basis. There is no one to stop the most ambitious Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. Certainly not Donald Trump.

Xi has taken a small island in the Spratly chain in the South China Sea and expanded the surface area with his man-made mega engineering buildout, complete with a major set of runways. Using this expanded land mass to exert a claim of sovereignty over adjoining international waters, Xi has confronted nearby nations – particularly Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam – over regional fishing, navigation and territorial rights, capturing their crews and even sinking boats in the process.

Xi has completely ignored China’s 1984 treaty with Britain that turned over Hong Kong to China, an accord that guaranteed HK free speech, political/judicial autonomy and a neutral capitalist economic system. Instead, Xi is using force and laws emanating from mainland China, to crush freedom, subjugate the judicial system, nullify personal freedoms and eviscerate local democratic elections. He’s also locked up masses of his own Western Chinese Uighurs in what are effectively concentration camps.

Attempting to assert the Chinese position in a territorial dispute with India – in Galwan Valley in the disputed Ladakh region in the Himalayas – on June 15^th, Xi sent PRC troops across his border with India to take control of that disputed region. Almost two dozen India soldiers died in the short-lived conflict. Perhaps that unprovoked attack was the shock that the region needed to see that unbridled and naked aggression has redefined China’s regional goals.

After Mao and before Xi, China had very much conducted a laissez faire foreign policy based on Mao’s successor’s (Den Xiaoping’s) famous slogan: “Hide your strength, bide your time.” Xi has reversed decades of China’s unwillingness to delve into international conflicts, and with a powerless United States under Donald Trump, now is undeterred in his actions. There is, literally, no one to stop him or Vladimir Putin in their quest to expand land and power. By numbers of vessels, China now has the largest navy on earth and the largest naval force in their Asian sphere of influence. The animus has even spread to the South Pacific.

Trade issues and Australian demands for more information on the origins of the coronavirus in China led to this: “The Chinese embassy [in Australia] has labelled the move politically motivated, with one Chinese state media editor comparing Australia to ‘chewing gum stuck to the bottom of China's shoe’… Hu Xijin, the editor of the state-run Global Times, wrote on Chinese social media platform Weibo that strained ties between the major trading partners meant their relationship must be reconsidered.” SBS.com.au, April 29^th.

Trump made Putin smile and US allies wince (particularly the Eastern European bloc of the European Union), as he announced pulling US forces out of Germany. Meanwhile, Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte, who had summarily disinvited the United States from continuing its five military bases in his country (see above map) – including Antonio Bautista Air Base, which is strategically located near the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea – quickly reversed course after the China’s military incursion into India. With China’s new aggressions, regional powers are now imbued with a newfound appreciation for the US military bases scattered around the area.

Because of the economic pressures from the pandemic that have pushed China’s regional infrastructural Belt & Road Initiative to the financial breaking point for many of the nations that accepted the relevant loans, China’s hyper-aggressive and unrestrained military efforts in the region may have pushed China’s out of the perceived role of benefactor to malefactor. What a perfect time for the United States to step in and reassert its once determinative and dominant role in strategically essential Asia. We would actually be welcomed with open arms. Ah, but then Donald Trump is President of the United States, and we know that won’t happen. Another wasted opportunity.

          I’m Peter Dekom, and as a US Foreign Service brat with all my parents having given significant service to the US government/military, I have never been so embarrassed by the foreign policy incompetence of any senior US official, especially from any US president.

Humanity vs COVID-19

If COVID-19 had emotions, if it could express gratitude, it would be joyfully effusive in thanking human beings who have made re-opening businesses more important than saving lives, turned wearing a mask from a medical preventative into a political statement and have engaged in trivializing and/or denying the seriousness of the outbreak. With nothing more than some treatments that might shorten a recovery (for those who are strong enough to recover) or lessen some symptoms, humanity is facing a killer pandemic with little more that hope that someone will find a solution to this disease. Right now, we are totally relying on building up herd immunity. And if you are willing to take a good hard look at how long that would really take and how many people need to be infected, please take a look at my June 13^th Are We Just Going to Learn to Live with Massive Death Tolls? blog.

Ah, you say, there are now at least 130 separate efforts to find a vaccine to stop this virus dead in its tracks. First, we really aren’t very good in fast-tracking vaccines of any kind, but our history on viruses is particularly bad. If the first vaccine that survives the expedited (and perhaps not so exhaustive) safety tests is somehow widely deployed, why do we assume that this is the best choice? What if there are long-term side effects? What if the immunity is only short-term? Maybe the virus will be nice and mutate into a weaker version, as some scientists hope. It  has mutated dozens and dozens of times already, but it does not seem to be fading at all.

And why should it? Particularly in the United States, where hordes of people no long practice safe distancing and wearing a mask is a sign the you do not support President Trump. That red states – especially Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia – are reaching new daily volume records of new outbreaks tells you that reopening too fast only makes things much, much worse. Not one single state that embraced a policy of reopening businesses met the CDC guidelines to justify that choice. But no one, and I mean no one, is talking about re-imposing the necessary lockdown scenarios that we imposed in March. We’re just backtracking a little and slowing down a bit.

“Viruses are not as smart as humans, but they are much more patient, said Harvard University epidemiologist William Hanage. And this virus’ track record does not bode well for a strategy of ignoring it in hopes it will burn itself out, he added… ‘That would be waiting for the virus to help us,’ Hanage said. ‘That’s not a good idea.’” Los Angeles Times, June 24^th.

I see emails and editorials from folks telling me that wearing a mask and safe distancing is a matter of personal choice. Freedom in a democracy… and they have rights to free movement without precautions and to engage in commercial activity without all these safety requirements. As so many addicted to Trump rallies illustrate, gathering in groups indoors without considering the impact they may have in spreading the virus to people they might come in contact with is considered Trump-correct behavior. Effectively, they want the right to infect others.

This notion of larges groups without protective measures consistently generates the worst infection and mortality rates. From nursing homes, prisons and church services to university students on Spring Break. “[University of Texas at Austin] College students who partied on the beach at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, over spring break paid a price for their frivolity: Their fun in the sand led to 64 cases of COVID-19 back in Texas, U.S. health officials report…

“Little did the students know that as they tanned and knocked back shots of tequila in mid-March they were also transmitting the coronavirus… Subsequent contact tracing and testing turned up positive tests for 60 out of 183 travelers. In addition, a housemate and three of 35 community contacts also developed COVID-19… About one-fifth who tested positive showed no symptoms, no one needed hospitalization and none died, the report noted. The March 14-19 trip led to 231 people getting tested. Of that group, 28%, or a total of 64 people, had positive results.” US News & World Report, June 24^th. But they came back to share their infection with others, maybe older parents and grandparents. They kept the virus alive and growing.

We’re technically still in the first wave of viral infection. That we are heading for a second wave in the fall is becoming almost a foregone conclusion… with no vaccine in sight until well into 2021, if even then. What is an economy that is 71% consumer-driven worth… when consumers are getting seriously ill or are scared to go out? Who pays? Who cures? And what happens, as appears to be the case in big Florida and Texas cities, where we run out of hospital beds and ICU units? Trump wants to test less… so we might not even know where the danger spots are or whether we are able to contain the virus.

I heard one major league baseball player say that he won’t play this season no matter what. It’s not just that he is rich enough to sit this one out. He noted that even in those who have recovered, the lingering aftereffects often entail permanent impairment. “If my respiratory system takes my ability to compete even down by a mere 5%, that is the end of my professional career,” he said. And a 5% impairment would not be a terrible outcome.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and unless scientific reality and commonsense merge with a notion of personal responsibility to others, an awful lot of Americans are going to suffer, some to die, as a result.

Non-White Power

If the population of the United States were getting “whiter” and more traditional, you’d expect the Republican Party to be celebrating. But the opposite is happening. Maybe reality is why they have amped up their notion to employ every form of voter suppression they can – gerrymandering, moving polling stations far from minority neighborhoods, imposing voter ID requirements despite judicial resistance, culling voter rolls over technicalities but only in minority communities, and making sure minorities are also prevented from vote-by-mail alternatives – to make sure traditional white voters continue to have dominating control over the ballot box.

Simply, rural red states generate 1.8 times the voting power per voter over blue urban voters. Less than one third of all voters elect 70% of all US Senators. And for those wondering if Washington, DC, where voters cannot elect a US Senator or a voting member of the House of Representatives, will become the 51^st state… it will be over the dead body of the GOP. DC wants it. The Democrats know it would add two US Senators (exceptionally likely to be Democrats) to tip the scales toward the Democrats control both Houses. And the threshold for becoming a state is not particularly high.

Article IV of the US Constitution sets a pretty low bar: “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.” There is no requirement that the President has to sign off, but all prior state admissions have had a presidential signature. So that seems inevitable. Watch the GOP bob and weave, litigate and try by hook or by crook to try and prevent that from happening.

But the handwriting is already on the wall:  According to the US Census Bureau, the number of non-Hispanic white Americans has contracted in the last decade, most significantly since the 2016 election. Down by half a million in just three years. Looking only at the youngest generations, those under 16, the majority of those rising voters are already non-Hispanic white people, a demographic that is significantly and traditionally more liberal than recent average voter rolls. We crossed that demographic line in 2019.

While the average numbers across all demographics have not crossed yet that line, the changes are still significant. Using Bureau of Census data, the Associated Press (June 26^th) breaks down the numbers: “In 2019, a little less than 40% of the U.S. population was either nonwhite or Hispanic. Non-Hispanic white people are expected to be a minority of the U.S. population in about 25 years.

“A natural decrease from the number of deaths exceeding births, plus a slowdown in immigration to the U.S., contributed to the population drop since 2010 for non-Hispanic white people, whose median age of 43.7 last year was by far the highest of any demographic group. If these numbers hold for the 2020 census being conducted right now, it will be the first time since the first decennial census in 1790 that there has been a national decline of white people, Frey said… ‘It’s aging. Of course, we didn’t have a lot of immigration — that has gone down,’ Frey said. ‘White fertility has gone down.’

“In fact, the decrease in births among the white population has led to a dip in the overall number of people under age 18 in the last decade, a drop exacerbated by the fact that the much larger millennial cohort has aged out of that group, replaced by a smaller Generation Z.

“Over the last decade, Asians had the biggest growth rate of any demographic group, increasing by almost 30%. Almost two-thirds of that growth was driven by international migration… The Hispanic population grew by 20% since 2010, with almost three-quarters of that growth coming from a natural increase that comes when more people are born than die… The Black population grew by almost 12% over the decade, and the white population increased by 4.3%.

“The number of seniors has swelled since 2010 as baby boomers aged into that demographic, with the number of people over 65 increasing by more than a third. Seniors in 2019 made up more than 16% of the U.S. population, compared with 13% in 2010… In four states — Maine, Florida, West Virginia and Vermont — seniors accounted for 20% of the population. That’s a benchmark the overall U.S. population is expected to reach by 2030. ‘The first baby boomers reached 65 years old in 2011,’ said Luke Rogers, chief of the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Branch. ‘No other age group saw such a fast increase.’” And as that older, white-traditional-skewing demographic dies off… COVID-19 is highly toxic to older voters.

Assuming the United States even survives intact, it has become GOP mission one to make sure that the Republican hold on political decision-making be locked in favor of what is inevitably going to be an overall white minority. And nothing screams long-term power like appointing very young and very conservative federal judges… appointments for life! What the GOP loses at the ballot box, in the very near future, they hope to be able to dominate the federal judicial system for decades. As you watch the battles against racial and ethnic injustice unfold, keep this transition in mind.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and it is interesting, if not frightening, to watch as Republicans everywhere are forced to distort and manipulate the political system to force what is increasingly a minority will against the majority of voters.

Zoonotic Infections – Germs in Vertebrate Animals that Crossover to Humans

“For decades, we've faced the threat of future pandemics without knowing how many viruses are lurking

 in the environment, in wildlife, waiting to emerge. Finally we have a breakthrough—there aren't millions of

unknown virus, just a few hundred thousand, and given the technology we have it's possible that

in my lifetime, we'll know the identity of every unknown virus on the planet” 

Peter Daszak, PhD, corresponding author and president of EcoHealth Alliance.

There are literally billions of viruses, with mutations and new varieties emerging all the time. There has been an assumption that that a killer pandemic, one that obliterates hundreds of thousands or millions of people, comes only once every hundred years or so. Think: Spanish Flu of 1918-20 and COVID-19 of 2019/20 to ?? But depending on which experts you speak with, given the pollution, deforestation, starvation, climate change and drain on expendable resources, on an optimistic basis, our planet is currently home to double the number of people than is sustainable. Thus, probabilities are that even after COVID-19 passes, nature is highly likely to continue to cull the herd. And viruses are a highly effective tool to accomplish that goal.

The harsh reality suggests that as horrible as COVID-19 is, there are viruses building out there that are vastly worse. Infectious agents that will kill 60% of those infected, for example. We weren’t remotely prepared for the current pandemic, and under the mantra of reducing the role of government in our society, the federal government recently dismantled programs focused on preventing or containing such outbreaks, both internally and in outbound efforts to enhance global cooperation. Viruses are not contained by political rhetoric or budgetary constraints and in fact might well benefit from such lackadaisical attitudes. There is a horrific toll to be paid when politicians prefer mythology to hard science.

Well before the COVID-19 explosion, strides were being made in identifying viruses (currently infecting non-human mammals) that might someday threaten humanity, separating out those viruses that do not have that potential. On September 3, 2013, the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University published the initial results of this effort to narrow the focus of viral research in an article – First Estimate of Total Viruses in Mammals:  “Scientists estimate that there is a minimum of 320,000 viruses in mammals awaiting discovery. Collecting evidence of these viruses, or even a majority of them, they say, could provide information critical to early detection and mitigation of disease outbreaks in humans. This undertaking would cost approximately $6.3 billion, or $1.4 billion [closer to $7/$1.6 billion today] if limited to 85% of total viral diversity—a fraction of the economic impact of a major pandemic like SARS [which inflicted as estimated $16 billion in damage].

“Close to 70% of emerging viral diseases such as HIV/AIDS, West Nile, Ebola, SARS, and influenza, are zoonoses—infections of animals that cross into humans. Yet until now, there has been no good estimate of the actual number of viruses that exist in any wildlife species.” Without addressing the loss of life or the suffering even of those who recover, the “Centre for Risk Studies at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School determined that the potential [global] toll could range between what it called an ‘optimistic loss’ of $3.3 trillion in case of rapid recovery, and $82 trillion in the event of an economic depression.

“While lost value of $82 trillion is the worst case scenario, the centre’s consensus projection was a loss of some $26.8 trillion, or 5.3%, of global GDP in the coming five years… To put a figure on the potential impact to some of the leading global economies, the following five-year loss projections added more context (All %’s represent five-year GDP estimates):

*US: Best case: $550 billion (0.4% of GDP). Worst case: $19.9 trillion (13.6%)
*UK: Best case: $96 billion (0.46%). Worst case: $2.5 trillion (16.8%)
*China: Best case: $1 trillion (0.9%). Worst case: $19 trillion (16.5%)” Daily News (UK), May 21^st(italics added).

Viruses aren’t the only contagion that threaten people. There also dangerous bacteria, fungi and parasites. In recent years, we have seen the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but the scariest trend is focused on the rise of new seemingly incurable viruses. Coronaviruses are just one significant category of viruses (just like there is another category of Ebola viruses). Is it possible to take out one entire family of viruses with a single vaccine? Who knows?

The Donald Trump approach to this pandemic, inconsistently shifting responsibility and blame on state governments, putting in and then taking out federal involvement, cutting support and excoriating scientists and medical expertise, is obviously is a soup-to-nuts failed policy. The White House’s writing off the pandemic threat early in the game, denying the problem, delaying the response, defunding agencies necessary to find solutions, blaming China, positing false statistics as well as clearly ineffective cures and failing to step up federal involvement in procuring and distributing supplies are estimated to have cost well over thirty thousand American lives (according to Columbia University), a number likely to rise significantly under federal pressure to open the economy without following most CDC guidelines to limit infection rates.

Effectively, this laissez-faire prioritization of totally reopening the economy, until a vaccine is clearly in wide deployment (which is unlikely in the near term), is reliance on achieving so-called herd immunity. The required exposure – which will explode infection and mortality rates way beyond anything we have experienced to date – to the disease is at least 60% of the population. We still hovering below 20%. To understand exactly what herd immunity requirements are, please refer to my June 13^th Are We Just Going to Learn to Live with Massive Death Tolls? blog.

So many of us believe that once we get past this horrific pandemic, we will be just fine for the foreseeable future. No SARS. No MERS. No Ebola. They never happened? The only reality of which we can be absolutely certain: there will be more epidemics, more pandemics… and we will not have to wait a century for the next. To exacerbate the risk, climate change is causing the migration of animals (including disease carrying insects) and germs to climates that reflect the environments and temperatures they are used to. New areas that have no experience with those species or any built-up immunities to the migrating contagions. In the meantime, the US COVID-19 infection and mortality rates are rising again.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and unless we unite as a nation and seriously increase federal funding towards pandemic research, prevention, preparation and cure, the next pandemic-resulting loss of life and economic damage could dwarf what we have experienced and will experience from COVID-19.

Dreamers Not Schemers

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the
Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are
proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We needmore Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else.
                                                                                 Vote Trump 2020!8:08 AM · Jun 18, 2020

Neither Trump-appointed Supreme Court Associate Justices joined in the majority opinion, written by George Bush-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts, effectively staying the current administration efforts to deport roughly 650 thousand “Dreamers” – undocumented immigrants brought into the United States as children. The Trump administration was forced in federal court to defend the legitimacy its executive order reversing a 2014 Barack Obama executive order (DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), according these now mostly grown children legitimacy to remain in the only country they have ever really known.

“Legal challenges kept the [DACA] program in place, and in the meantime, DACA recipients were allowed to renew their status. It allowed them to find better jobs, increase their earnings and get driver’s licenses. They pay taxes and buy homes. Some have U.S. citizen children. An estimated 29,000 DACA recipients are working in health care, some of them on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, as pro-DACA groups pointed out in a supplemental brief filed with the Supreme Court in April. (Although the justices heard oral argument in the DACA case in November, they agreed to consider this new information as well.)” Huffington Post, July 18^th.

Those legal challenges came to a head on June 18^th. “In a 5-4 ruling written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court said the government’s justification for ending the federal program was ‘arbitrary and capricious.’ Roberts was joined by the court’s more liberal voices, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

“In his majority opinion, Roberts wrote, ‘Whether DACA is illegal is, of course, a legal determination, and therefore a question for the Attorney General. But deciding how best to address a finding of illegality moving forward can involve important policy choices, especially when the finding concerns a program with the breadth of DACA. Those policy choices are for DHS.’

“The DACA policy, which was announced by the Obama White House in 2014, protected hundreds of thousands of immigrant children, known as ‘Dreamers,’ to apply for temporary status that allows them stay and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation. It has granted some 700,000 people work authorization and various federal benefits.” Variety.com, June 18^th. The opinion resolves the issue for now, but there are many ways still to reverse this policy.

In a bizarre way, Donald Trump dodged a bullet with this ruling. He still gets to use his anti-immigration, anti-DACA diatribe in his campaign… but he no longer faces a Hobson’s choice: (i) postpone the deportation and truly alienate his base or (ii) allow the deportations and face massive news coverage as these pretty normal US residents are rounded up, forcibly shoved out the door and sent to countries they have never lived in. Trump now has someone to blame, fitting perfectly into Trump’s standard paradigm. He truly dislikes judges and courts… who overrule his autocratic proclivity to hold any constitutional restriction or statute that contains his raw power as criminal or at least reprehensible.  His tweet above says it all.

Homeland Security was already planning a massive deportation effort had the Court ruled otherwise. “While some Trump administration officials have said DACA recipients wouldn’t be priorities for deportation should they lose their protected status, Trump ended other Obama administration policies prioritizing some immigrants for deportation over others. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has reopened removal cases against DACA recipients, and ICE acting director Matthew Albence confirmed in January that if individuals ‘get ordered removed and DACA is done away with by the Supreme Court, we can actually effectuate those removal orders.’

“In early June, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime advocate for Dreamers, asked the head of ICE’s deportation arm whether it would carry out removal of DACA recipients, should the program be eliminated. The answer was yes. 

“Henry Lucero, director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, told Durbin in a hearing that there are no current plans on the matter and that orders for removal come from immigration judges or, in certain cases, agencies that carried out the arrest… ‘ICE carries out those lawful orders and will continue to do so,’ Lucero said…

“Trump’s election in 2016, after a campaign defined by his vilification of immigrants, effectively doomed the chances for progress on major immigration reform. The president has occasionally given lip service to supporting efforts to protect Dreamers, including tweeting in November that if the Supreme Court allowed him to end DACA, ‘a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!’

“In practice, though, he has conditioned potential support for Dreamer protections on the passage of his own priorities, such as funding a border wall, limiting access to asylum and changing the legal immigration process. Republicans, even those who state support for Dreamers, also largely back tying protections to broader immigration reform.” Huffington Post. Dreamers have become political pawns, enlisted in Trump’s neo-nationalist campaign for reelection, now a doctrinaire GOP platform. Still, this is not an issue that has much traction outside of Trump’s base and his lockstep Congressional Republicans.

“While the majority of voters, along with some politicians from both parties, have said that people who came to the U.S. as kids shouldn’t be punished, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly blocked measures to help them. The Dream Act, a bill initially proposed in 2001 to give Dreamers a path to citizenship, failed most recently in 2010. In 2013, House Republicans blocked broader immigration reform that would have given many undocumented people the opportunity to gain citizenship, even after the legislation passed in the Senate.” Huffington Post. 

This decision adds to a nascent and unexpected Court trend toward civil rights. It is a natural offshoot to the June 15^th Supreme Court 6 – 3 ruling (actually written by Trump-appointed Neil Gorsuch), holding that existing federal anti-discrimination laws under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applied to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees. 

Will this recognition of minority rights continue? In late March, the Court had ruled against a “corporation vs corporation” case over minority-controlled companies gaining bandwidth cable access on mainstream carriers, but that was in a business, not an individual, context. Were the LGBTQ and DACA rulings setting a new course for the Court, or were the decision margins so tight that if the liberal wing of the Court lost one justice the entire Court would shift even farther to the right, as its prior rulings on most other matters suggest. Time will tell.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and Donald Trump is already using this decision as justification to his supporters as to why he must be reelected… and appoint more conservative justices.

Liberals vs Public Worker Unions

The rise of collective bargaining in the United States has a bloody history. Big players in corporate America, including Henry Ford himself, used local police and hired well-armed goons mercilessly to crush efforts to organize his assembly lines. People died in that effort. Employers believed that allowing their workers to organize would kill their ability to make profits, so they employed every tactic they could to prevent that from happening. It took the Great Depression and the right of social legislation to get America back to work to change all that.

“In the United States, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 [enhanced by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947] made it illegal for any employer to deny union rights to an employee. The issue of unionizing government employees in a public-sector trade union was much more controversial until the 1950s. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order granting federal employees the right to unionize.” Wikipedia. Corporate America fought this legislation in the courts. Some even had their employees sign individual contracts in order to assert that the new labor legislation took away these employers’ contractual property rights without due process of law. Courts quickly invalidated what they called “yellow dog” employee agreements, and collective bargaining was on its way.

Simply put, when a union is certified as the proper representative of a group of employees (who vote that union as their representative), they address the three mandatory subjects of collective bargaining: wages, hours and working conditions. In a strange way, the resulting rise in effective pay rates created by unionization generated a large middle class that was able to buy more products than ever before. These wages went right back to the same employers who feared destruction in the form of dramatically increased consumer spending. Union workers generally earn 10%-30% more than non-union counterparts. And they spend it!

Half a century ago, almost a third of all American workers were unionized. Today, that number has dwindled to approximately 12.7%, with around 6.2% of private sector workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The huge growth has been in public sector unions, where over a third of non-military government workers are now represented by a union. That public sector unionization has generated enormous political power, their coffers full from such sizeable membership dues, often used to lobby and cajole elected officials (state, federal and municipal) to keep wages high and government funding for union jobs high, has been a sore spot for many budget impaired governmental agencies.

Critics of government unions, which are generally not permitted to strike, have argued that unions prioritize seniority and job retention over protecting the public from incompetent, under-performing and sometimes dangerous union members. They point to being unable to fire “overpaid” senior teachers whose students fail upwards, instruction that clearly is second rate or worse.

And for police unions, it is the consistent lock-step combination of using concerted labor actions short of striking (the “blue flu” or simple slowdowns and unresponsiveness to police emergency calls) to secure raised and increase funding with a grievance and arbitration process that pits a union representative (with rank and file encouragement) against the city administrators attempting to discipline “bad cops.” First responders also usually have exceptional defined benefit retirement benefits that are triggered decades before most ordinary workers reach retirement age. Police unions also deploy top-flight lawyers and engage in high-profile assaults in the press to protect even rogue cops. The thought of losing union campaign funding or, worse, generating funding for negative campaigns, has caused a large cadre of elected officials to let cops back into the force… who really should not be there.

While police officers generally are wildly supportive of their unions’ zealous defense of all charged police officers, what used to be a lockstep public support of collective bargaining for government employees has frayed of late. As income inequality has infected our economy over the last few decades, more often than not, public employees make significantly more (with better fringe and retirement benefits) than the average, comparably trained worker in the private sector. But nothing has escalated the rise of a negative public perception of government trade unions than the recent spate of blue-on-black killings and the police response to peaceful protesters. Militarization of police departments combined with seemingly unbridled police union power have turned the public tide.

We have given police too many laws to enforce and saddled them with covering activities – like mental illness, drug addiction and homelessness – which really are much better suited to other governmental agencies. Effectively, society has dumped “stuff no one else wants to do” on cops. For some, “defunding” the police is nothing more than moving these social problems (and that share of the police budget consumed with these social issues) away from cops… to let them focus on what they really should be doing. Additionally, most US police officers receive a fraction of the training that is applied in other developed nations. It shows.

As the partisan response to national anger, which broke loose with the murder of George Floyd, pits “law and order” advocates against “humanize the police and get them closer to the community they serve” policy wonks. But what to do about police unions is now a problem for left, right and center. It’s time, say many, to curb union power both in terms of what is possible within the confines of a collective bargaining agreement and how unions represent rogue cops or cops who have made big mistakes.

Matt Pearce, writing for the June 16^th Los Angeles Times, provides a clearer look at the issue: “Many activists have called for legal reforms to limit police collective-bargaining agreements and union-backed laws that limit transparency into misconduct or make it harder to fire officers for wrongdoing.

“Some union contracts allow departments to erase disciplinary records, give officers access to investigative records before they are questioned or allow the officers to essentially prevent their departments from publicly releasing internal records — making it easier for officers to beat misconduct charges or to prevent the public from knowing about them… One University of Chicago Law School working paper from 2019 on newly unionized sheriff’s deputies in Florida concluded that ‘collective bargaining rights led to about a 40% increase in violent incidents of misconduct among sheriffs’ offices.’

“The labor movement in the U.S. is facing questions about what its relationship should be with the hundreds of thousands of police officers who make up a major portion of unionized public-sector workers… The AFL-CIO has faced growing calls to disaffiliate from the International Union of Police Assns., and some liberal activists have started calling for Democratic politicians to reject campaign contributions from police unions.

“‘Even for people who have a deep, long-standing, genuine commitment to the labor movement ... there’s a recognition that the power of unionization, the power of collective bargaining, is being abused in indefensible ways by police unions,’ said Benjamin Sachs, a Harvard law professor and faculty director of the school’s labor and work-life program, which will be studying potential legal reforms to collective bargaining by police.

“Police officers are heavily unionized compared with many private-sector workers, and they have enjoyed generally high approval ratings from the public compared with other government services. Police unions can also be a big spending force in political campaigns, like in Los Angeles, giving them influence before they even reach the bargaining table… Like many unions, police officers’ leaders are unapologetic advocates for their members, often willing to wage bare-knuckle political fights, including during the recent wave of protests. But unlike many unions, police unions’ members have the power to arrest and kill, and their central role in public safety gives them immense — and sometimes intimidating — leverage.

“In New York City, the Sergeants Benevolent Assn. violated Twitter’s rules when it tweeted private arrest-record information about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, after she was arrested at a May 30 protest, adding, ‘How can the NYPD protect the city of N.Y. from rioting anarchists when the mayor’s object-throwing daughter is one of them?’ (She had not been accused of throwing anything.) The account had also recently tussled with the city’s health commissioner over a lack of masks for officers, at one point tweeting that she ‘has blood on her hands.’

“In Delaware County, Pa., the local police union posted a warning to potential critics on June 3: ‘If you choose to speak out against the police or our members, we will do everything in our power to not support your business.’ (The union later apologized for the comment.) One member was reportedly suspended from the Media Borough Police Department when he added: ‘Try us. We’ll destroy you.’

“After the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said June 9 it would no longer transport local police to anti-police-brutality protests, the officers’ union, the San Francisco Police Officers Assn., shot back on Twitter: ‘Hey Muni, lose our number next time you need officers for fare evasion enforcement or removing problem passengers from your buses and trains.’

“Floyd’s death became a breaking point for many labor supporters. As protests swelled in Seattle, the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council, which represents more than 100,000 area union workers, passed a resolution demanding that its affiliated Seattle Police Officers Guild ‘become an antiracist organization’ and acknowledge ‘that racism is a structural problem in our society and in law enforcement’ or risk a vote of expulsion.”

Police unions may be precipitating their own funeral with such actions, but union leaders were elected by their member to take precisely these tough stands. If union attempt to block reform, popular sentiment most major cities will simply reflect a growing frustration among citizens against a once revered category of civil servants… instead of being a constant drain on city budgets to pay off settlements or court judgments against offending officers, many of whom are still on the force!

              I’m Peter Dekom, and for those police officers and union representatives who are fighting to resist this move to improve and change, I say, “get over it or resign; you are on the wrong side of history.”