Plutocratic Populism

Huh? That sure looks like an oxymoron, but dig a little deeper into the concept. Ever wonder how a minority party – representing about 25% of registered voters – has been able to create a majority in well over half state legislatures, electing more than half the governors and gaining control of the presidency and the US Senate? How a party that pretty much rewards the one-percenters with lower taxes, deregulation, lucrative government bailouts, “quantative easing” (where the Federal Reserve takes out bad corporate debt), low interest rates for the rich, tons of tax loopholes that only benefit the rich (like that “carried interest rule”) and lots of delicious government contracts that turn millionaires into billionaires… at the expense of everyone else… and gets away with it?

I’m sorry, liberal friends, but there is sheer brilliance working here. After fiscal conservative and states-righter Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee in 1964, was crushed by Lyndon Johnson, the GOP woke up. Their problem was how to represent a program of fiscal conservatism and federal laissez faire minimizing of federal authority, elements that literally only benefitted less than 5% of the country, to generate at least 51% of the popular (or district) vote. It was always about the money, but voting more money to rich people is not an easy sell.

Lots of theories were tried, like the dramatically disproven “trickle down” supply-side economic theories (a vestige of the Reagan era) that linger still, but the core realization was based on social values. More significantly patriotism and Christianity. The Dems had dominated the Southern States from Reconstruction on, embracing expanded Jim Crow laws and creating a corrupt political machine that ran roughshod over state and local politics in that region. The Republican Party figured out that if they could blend their image with all-American values and a mantle of evangelical faith, giving social and religious conservatives what they wanted, they could rip power away from those Southern Democrats and take the vote. By the onset of the 1970s, that evangelical base – never less than 25-30% of the national constituency – solidified as the cornerstone of the reconfigured Republican Party. Effectively, the South tossed out the Dems. Rich Republicans rejoiced.

But it was the charismatic voice of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s that seduced the socially conservative masses in a modern era to support the otherwise unpopular desires of fat cat Republicans. And it all began with “a 1983 memo by the late Lee Atwater, the hardball political operative who conceived of the infamous Willie Horton ad used against Michael Dukakis in 1988, which is now considered an exemplar of the use of the race card to win elections. 

“In 1983, Atwater was a young aide to Reagan when he wrote a memo to the president’s campaign essentially arguing that the president’s agenda appealed to country-club Republicans, but wasn’t going to be popular with enough voters, particularly in the South, to guarantee his reelection. Atwater argued that the party needed to attract what he called ‘populists’ — voters who were to the left on economic issues, but to the right on social issues. By social issues, Atwater meant cultural issues like the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion, but also racial issues and civil rights. 

“Atwater’s vision for the party wasn’t fully embraced at first. Reagan started moving in that direction, but much of the party was still fairly mainstream. When Atwater masterminded the Willie Horton ad, he was working for George H.W. Bush, who represented the old guard of the Republican Party and famously raised taxes, despite a campaign promise not to do so, to reduce the budget deficit in 1990.” Jacob Hacker, Yale University’s Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the July 27^th YaleNews.

Cut to the current political reality, as the November election looms. As a deeply unpopular American President, with autocratic desires, faces a likely political demise. Just four years ago… “The 2016 election was a thrilling victory for the Republican Party, which seized the White House while maintaining majorities in both houses of Congress. Yet many of the economic and health policies the party champions in Washington have limited public support. 

“How has the GOP managed to hold power despite its unpopular positions? Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker argues that an unlikely but extremely effective alliance between plutocratic economic interests and right-wing populist forces allows the party to secure working-class votes while championing policies that favor corporations and the wealthy… In their new book, ‘Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Inequality,’ Hacker and co-author Paul Pierson of the University of California-Berkeley draw on decades of research to explain this political phenomenon and the threat it poses to American democracy.

“Hacker… discussed the book with YaleNews. [Interview condensed and edited:] Plutocratic populism describes how the Republican Party has combined organized money and organized outrage to win elections, tilt the playing field in their favor, and govern for the top 1%. In a nutshell, the party responded to skyrocketing inequality by siding with those at the top and, in the process, embraced a set of economic policies beloved by its big donors and big corporations but unpopular among voters, and even many Republicans. To pursue those unpopular priorities, the party created an infrastructure of outrage to attract voters in election after election. It partnered with organizations like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Christian Right along with the increasingly powerful organs of right-wing media. Those two sets of forces — organized money and organized outrage — form the two sides of the contemporary party. It’s why we say that the party has come to exemplify plutocratic populism…

“This is not a book about Donald Trump. Most of these transformations took place before he came to power. Indeed, we think these transformations made the party uniquely vulnerable to a leader like Trump. He has essentially doubled down on both the party’s plutocratic and right-wing populist sides. I’m reminded of the famous scene from ‘Spinal Tap’ about the amplifier that goes up to 11. Trump turned the dial to 11 on plutocratic populism. But it was there before he ran for president.” YaleNews. Look what happened and where we are right now. The chickens have come home to roost.

As income inequality has soared to the highest level in the developed world, taxes plunged, medical bankruptcies have reached staggering levels, as pollution levels are rising with deregulation, job loss in obsolescent industries met with impossible dogwhistle pledges of “Making America Great Again,” as housing and college tuition costs have exploded as social mobility became relegated to the history books, universal healthcare is conflated with socialism and fought tooth and nail all the way by the GOP… look who is in power.

But when an elite has so distorted the entire social and political system that it can no longer deal with national emergencies like the instant pandemic, when that pandemic reveals how close to economic death tens of millions of paycheck-to-paycheck Americans are, the system either implodes… or there is an internally generated philosophical regime change… the Big Reset.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes when you are living in the middle of an explosive life-altering moment in history, it is hard to look at the big picture of how we got here and the Big Reset (transition) we must face.

If One Man Can Stop the US Election

Regardless of the rationale, and notwithstanding the twisting and squirming to find justification (e.g., The Insurrection Act of 1807), if Donald Trump can cause the election to be held when and how he believes it to be proper, if ever, the United States of America is done. One man, a rogue narcissistic president will have jammed a sharp knife into the heart of American democracy, killing it almost instantly. Unless this autocratic threat is eliminated almost immediately. 

Trump is working overtime to create a myth that armed insurrection is roiling through US cities – all in Democrat-controlled areas – from anarchist radical leftists. He is justifying sending federal forces, using tear gas, pepper spray, “non-lethal” bullets and random arrests by unmarked vans, by creating visuals – blurred by the smoke – as evidence of the “threat.” “Law and order” Trump, in his message, is the only person who can save this country from those made-up threats. 

Even as the mayors reeling from the incursion of federal “police” are describing unnecessary provocation and abusive violence from those federal forces telling us the feds are actually the source of the problem, not the local protestors. Trump’s lackeys back their “strongman,” like his “personal-attorney-masquerading-as-US-Attorney-General” William Barr who has perjured himself in Congressional testimony to contradict what senior officials and raw footage have provided via clear and convincing evidence that there is no such anarchist uprising. Mostly peaceful protestors exercising their First Amendment Rights. 

There is no way for this American ship to be righted by the November election. The Trump administration’s incredible mishandling of the pandemic – dramatically proven when the results in Europe and many parts of Asia are compared to ours – the willingness to dump young children back into schools (under threat of withholding federal funding if they do not) just as the COVID-19 infection rate is soaring, the collapse of the economy made so much worse by forcing reopening before containment (violating federal guidelines for reopening), and Trump’s crashing and burning poll results have obviously terrified him. 

Although there are more than three months until the election, and anything can happen, Trump is rapidly coming to the conclusion that he is exceptionally unlikely to be reelected unless the America people believe normalcy has returned or is imminently certain to return. And he knows that, notwithstanding his promises of a widely deployed vaccine or his pledge of a strong economy, that will not happen by November. So in addition to fabricating the threat of armed insurrection, and even though in past elections in red states the GOP has dominated the vote-by-mail constituency, Trump has also fabricated – without a shred of evidence – that voting by mail will produce a fraudulent result. If the polls are correct, and clearly Trump now believes them, he feels the overwhelming shadow of a massive defect looming over him. 

His tirade against the well-established vote-by-mail process (which under the Constitution is controlled by states) has even backfired in those states where his most passionate supporters, who have used vote-by-mail in past elections, are now burning and destroying their notifications from their own states inviting them to use mail-in votes during this pandemic. Strangely, Trump just might have effectively cut those voters out of the voting process if the live vote process is as abysmal as in recent elections, with long lines and failing voter machines, and if the pandemic pushes his traditionally older voters, a major Trump constituency, from leaving their homes to vote. But none of that is getting in the way of a dictator wannabe who know believes that he cannot otherwise win an election. And by hook or by crook, Trump intends to remain President. 

“President Donald Trump on Thursday [7/30] suggested delaying the November presidential election while baselessly warning that mail-in voting will lead to ‘the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history.’… ‘It will be a great embarrassment to the USA,’ he tweeted. ‘Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???’ 

“States are increasingly offering mail-in ballots due to concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic, but Trump has repeatedly tried to dissuade people from voting by mail, claiming — without any supporting evidence — that it will lead to voter fraud. 

“Trump has no power over the election schedule; moving it would require changing federal law. The Constitution states the exact date and time when a president and vice president’s term ends. There is no clause that would allow a president to remain in office beyond that date, which is the Jan. 20 following the presidential election. 

“Trump’s urging came on the heels of the release of dire new economic figures from the Commerce Department, which showed that the U.S. economy shrank by 33% between April and June — the worst quarterly plunge ever… There are fewer than 100 days until the election, and he is trailing badly in the polls.” Huffington Post, July 30th. 

Persuading Congress to postpone the election is not happening. His support even within his own party, as least on the date of the election is dwindling: “Congressional Republicans quickly sought to distance themselves from the president over his suggestion. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, told a Kentucky television station that the election date was ‘set in stone’… Senator Marco Rubio, a loyalist on most issues, said: ‘I wish he hadn’t said that, but it’s not going to change: We are going to have an election in November.’… Lindsey Graham, normally a cheerleader for the president, told CNN he did not think Trump’s tweet about the election was ‘a particularly good idea.’… 

“The Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, simply tweeted quoting the US constitution stating: ‘The Congress may determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.’… [As for vote-by-mail fraud,] Trump himself and numerous members of his administration, including Vice-President Mike Pence, have voted by mail.” The Guardian UK, July 30th. You’d think by now, some Republicans – who still seem wary about alienating Trump’s evangelical base – might begin to worry that tying themselves to Trump might be their own undoing. 

If Trump cannot stop the election but refuses to recognize the results if he is defeated on the basis of “mail fraud,” he is effectively negating the election process of the states that have implemented mail-in voting (which has been around for a long time in many states). He even seems willing to allow the US Postal Service to shut down by defunding it to make vote-by-mail impossible. 

But if the federal government allows Trump to negate those votes, any state can file a lawsuit against the federal government directly with the US Supreme Court without having to resort to starting at the District Court level and working up the system. Even with Trump’s conservative appointees, I cannot conceive of much of anything other than an overwhelming rejection of Trump’s efforts. Those justices know that if they rule otherwise, they will have killed the American democracy. State attorneys general are already preparing to file the necessary lawsuits… if necessary. 

The next fear is that those die-hard and well-armed Trump constituents rise to begin a civil war in support of their fearless leader. The consequences, regardless of the ultimate result, will cripple this nation for a very long time, assuming it even survives as an integral unit. If treason is on the Trump agenda, if maintaining power at all costs is the priority, every single American – left, right and center – is at severe risk politically and economically… we could just lose it all. Is the self-described “stable genius” out of his mind?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and it is scary to contemplate how close to the brink of collapse we just might be and how many people are willing to kill our nation to get their way.

Lying with Statistics – 101

“Our case fatality rate has continued to decline and is lower than the European Union and almost everywhere else in the world… If you watch American television, you’d think the United States was the only country involved with and suffering from the China virus. Well, the world is suffering very badly. ... We’ve done much better than most. And with the fatality rate lower than most, it’s something we can talk about.”

Trump Press Briefing, 7/22 (above)

When you want numbers to help you make a decision, or analyze where you made a mistake, you probably should frame the statistical question properly. For example, if you want to know how the earning power of middle of the bell curve of Americans is faring (most of us), looking at the stock market or analyzing gross domestic product numbers (where the richest in the land pull up the numbers for everybody) is a misdirection. The numbers you need to look at are those that apply to the target you are trying to understand. Not looking at “everybody” or links that do not correlate to the performance level you are targeting. 

But for leaders from both sides of the aisle, stock market performance and GDP numbers are the measure… if they look good. That 70% of Americans, even before the pandemic, had not had a meaningful increase in buying power in four decades would tell you the real story… and the dramatic and very quantifiable erosion in of the middle class and upward mobility coupled with the rising costs of housing, food, education, etc. 

Likewise, if you want to know what is happening in a rapidly changing situation – like right now – examining the numbers that skew heavily from “a while ago,” aggregating them into the numbers you are looking right now does not help you understand the immediate situation. Apples to apples. Recent numbers, immediate numbers need to be your focus. You want to know about now, look at now. 

Finally, you can skew the results by using words that people think have one meaning but actually have another. Take the word “average,” for example. If I have nine people who make $10,000 a year, and one person who makes $10 million at year – a total of $10,090,000 – the average is the that total divided by the number of people; hence, the average individual earnings in that group would be $1,009,000. So, if you use an average, they’re all doing pretty well. The median number would be the number dead in the middle, eliminating all the numbers below and above. That would be $10,000, which is not such a good number. 

Donald Trump is still trying to convince the world that he is doing a great job at containing the pandemic, even though everyone knows he has done the worst job of any leader in the developed world. He aggregates numbers from the earliest outbreak of the virus and presents cumulative results. For those nations that stared badly but currently have the very acceptable infection and mortality rates, who are not spiking as is the United States, it suggests that they are failures. But if you just look at current results, we are absolutely among the worst performers on earth. Those that have contained the virus get no credit for their success, and Trump just makes us appear good. We are just the opposite. 

Now, let’s focus on both cumulative numbers and vocabulary. “Let’s start with the ‘mortality rate.’ This is a per capita measure of how many residents of a particular country or region have died of the disease. Think of it as ‘COVID-19 deaths per hundred thousand’ (or million, or any other convenient number). 

“For weeks, Trump was saying America’s mortality rate is the lowest in the world. It’s not. According to John Hopkins University, it’s actually the 10th highest, after San Marino, Belgium, the U.K., Andorra, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Chile and France. To date, the U.S. has suffered 43.07 deaths per 100,000 residents. Brazil has suffered 38.25. Mexico has suffered 31.29. Iran has suffered 17.61. Germany has suffered 10.97. 

“And this actually understates America’s current mortality problem. The mortality rate is typically presented as a cumulative number — that is, how many per capita COVID-19 deaths have occurred so far during the entire pandemic. But you can also measure it daily, which gives you a better sense of how your country is performing right now. 

“Here, the U.S. is faring even worse. In early April, far more people were dying of COVID-19 per capita across Europe than across the U.S. Today, America’s daily mortality rate is 10 times as high as the European Union’s. 

“To assist Trump with his briefing, someone in the White House seems to have told him to stop touting America’s (relatively unflattering) COVID-19 mortality rate and start touting its (ostensibly more flattering) case fatality rate instead, which is really what Trump was trying to do all along. Hence the big ‘Case Fatality Rate’ chart… It didn’t really help him make his point. 

“The case fatality rate (CFR) of COVID-19 is just the ratio between confirmed COVID-19 deaths and confirmed COVID-19 cases. This sounds like a solid metric, but there’s a hitch. COVID-19 deaths are fairly straightforward to count. But the raw number of COVID-19 ‘cases’ a country finds is totally dependent on how many infections it’s able to detect through testing.” Andrew Romano, writing for the July 22nd Yahoo News. And we know there are long lines across the nation for testing, some hours long, and extended periods before results come back (there is a huge backlog), so those numbers are at best questionable. 

The other fly in the ointment is the time lag between rising infections and rising deaths from the infection. We watched the infection rate – which correlates to CV-19 hospital admissions and ICU usage for the doubters – continue to skyrocket. It took a couple of weeks for the mortality rates to begin to rise as a result. But they just did. The numbers will begin to worsen, so it will be interesting to see how Trump will spin that negativity. 

The President also announced a nearly $2 billion vaccine research development payment to Pfizer and a smaller German research company with research showing some positive early results. Their vaccine has yet to be vetted through the required litany of clinical tests, but the contract with them calls for a vaccine to be ready and deployable in 2020. 

Even though there are huge additional steps to certify the effectiveness and safety of that vaccine, I suspect we will soon hear statements from the President that the vaccine absolutely will be ready and available this year. Immediately before the November election, Trump could easily promise the American public that the vaccine is 100% going to be ready… and then if it is not, simply say that there were unanticipated glitches or simply blame overzealous government bureaucrats for doing their job. 

Had we taken the steps that Germany, Taiwan, Korea, etc. had taken when Trump first learned of the virus, our death toll just might have been one third the 140,000 plus we have to date in this country. Trump has failed… dramatically. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and too many people are listening to or watching the Trump-directed headlines on the virus without remotely understanding how profoundly misleading those charts and words really are.

One of the Herd of Elephants in the Room Steps Forward

This pandemic has been a particularly harsh to elders, those with serious pre-existing conditions, and those – usually hovering above destitution – forced to work, shoulder-to-shoulder or live in crowded barracks. Healthcare workers are often deprived of basic PPE, working under impossible conditions in severely overcrowded hospitals. Overwhelmed. But what has made a terrible situation so much worse is the dramatic polarization of just about every aspect of this COVID-19 outbreak.

Over 150,000 Americans dead, California and a disproportionate number of red states with “reopen, reopen, reopen” pressures from Trump populists who believe for some inexplicable reason that the economy can be restored before the election if only Americans ignore the virus and just plain return to work… are pushing infection rates through the roof. And it is still considered a leftist acknowledgement to wear a mask and avoid crowds. Not a medical necessity.

But what is increasingly apparent is the out-and-out political hostility in Trumpist populism against parents needing to care for children. If the pandemic is “exaggerated,” as conspiracy theorist insist, then holding kids out of school simply has to be wrong. A radical leftist plot to keep Trump down. Obviously, this creates a pressure to reopen public schools for in-person learning.

This of course is also overwhelmingly a slam to working women. When the pressure to open schools accelerated, Trump was explaining the dramatic damage to children, some struggling with online learning with others losing valuable social skills that come with classroom learning and school sports. Some truth there. Then the trickle of the real “why”: to get enough people into the workforce to restore the economy – Trump’s once strong economy “trump” card – parents who needed to leave home to work required “schools as childcare alternatives.” Desperate and facing losing a job if they refused to work, many were even willing to take the risk that their kids just might bring the virus home with them.

In considering whether or not to continue the expiring $600/week in federal support for unemployment benefits during the pandemic, there is a coterie of Congressional Republicans who believe that unless those benefits are seriously reduced, such payments would hold back too many workers from going back to their jobs. Parents who have no other way to support their families would thus be forced to overlook the obvious COVID-19 risks, go back to their jobs (even in risky environments and place where the outbreaks continue to soar) and place their children back into classes.

That teachers’ unions are suing gubernatorial “open school” mandates, that schools are mostly unfunded to handle the unique issues of education during a pandemic, seem irrelevant. Even GOP leaders who acknowledge the recent surge see only a postponement of “a few weeks” before public schools begin a semblance of normalcy… well before the November election. Death and horrible suffering from this virus are simply the price Americans have to pay to get their economy back. And younger people, already resentful of restrictions they feel are aimed only at protecting elders and who believe that they are strong enough easily to fight off the disease if they get it, join that “reopen” chorus.

Sam Dean, writing for the July 26th Los Angeles Times, addresses the pressure on corporate America to fill in where government tax credits and minimal real childcare commitments have failed: “Parents who could work from home struggled to stay productive while keeping toddlers entertained and teens focused on remote schoolwork. Those deemed essential workers somehow had to find someone to watch their kids while they spent their days in newly dangerous workplaces.

“We just have to make it through the lockdown, they told each other. Then: We just have to make it through the summer… Forced to adapt to this new normal, California’s biggest employers responded, in varying degrees, with measures such as paid leave for caregivers, flexible work schedules and stipends for childcare. But now that the L.A. Unified School District and many others across the state are barred from opening for in-person classes in the fall, many of those employers are still relying on emergency policies intended as stopgap measures, while some are cutting back on new child-care benefits…

“Many state- and employer-provided benefits are slated to expire over the summer, even though child-care needs have not changed… Nationally, fewer than half the U.S. companies that have returned to in-person work have a plan for employees with child-care responsibilities, and only 32% of companies that have announced a set date for returning to work have come up with a plan, according to recent research from the Society for Human Resource Management .

“But employers may be forced to figure something out soon, as the reality of rising cases and remote schooling sets in for working parents across the country, said Rachael McCann, a senior director at the human resources consulting firm Willis Towers Watson… ‘The changes we’ve all seen have led to shock, dismay and anger, but I think companies are about to move into acceptance,’ McCann said. ‘We actually have to be dealing with this for the next 12 months; there’s no more denying that a pandemic is here.’

“Research from Willis Towers Watson found that before March, companies were offering some parental support, but it varied widely from sector to sector. Financial services companies were the most likely to offer child-care benefits and led the pack in subsidizing employees who paid for off-site child care, while healthcare companies were the most likely to offer on-site subsidized child care.

“Back then, these kinds of child-care services were ‘a nice-to-have, but utilization was incredibly low — employees often didn’t even know they had it,’ McCann said… Six months into the pandemic, McCann said, priorities have changed: ‘It’s shifted from being viewed as a perk to being a critical need.’

“That need has been clear for healthcare workers and companies since the pandemic struck. Three of L.A.’s top 10 private-sector employers are healthcare companies, with more than 70,000 workers between them, and the essential workforce includes a higher proportion of parents and more women, who are often stuck shouldering child-care responsibilities, than the working population as a whole.”

We hear right-wing Trumpists excoriate Europe’s blatant “socialism” – conflating “socialism,” where government owns the means of production, with “social programs” where government administers social benefits like public education and Social Security – touting the superiority of American free market capitalism. Even though the tax code and ability to access capital are horrifically skewed to favor the rich with government bailouts of failing automakers and “too big to fail” financial institutions. Hardly a “free market.”

We laugh at Germany, with a fully functioning universal healthcare system (based on a percentage of individual earnings) that covers all medical, dental, hearing loss and vision care with superb results. We accept that nasty six figure average undergraduate tuition cost here, with crushing student debt, where a comparable college education in Germany is close to free. We look to indirect “tax” credits to fix our really serious childcare issues, when so many of those working women don’t make enough for such tax incentives to matter. Germany has true and direct childcare, earnings safety nets, and retirement programs that put our Social Security to shame. Medical bankruptcy is unknown there.

You can skip through much of the rest of Europe with similar results. Why are we laughing? Why do so many women vote against their own self-interest in this country? Is our failing educational system simply producing an increased flow of undereducated and thus ignorant voters?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and Donald Trump is completely dependent on a large coterie of voters quite ready to vote against their own best interests in support of conspiracy theories and assumptions-contrary-to-facts who simply are unwilling to look at the President for who he really is.

Death Knell to Small Business

It’s fascinating how Europe bests us at every turn when it comes to the coronavirus. With universal healthcare, nobody worries about falling between the cracks when it comes to treatment and a vaccine (when available). Medical bankruptcies do not exist. Childcare is readily available under government aegis, so folks do not need to look to risky public schools as a substitute for childcare. Employees who have been laid off or lost their jobs have legions of pre-planned and pre-funded wage and salary guarantees. Most Europeans also do not have to wait for their respective parliaments to battle out whether or not to create safety nets for those out-of-work… rates far higher and of longer duration than US unemployment benefits. Which leaves governments more leeway to support industries, small businesses, the arts, and educational institutions.

The picture in the United States is a tad more bleak, particularly in red states that opted out of Medicaid expansion under Affordable Care Act. Lots of furloughed or discharged employees have lost employer healthcare coverage, and openings in local healthcare exchanges are often closed. In some red states, where Medicaid exists at some level, recipients face “work rule” requirements to qualify.  Just one tiny catch. Even assuming they are able-bodied, exactly where are they going to find any work, part-time or otherwise, as pandemic numbers skyrocket and businesses are shutting down again? Delivery openings? Even if they don’t have a vehicle?  Not to mention that any state that reopened too quickly is facing horrific new COVID-19 infection and mortality rates that Europe saw in March and has since brought under control.

Given the dramatic absence of central leadership and a bevy of red state lock-step governors who cannot make decisions without precisely following the orders of their fearless GOP leader, the permanence of the economic damage premature reopening caused is settling in. The headline from The Washington Post (July 23^rd): If a business is still closed at this point in the crisis, it’s probably permanent. Mostly small businesses, of course.

“[With] bailout money running dry, a new report from the online review site Yelp shows that, as the healthiest businesses have reopened and the ranks of permanent casualties have swelled, it’s now more likely than not that a closed business is gone for good.

“As of mid-July, 55 percent of the 132,500 pandemic-era closures on Yelp are now permanent. The online review site’s database includes hundreds of consumer-facing industries, from ax throwing and wine tasting to cabinetry and boat dealers, and only counts closures that have been confirmed by Yelp’s user operations team or reported directly by the business’ owner…

“The nascent recovery has entered a crucial period. Over the coming months, expiring leases will force many more businesses to make existential decisions, said Harvard University postdoctoral researcher Michael Stepner, who has extensively tracked business performance in the coronavirus era.

“‘Businesses are needing to decide, ‘Do I renew my lease on my space for another year?’ It is really hard to make a one-year commitment to paying rent when businesses are closing down for the second time and there’s no end in sight to this virus,’ Stepner said… ‘The longer these temporary closings go on, the more of them will turn permanent,’ he added.

“Permanent losses are highest in the restaurant sector, both overall and also relative to temporary closures, Yelp’s data science team found. Retail accounts for another huge swath of the damage, as do smaller but hard-hit sectors, such as beauty, nightlife and fitness…

“The wave of permanent closures helps explain why, five months into the crisis, the number of Americans filing new unemployment claims remains stratospherically high by historical terms. Jobless claims had been slowly declining from their peak in late March, but in the past week [third week in July], they reversed course and rose by 109,000 to 1,416,000. Similarly, separate data shows that permanent job losers continues to climb even as the headline unemployment rate falls.

“‘This data suggests that economic damage continues to accumulate,’ said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork. ‘They were hidden by a wave of workers returning from temporary layoffs in the last two months, but if you look beyond the headline numbers, it’s clear we are not out of the woods yet.’” The Post What makes this particularly hard to take is how much of it is and was preventable. If protecting the economy was truly the goal, Trump dramatically decimated that most essential part of the economy: people. The US economy is over 70% consumer based.

The list of errors is impressive: Ignoring and suppressing facts, distorting government reports from experts, and engaging in wholesale denials of science and hard medical facts. Engaging in mass denial, excoriating any serious and credible organization or individual with a contrary view. Preventing proactive prevention methods or delaying them until we passed a point of no return. Disabling institutions, defunding experts and preparedness. Firing, demoting or suppressing experienced and educated government professionals, literally keeping them from doing their jobs. Fostering fake cures. Making false promises. Taking bona fide statistics, doctoring them to conform with the “leader’s expectations” and releasing those distortions to justify politically desirable decisions that would ultimately just make matters worse. Engaging in activities (e.g., political rallies) to create maximum contagious exposure. Politicizing common sense medical applications that worked in Asia and Europe – wearing masks, limiting gatherings and safe distancing – so that those who followed “doctor’s orders” would be viewed as disloyal political turncoats.

Trump’s begrudging acceptance of masks, no longer suggesting that wearing them represented challenging loyalty to him, has not moved the needle much. Not only is he not wearing a mask much at, but he has engendered a notion among his followers that they have individual rights to refuse to follow state and municipal directives (even with fines and other sanctions) to wear masks, not gather in larger groups and safe-distance. Even some red state governors have refused to issue such orders, and one (Brian Kemp in Georgia) even countermanded city mayors with horrific spiking infection rates who ordered such practices within their jurisdictions.

The needle also didn’t move on July 23^rd when he finally cancelled the GOP convention in Jacksonville and suggested that some school districts might be delay in opening in-person instruction for a “few weeks” at the discretion of the respective governors. Trump’s minions were already too committed to their earlier paths of resistance and denial.

The President pretty much did everything wrong. In July, he finally figured out that he could no longer avoid dealing with the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the room. A nasty accelerating virus. So, he resumed his daily coronavirus press briefings, told the world masks are good, and pre-purchased 100 million units of a vaccine that doesn’t even exist yet. He just might claim an imminent vaccine-induced end to COVID-19 with no real evidence that timely completion, testing and deployment is guaranteed. Keep everything open! Open what’s closed! Open all schools for in-person learning against the advice so many doctors who have guidelines that are hard to meet! The virus is mostly just another flu! Mild to most! Really?

The President got some “lie with statistics” experts to create some highly erroneous and misleading charts to “prove” he is right. He wasn’t. But whatever he does, even if these efforts finally begin to turn the tide, the vast majority of the massive damage – the well-over 140,000 dead Americans, more with permanent health impairments, business closures and job losses, and an exceptionally long projected economic recovery – caused directly and immediately by Trump’s failures is already done and will probably continue. Can he erase his mistakes by November? Depends on which funeral home you ask.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and listening to Trump supporters praise the President’s efforts, his support of the economy, in the face of a tsunami of hard data to the contrary, continues to stun me.

Special Federal Police Designed to Crush Civilians

As Donald Trump escalates his law and order agenda, catering to his populist and right-wing supporters, he deploys what the Department of Homeland Security describes as members of a U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and a Border Patrol Tactical Unit. Storm troopers, well-trained in military tactics using flash-bang grenades, tear gas and pepper spray, non-lethal (usually anyway) bullets with experts holding sniper rifles at the ready “just in case.” The philosophy that underlies these actions is an administration belief that they can hammer, arrest and defeat passionate protestors into total submission. Trump would declare victory. His base would cheer. And protests would end. 

Except for one tiny detail. These violent military attacks, mostly against peaceful protestors, simply amp up the rage and anger, and as the President believes he is pulling a Trump double down, the anti-Trump protestors quadruple down. As his senior political appointees at Homeland Security design tactics deployed by oppressive regimes around the world, implemented with glee, career senior bureaucrats, joined by what should be politically conservative military leaders, look on in horror. That these military-like incursions only happen in cities with Democratic mayors, even more in states where the governor is also a Democrat, seem to support the notion that this is a massive and destructive political charade. 

As the list of cities in which such federal police troops gather grows, Trump has not managed to reduce the protests, instead uniformly and dramatically escalating the violence he claims his efforts would subdue. These efforts haven’t worked. They won’t work. If anything, they simply reinforce precisely what those protests are all about. Bad goes to worse goes to horrific. But then, Trump points to the violence his decisions have caused as a reason to assert more violence against those communities. Trump’s specialty. 

Create a problem that really did not exist (or if it did was easily within the ambit of local control), make sure it creates lots of footage that his “news” propagandists can spin into evidence of violence… and set about to solve the “problem.” Make sure to use lots of dog whistle and buzz words. “Radical left.” “Antifa” (a philosophy, not an organization, by the way). “Radical Democrats.” People trying to “erase our culture and history.” And if you can slip in a phrase that links Trump to white supremacists without saying exactly that, go for it! Portland is the easiest example, and where we have the most visible responses. 

Eyewitness journalist Patrick Symmes, writing for the July 23rd Yahoo News: “When not emerging on most nights to drive back protesters (including Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who was gassed Wednesday night [7/22]), they have been filmed roving the downtown area in unmarked rental vans, leaping out to snatch individual protesters away for questioning… The shadowy DHS force is, at least visually, reminiscent of the secret police units that do the bidding of authoritarian regimes around the world, albeit of a far less brutal variety. 

“But there is little evidence the tactical escalation is working. The noisy show of force I witnessed Tuesday [7/21] night left hundreds of people, including me, choking on tear gas. But federal officers have essentially been deployed for a photo op: less than 15 minutes after the skirmish began, it was over. The federal officers retreated inside the courthouse, surrendering the ground they had just taken back to jeering activists. 

“By some accounts, this was night 50 of the Black Lives Matter protests that have rocked Portland and focused national attention on the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress protests that sometimes carry a violent edge. The give-and-take of ground has become an almost nightly ritual. 

“Protests begin at sunset with music and the chanting of slogans, but usually end later in the night with clouds of tear gas and nonlethal munitions ricocheting off cars and walls. In its microcosmic way, the city of Portland has become the ‘battle space’ that Secretary of Defense Mark Esper vowed to “mass and dominate” in a White House call with governors on June 1. 

“It was Trump himself who tweeted about domination, vowing to deploy the military and publicly putting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley in charge of suppressing riots. Trump also announced, just hours before I was teargassed at the Hatfield courthouse, that the same forces would be deployed to Chicago and other cities experiencing anarchic protests.” Anarchy is simply defined: defying Trump’s vision. 

If you ever wondered how Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte, Hungary’s autocratic Viktor Orbán, Russia’s despotic Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s religious zealot-President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and even German Führer Adolph Hitler seized dictatorial power from within electoral democracies… they were elected after implementing conservative law and order campaigns using military and specialized police forces against their civilian populations. If you think that cannot happen here, think again. It’s already happening. 

On Sunday, July 19th, in a Fox News Interview by Chris Wallace of Donald Trump, this is how the President answered when asked by Wallace if he is a “gracious loser.” The President said that he's “not a good loser… I don't like to lose… I don't lose too often.” When Wallace pushed him on the question of whether he would accept the election results, Trump responded, “You don't know until you see, it depends. I think mail-in voting is gonna rig the election, I really do.” 

If being a loser is measured by the number of bankruptcies you have filed, how many people are sick and dying from wrong-headed policies in the face of a pandemic, butting heads with world leaders with little or no benefit to Americans and even how you fare in popularity polls, it seems pretty clear why the President just might not want to accept the will of the people in November. 

            I’m Peter Dekom, and if we could retroactively recast The Apprentice, would Trump still be on that show or would he be forced to migrate to The Biggest Loser… unless he ascends to the throne atop the United States of America by force.

There Ain’t No Good Guys Here

Let me make myself abundantly clear: The Peoples’ Republic of China is not our friend and is unlikely ever to become one. At best they range from being mutually dependent détente trading partners to “frenemies.” Their leader, President Xi Jinping, is the first super-autocratic leader since Chairman Mao Zedong, carefully orchestrating his unlimited rule, isolating and eliminating this domestic foes, clamping down on criticism and dissent and sending a message to the world that China is “the other major world power.” 

Xi, like Trump, is fomenting a personality cult around himself. Both leaders are quite willing to use the military and federal police against their own civilians to enforce their vision for their countries. For the first time in modern Chinese history, the PRC is reaching well beyond its borders to assert global power. It’s Belt and Road initiative seeks to link nations around the world to a trading infrastructure with China in control and at the hub. 

But this is not the same as the Soviet era Cold War, despite the rhetoric. American movies still play in Chinese theaters. Trade at some level continues. There is some limited travel between ordinary citizens, perhaps temporarily limited because of the uncontained surge of COVID-19 cases here in the United States. There is communication, however strained. There are diplomatic links as well. 

But two autocrats are slamming each other endlessly. Trump, master of blame and making up facts, counters an expansionist Xi whose spy network is now on overdrive in the Western world. It’s not as if we aren’t also trying to penetrate PRC government sources and file servers, but the battle over a cure for COVID-19 has amped the rhetoric and the effort up one giant notch. We’ve always had an issue with Chinese agents looking for technology to steal, private and governmental; it’s just that now the stops have all been pulled out. Racism against Asian Americans in the United States, individuals beaten because they are assumed links to a Chinese sourced virus, has given Xi a moral justification however tenuous that might be. 

Aside from the spying, the BBC.com (July 23rd) summarizes the issues between the nations: There are a number of flashpoints between Beijing and Washington. Some of the most serious are: 

• Coronavirus: President Trump has repeatedly referred to Covid-19 as the "China virus". and alleged it originated from a Chinese laboratory, despite his own intelligence officers saying it "was not manmade". In response, Chinese officials have suggested, without evidence, that Covid-19 might have originated in the US 
• Trade: Mr Trump has long accused China of unfair trading practices and intellectual property theft. The US and China have engaged in a tit-for-tat tariff war since 2018 as a result of the dispute 
• Hong Kong: China's imposition of a sweeping new national security law in Hong Kong in June led the US to revoke the region's preferential economic treatment. Beijing has accused the US of "gross interference" in its domestic affairs, promising it will retaliate 
• South China Sea: The two countries have also clashed over Beijing's pursuit of offshore resources in disputed waters, with Mr Pompeo calling it a "campaign of bullying".

But as the adman says, “but wait, there’s more.” There’s a diplomatic war raging. Images of massive document burning at China’s consulate in Houston – standard operating procedure for most hostile nations when they are expecting to close or be tossed from their facility – suggest that China was most aware that its efforts in the region, the rather unsubtle attempts of consular personnel to enter restricted federal facilities and their increased efforts to ferret out US COVID-19 vaccine progress, were about to result in US State Department close order. On July 22nd it happened. The Trump administration has threatened more such close orders. 

Promising retaliation, “Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused the administration of using excuses to limit, harass or crack down on Chinese scholars in the country… ‘In response to the US's unreasonable actions, China must make a necessary response and safeguard its legitimate rights,’ he said at a press conference, describing the US allegations as ‘malicious slander.’… 

“A Chinese scientist suspected of visa fraud and concealing ties to the military has fled to China's consulate in San Francisco, the US says… According to the filings, during an interview with FBI agents last month she said she had not served in the Chinese military. 

“However, the document says, an open-source investigation uncovered photos of her wearing military uniform and a search of her home found further evidence of her affiliation with China's People's Liberation Army (PLA)… ‘At some point following the search and interview of Tang on June 20, 2020, Tang went to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, where the FBI assesses she has remained,’ the filing, first reported on by the Axios news site,  

“It adds: ‘As the Tang case demonstrates, the Chinese consulate in San Francisco provides a potential safe harbor for a PLA official intent on avoiding prosecution in the United States.’… Prosecutors say that this is not an isolated case but ‘appears to be part of a program conducted by the PLA’ to send military scientists to the US on false pretences.” BBC.com. China quickly announced the closure of the US consulate in Chendu. 

“The State Department said in a brief statement that the shutdown order was given ‘to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.’ The statement did not elaborate on the issue…. ‘President Trump has said, ‘Enough, we’re not going to allow this to continue to happen,’ ’ Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo said at a brief news conference Wednesday [7/22] in Copenhagen. ‘We are setting out clear expectations for how the Chinese Communist Party is going to behave, and when they don’t, we’re going to take actions that protect the American people, protect our national security and also protect our economy and jobs.’ 

“Closure of a diplomatic mission would represent a significant escalation in the accelerating breakdown of relations between Washington and Beijing… A trade war has already engulfed the world’s two biggest economies, and the Trump administration’s accusations of Chinese mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak have further strained relations. 

“The two countries have imposed restrictions on each other’s journalists, expelling many of them, and the U.S. has restricted visas for Chinese graduate students with ties to entities deemed to be seeking to acquire foreign technology for Chinese military purposes.” Los Angeles Times, July 23rd. 

In the end, the United States has gained many superlative PRC graduates who have simply elected to remain in the United States, enriched private industry by their inventions, and generated ton of American jobs in the process. We are also faced with global issues that cannot be solved without some form of cooperation with China: global pollution and climate change, identifying and tracking potential new pandemics, the United Nations itself and governmental multinational trade where bilateral agreements simply do not fit modern realities. There are risks. There are rewards. But we are stuck with each other, one way or the other. Blame, making up facts and name-calling do not help. But genuine bad acts need to be identified and countered effectively. Substance needs to trump form. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and today the United States seems unable to walk between the two pillars of modern diplomacy: realpolitik (crass pragmatism) and adhering to the moral values that define what the United States has, until recently, stood for.

COVID-19 – Who Prevents? Who Treats? Who Pays? Who Gets Left Behind?

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good" Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street

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I’ve discussed the path to getting a vaccine for COVID-19. See my July 17th 2021? – A Vaccine, Now What? blog. Today, I wrestle with the elephants in the room: availability and economics. We live in nation where money and business trump most everything else. Despite the rhetoric of universal availability when the anti-COVID-19 vaccine arrives (assuming it will), there are some very real barriers built into our entire healthcare system. Fair distribution at a fair price are anything but guaranteed. 

“Multiple lawmakers have raised concerns about the affordability and availability of an eventual vaccine. Sen. Bernie Sanders pointed out in last week’s hearing [early July] with leading health officials that billions of taxpayer dollars are funding pharmaceutical companies in their effort to develop a vaccine. He asked, given the significant of that investment, if every person in the country can expect to have access to an eventual vaccine regardless of their income. 

“All four public health officials present during the hearing — Fauci, Redfield, Hahn, Redfield and Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brett Giroir — answered Sanders’ question affirmatively.” PBS News Hour, July 8th. Sounds good… but those are just words without a clear path of implementation. The reality, the battle between and ethical and socially responsible results and the primacy of the profit driver sanctified by the American legal system, could well be quite different. But it just might not be the United States that answers the question. 

Should we be grateful that a seemingly functional vaccine is more likely to emanate from outside the US (where government funding of research has been on a steady decline)? Maybe even China? There are signs that England’s Oxford University, partnered with drugmaker AstraZeneca, seems to be at the forefront of a working vaccine. Under the aegis of Oxford Professor Sara Gilbert, several initial sets of clinical trials are showing the most effective vaccine development we know of. An agreement between the US and UK could make that preventative available here, ready to be manufactured at the end of this year and available in early 2021. We are still finding out how long the immunity lasts, whether there hidden side effects and if the vaccine is generally tolerable. Oxford is unlikely to be a partner in price gouging, and the restraints in Europe and the UK, where national healthcare has existed for a very long time, are consumer friendly. 

But who gets it first here and at what cost? Especially if the price is controlled by a US manufacturer and deployment is as haphazard as our COVID-19 response has been to date. Nicole Hassoun, professor of philosophy at Binghamton University, State University of New York, writing for the July 18th FastCompany.com, tells us: “As COVID-19 surges in the United States and worldwide, even the richest and best-insured Americans understand, possibly for the first time, what it’s like not to have the medicines they need to survive if they get sick. There is no coronavirus vaccine, and the best-known treatment, remdesivir, only reduces hospital recovery time by 30% and only for patients with certain forms of the disease. 

“Poorer people have always had trouble accessing essential medicines, however—even when good drugs exist to prevent and treat their conditions. 

“In the U.S., where there is no legal right to health, insurance is usually necessary for medical treatment. Remdesivir costs about $3,200 for a typical treatment course of six vials, though critics argue its manufacturer, Gilead, could make a profit off much less. Internationally, high drug prices mean that critical medicines are often available only to the richest patients. 

“Access to medicines, in other words, is usually an ethical problem—not a scientific one. And that’s going to complicate the global coronavirus fight. Experts worry that any COVID-19 vaccine is likely to have a high price tag and, as a result, be unequally distributed according to countries’ purchasing power, not need.” Rich counties serve themselves and their political constituents first. Some countries, like Russia, are busy trying to hack their way into the computers of the leading vaccine contenders to shortcut their path to a vaccine by simple theft. 

Usually, what brings the price down to reasonable is competition. Several drugmakers with viable solutions. That could happen here, but the struggle to find even one vaccine with a year to a year and a half – tested, manufactured and deployed – is something the United States has never done before. Hence first in time just might have the ability to price gouge, something Congress is likely to legislate against if it happens… assuming Donald “let the market fix the price” Trump is no longer in office or bends to an obvious need and signs the bill if he is. 

It took years for HIV drugs to reach an economically reasonable plateau. “[By] 1997, most people diagnosed with HIV in Europe and the U.S. were living long and productive lives thanks to antiretroviral drugs… Meanwhile, the disease was still killing 2.2 million people each year in sub-Saharan Africa because pharmaceutical companies claimed it was impossible to lower the US$10,000 to $15,000 annual cost per patient for antiretrovirals. 

“In response, human rights activists galvanized a global AIDS campaign, educating African patients about antiretrovirals, giving them the tools they required to demand treatment, and even suing drug companies. Eventually, mass protests erupted in South Africa and elsewhere, shifting public opinion on access to medicines. 

“By 2000, competition from generic drug manufacturers brought the price of antiretrovirals down to around $350 per patient per year, allowing millions more worldwide to take them… Around the same time, a similar story was playing out with tuberculosis, which had greatly diminished in the U.S. and Europe but remained deadly in many other places. The rise of drug-resistant strains—especially in the former Soviet Union and parts of Africa and Asia—posed a particularly terrible challenge. 

“Conventional wisdom held that people with drug-resistant TB couldn’t be saved. The drugs were too expensive, treatment courses too long, and disease management too complicated… The organization Partners in Health disproved that excuse by successfully treating 50 tuberculosis patients in Peru, then one of the world’s poorest countries. That project helped convince the World Health Organization to endorse multi-drug-resistant TB treatment. Global funding for TB treatment increased greatly, and generic medicines were produced. Today more than 70% of people diagnosed with drug-resistant TB receive treatment… 

“Other examples include the adoption of ‘ring vaccinations’ in the 1960s—a contact-tracing-based immunization strategy pioneered after mass vaccinations failed to stop smallpox—and a 2010 campaign to give children in Afghanistan their polio vaccinations at the circus… Ending the global coronavirus pandemic will require a similar creative resolve. 

“Recently, the U.S. agreed to pay $1.2 billion for early access to a promising COVID-19 vaccine in the United Kingdom and secured first access to another by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi, enraging citizens of those countries. Such arrangements also harm manufacturing countries such as Brazil, Egypt, and India, whose people have little access to the medicines their factories pump out. 

“Unequal access to COVID-19 medicines isn’t just a moral problem. In a global pandemic, an outbreak anywhere threatens people everywhere.” Hassoun. Indeed, many countries require price controls on pharmaceuticals as a condition of doing business within their borders… or simply grant the government a statutory right to coopt essential vaccines and treatments based on a set pricing procedure. 

But the United States, where for most people healthcare is an option and not a right, other than generic and undefined bans against “price gouging” often at a state level, drugmakers set their own prices. Even under the Affordable Care Act (being challenged by the Trump administration and 20 red states in court), healthcare exchanges were not permitted to use their size and bargaining power to negotiate better prices on prescription drugs. Picture someone gasping for breath willing to die to preserve the unaffordable “capitalistic” pricing system that underpins American healthcare today. It’s time for a ground-up change. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is simply time for the United States to join the rest of the developed and much of the developing world and deal effectively with according its citizens with healthcare as a right.

The Afterthought Killer – Enclosed Workspaces

Most of us are aware that partying, closely packed bars, beaches, rallies and even churches have sown novel coronavirus viral seeds. We believe warehouses and heavy manufacturing have reduced exposure risks with varying levels of success. We all know that meat and poultry processing plants, with workers pressed shoulder to shoulder and often living in barracks or small bedrooms with fellow workers, have been hotbeds of COVID-19 infections. We’ve come to believe that open office spaces are much easier to control, to make safe and secure. We just may have misjudged that reality. Particularly in California, increasing numbers of infections are being traced to open offices. 

While most passenger aircraft can recycle all the cabin air every three minutes, except when they shut down if they are stalled on the tarmac because of a delay, very few offices have HVAC systems that are even focused on a speedy refreshing of air within an office space. Even fewer deploy the kinds of HEPA filters that effectively filter out the virus found on most commercial jets. As the infection skyrocket here in Los Angeles, many now being traced to office workers, we just received an order to shut down “non-essential” offices. California is at least trying. There are still GOP governors in hot spot states unwilling to do what it takes to control this explosive new outbreak. 

Generally speaking, the Trump administration has been downright hostile to enforcing any regulations against any businesses. The mantra to open everything, everywhere to deliver economic success that would support a second Trump term is embedded in virtually every federal policy these days. From pollution to workplace safety. Unions have been forced to take this lackadaisical federal policy to court simply to protect their members from this malaise: “More than three years after taking office, the administration has never filled the job running the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is charged with enforcing workplace safety laws. The $560 million-a-year agency, whose estimated 2,000 inspectors performed 32,020 on-site inspections in 2018, spent months not doing any in-person inspections related to coronavirus, other than in hospitals, said Rebecca Reindel, director of occupational safety and health for the AFL-CIO. 

“OSHA has issued only one citation for violations of workplace safety laws related to Covid-19, according to its own testimony to Congress, to a Georgia nursing home that failed to report that a staffer had been hospitalized. The lone citation is despite well-documented shortages of required personal protective equipment at hospitals and Covid-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants. 

“The dispute has spilled into the courts, as the full U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia is being asked by the AFL-CIO to consider an appeal of a June decision by a court panel siding with OSHA and denying the labor federation’s request for a rule that gives employers specific guidelines for dealing with Covid-19… ‘We know 125,000 people have died, and we know the workplace is a major source of exposure,’ said Reindel. ‘Besides, it’s the only place most people are going.’″ CNBC.com, July 10th. 

What we now know is that since COVID-19 is a respiratory disorder; what’s in the air just might be more important than what’s on the surface. Sure, touch an infected surface and bring that toxin to your face with a simple touch or itch-scratching and wham… infection city. But without exceptionally expensive HVAC retrofitting, there is a real question whether sealed office space can be made safe at all. Senior managers are beginning to ask the right questions, even beginning to slow the process of bringing back office workers. Work from home continues to be viable for most office work. 

“U.S. companies are raising new questions about how they can make workplaces safe after the world’s top public health agency acknowledged the risk that tiny airborne droplets of the novel coronavirus may contribute to its spread, industry healthcare consultants said. 

“About two weeks ago [early July], the World Health Organization called for more scientific study into airborne transmission of COVID-19. The move raised awareness of an issue excluded from U.S. government back-to-work guidelines, adding to the challenge of keeping people safe in offices, stores and work sites, these consultants said. 

“Many companies devised strategies based on WHO guidance that large respiratory droplets of the virus could infect people when first emitted and after they landed on surfaces. Now the concern over infection is focused on the idea that tiny droplets could linger in the air for hours… 

“The slowdown comes as some employers, such as Texas energy companies Halliburton Co and Chevron Corp, had already begun delaying plans to bring back office workers due to rising coronavirus cases… Employers are asking whether public health recommendations that individuals remain 6 feet apart and wear masks to limit transmission through large droplets are enough.” Thompson Reuters, July 20th. Apparently, no one told those infectious droplets not to go around partitions or hover around for hours. And exactly how do you tell your landlord to spend a fortune upgrading the HVAC system to exchange and filter the air efficiently? Don’t count on the Trump administration for any help in this area. 

All of this faces us now. But after a possible near-term lull, it now seems all but certain that we will face that dreaded second wave, during traditional flu season, by the end of the year. “Robert Redfield, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has said the coming fall and winter months may be one of the toughest in the country's public health history… ‘I do think the fall and the winter of 2020 is probably going to be one of the most difficult times that we've experienced in American public health’ he said, as COVID-19 and the flu will coincide.” Newsweek, July 15th. It not as if no one cares. But it just might be that no one who can make a difference at the federal level cares enough.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and number and facts repeatedly confirm how badly the United States is handling this pandemic.