Sick ‘Em! UPDATED

 

 “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health… The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity,  is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”                                                                 

White House Policy (October 2020) as expressed in the Great Barrington Declaration

If you believe that the United States couldn’t get more polarized and dysfunctional, guess again. As the Republicans ignore every statement the made to justify denying Obama Supreme Court nominee Merritt Garland a Senate floor vote 9 months before the end of his term, here we are three weeks from the election to determine if Trump stays or goes. However, we are watching his 11^th hour Supreme Court appointment, Amy Coney Barrett, testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in anticipation of an almost immediate confirmation vote. An effort to stack the court into an unbreakable conservative supermajority.

Meanwhile, the maskless President himself is campaigning in his post-COVID moment, apparently jacked up on steroids and “feeling great,” addressing rally crowds, starting with his must win home state of Florida (pictured above). His doctors refuse to state if he has tested negative for the virus, but the President has declared himself fully “cured,” an almost certain medical impossibility. Bare-faced Trump told his Florida rally supporters, many them maskless and hardly adhering to safe distancing guidelines, he was totally free of the virus: "They say I'm immune - I feel so powerful. I'll walk in there and kiss everyone. I'll kiss the guys and the beautiful women, I'll give you a big, fat kiss."

Did his constituents believe it was too soon for him to mix with crowds, as most doctors suggest? Apparently not. “People have been getting their temperature checked and were offered face masks. Those who covered up didn't think it was too soon for the president to be out and about. They said they admired him for it. One man here told me he was originally from New York and had made Florida his home - just like ‘his hero’ Donald Trump.” BBC.com, October 13^th.

Trump continued to attack his highly fictionalized version of Joe Biden and railed at the now-released emails from Hillary Clinton. If only he were still running against Hillary Clinton or even Barack Obama, both whom he wants to see arrested for treason or other criminal violations. Add Joe to that list too. From the Barrett appointment announcement at the Rose Garden to additional meetings and rallies without a mask, Donald Trump appears to be the uncaring master host of rolling super-spreader events.

The mere fact that the President declared himself permanently immune to the constantly mutating novel coronavirus tells us that he simply made up his own diagnosis. No medical practitioner familiar with the virus can even tell anybody that an acquired immunity to the virus is permanent. That also may be true assuming a viable vaccine is developed. We haven’t had a longer-term experience with COVID-19 to know. In fact, there is reason to believe that immunity after recovering from the disease itself may not be permanent.

“A man in the United States has caught Covid twice, with the second infection becoming far more dangerous than the first, doctors report… The 25-year-old needed hospital treatment after his lungs could not get enough oxygen into his body… Reinfections remain rare and he has now recovered.

“But the study in the Lancet Infectious Diseases raises questions about how much immunity can be built up to the virus… The man from Nevada had no known health problems or immune defects that would make him particularly vulnerable to Covid.” BBC.com, October 12^th.

Still the President touts the existence of an available total cure – even though the Regeneron treatment he received, still going through testing, is anything but available – and the imminent arrival of a completely safe and effective vaccine, a promise with a date he has never been able to meet.

It’s not as if the vaccine clinical trials, even the most advanced trials, are going totally smoothly. We know the UK’s trial of the Astra-Zenca vaccine was halted after one test subject has a severe spinal cord reaction, readjusted and then restarted. Now another of the more advanced trials, from Johnson & Johnson, encountered another serious ailment (which may or may not be linked to the drug) and has shut down, hopefully temporarily.

With the President gallivanting around in swing state rallies pretending COVID is just another flu, there is a very ugly new prioritized Trump approach to the pandemic. So, what if a lot of people get sick, have serious long-term consequences or even die? Patriotic Americans just have to accept that: “White House officials have promoted a declaration supporting herd immunity that has reportedly been signed by fake names, The New York Times reported Tuesday [9/13]… In a Monday [10/12] phone call, White House officials cited the Great Barrington Declaration [excerpt above], which argues that the government should push for herd immunity with more infections among the healthy population, according to two senior administration officials… Supporters of the declaration use it to argue against lockdowns and more reopenings during the pandemic.” TheHill.com, October 14^th.  So the plan is just to let people get sick and die?

It's tough to listen to Mike Pence’s pretending that Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic provided the medical community with all the testing and PPE they wanted (both programs actually delivered only a fraction of what was required) and saved 2.2 million American lives (a wholly manufactured number). The Trump administration, which still lacks a cohesive approach to containing the virus, still cannot explain why the United States, with about 4% of the earth’s population, accounts for 20% of the planet’s COVID deaths and 25% of the infections. Relabeling abysmal failure as success may be classic Trump, but a lot more people have died or suffered unnecessarily from COVID-19 than is justified simply by looking at the numbers.

Very few people are likely to change their minds over their expected presidential vote. But just in case: White supremacists are clearly getting ready to back Trump should election results favor Biden. We can start with the failed kidnapping of Democrat Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer by another radical right-wing group. Even as the FBI carted away a number of accused Wolverine Watchmen, “Dar Leaf, Barry County (Michigan) sheriff, said that he doesn't have any regrets about being onstage with one of the suspects at a recent demonstration and suggested the Wolverine Watchmen militia members may have been merely planning to apprehend Gov. Whitmer to execute a citizen’s arrest.” Forbes.com, October 9^th. He really said that.

The radical right-wing Boogaloo Bois explain their position simply: we’re not interested in fomenting a civil war – people against people; we prefer to categorize our efforts as fomenting a revolutionary war – people against a government that no longer represents them. Of course, that perceived lack of representation is directed at anyone left of center, those who favor some form of gun control, immigrants and any other non-traditional “Americans.” In the end, we have faced almost four years of divisiveness, a president who has made it very clear he does not represent those who do not support his views, and who truly believes that the coronavirus is a minor threat and that we have turned the corner. 215 thousand Americans might strongly disagree with the President… but they died from the virus and can neither speak nor vote.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and the thought of Americans putting aside their differences to form a newly-invigorated “more perfect union” seems like a pipe dream that has already gone up in smoke, well beyond even our worst climate-change-accelerated wildfires.