Ten Things about COVID-19: Number Five

5.) Masking the Issue

The global medical community has been all over the map with advice to us poor contagious peons on how to slow the spread of COVID-19, and keep ourselves from catching it. 

It started out with, “Wash your hands and don’t touch your face.”  From there, it quickly jumped to “Shut everything down, stay home, don’t go out in public unless absolutely necessary.”  Early on, the mask question came up, and the experts scoffed and told us wearing masks would not be beneficial, so don’t bother. 

As time went on and infection raged, it turned out societies that were masking up were actually having success controlling spread.  So…uh-oh. We were wrong.  Masks are good.  Masks are great.  Wear a mask.

Now, I understand that dealing with a new contagion is a learn-on-the-fly sort of thing.  As time goes by and we learn more about the virus, its action and how it spreads, advice to the public on how to stay safe is going to change.  Unfortunately, this process is corrupted by our 21^st-century. instantaneous-but-not-necessarily-vetted-or-true method of broadcasting “news.”  Every entity on the planet charged with passing information on to the public is more interested in clicks and “views” than in getting the info straight.  The goal is to get eyes on THEIR medium.  Not to make sure the information sent out is good or useful or even safe.  And if it produces controversy, even better.  More clicks.

So, in the space of five months, we’ve gone from, “No need for masks” to “You HAVE to wear a mask” coming from the “expert” scientific community. Very fertile ground for the modern American “choose your own reality” crowd.   

And you have a POTUS whose policy on this nasty virus (that China sent over by way of the Democrats, to sabotage his reelection chances) amounts to “It will disappear.”  And, as such, refuses to wear a mask, and even goes so far as to say on camera that people wear masks to show their opposition to HIM. 

Now we have solidly politicized the wearing of masks; as even the smallest, least significant issue in this country has been politicized since the rise of the Tea Party and the Evangelical Right. There’s no such thing as quiet opposition.  Every god damn thing has to be a reason for us to hate and bully and smear each other.  It has to be loud and rude and ugly.

So Americans are beating the crap out of each other for wearing/not wearing masks.

And since mask-wearing has to be close to universal for it to really be effective… Case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths are experiencing a meteoric rise in the USA as we ignore any scientific advice we don't like and indulge in our ill-advised “re-opening” to save our crappy consumer economy and make sure we can keep the flow of $$$ into the pockets and off-shore bank accounts of the rich.  While we peons grovel in the trenches, intent on butchering each other, using the virus or any other means available.  No matter.  As long as those cash registers start to ring again.

Which leads me to wonder...how many ways can one pandemic kill us?                            

Ten Things About COVID-19: Number Four

4.) Testing: one, two, 40 million…

“Test, trace, quarantine.” That has been the recipe for success for all the nations of the world which have got the upper hand on the pandemic and are attempting to, and mostly succeeding at, restarting their economies after the virus clubbed them almost to death.  We’ve known this formula for months.  It’s no secret.

But testing has been a nightmare in the US from the beginning.  Five months in, it’s STILL a nightmare.  I'll go out on a limb and posit that America’s miserable for-profit health system coupled with our obscene-profit-driven pharmaceutical culture have multiplied by a factor of 1000 the logistical challenges of manufacturing, distributing and administering tests to Joe Average Citizen.  Because for decades, these forces have reduced health care in the US to “Who’s going to spend money on it? (Not me!  Not me!  Not me!)” vs “Who’s going to make money on it? (Me!  Me!  Mememememememememeeeeee!)  Obviously, this “system” does not work as a method for providing medical care for all who need it.  In fact, it’s not designed to provide medical care to those who NEED it.  Only to those who can afford it.  And afford to pay the “middle man” on top of that; the one who makes life and death decisions based on the financial bottom line rather than the best interest of the patient. 

So of course, when something like a pandemic comes along where the medical/pharmaceutical culture needs to put public health over profits, we have a system that is set up to fail.  Miserably.  And so it has.

After five months, there STILL aren’t enough tests.  Some reports say the tests we do have result in up to a 30% false negative rate.  And yet, those shitty tests are still reporting exponential spread of the virus in states—mainly in the south and west—that attempted to “re-open” before coming close to having the virus under control.  Or even possessing the tools to determine control. 

And here’s where the Toddler-in-Chief comes in.  COVID is hurting his reelection bid. First, it was because the virus was causing the market to crash.  Now, it’s because his dismal failure to step up and lead the nation through the crisis (rather than trying to lie, bully and minimize it into submission) has actually peeled the scales from the eyes of some of his less brainwashed supporters. 

Trump repeatedly claims, out loud, in front of the cameras, that the reason we have so many cases is because we’re doing too much testing.  Less testing, less cases.  He honestly believes this.  Like, if I don’t take a pregnancy test, I can’t be pregnant. 

He’s admitted that he asked states to slow down testing.  That didn’t go over too well.  So, now, he’s decided to discredit his own medical experts and the CDC, bypass them and have all COVID statistics from hospitals across the nation sent to the White House instead of the CDC.  If he can’t convince them to slow testing, then by god he’ll just withhold or monkey with the numbers.  It never enters his or his accomplices' minds that the “cases” he fails to reveal will be dying alone in the hallways of overwhelmed hospitals, their mortal remains shuttled to refrigerated truck containers as funeral homes are engulfed in or unwilling to handle contaminated bodies, possibly buried in mass graves without ceremony or loved ones present.  

Or perhaps it does enter their minds…they just don’t care.  Collateral damage of the Trump Reelection Campaign.  No price too high, as long it’s not Mango Mussolini suffering or dying. 

It boggles the mind, really.

Test, trace, quarantine.  We can't even get the first step right.

                  

Ten Things About COVID-19: Number Three

3.) Viral Politics

 

In February, world stock markets started tanking as the effects of COVID-19 on global production and consumption began to become evident.  Donald Trump panicked.  He saw his reelection campaign—based upon his arrogant (and erroneous) claims that he alone had blessed America with the most prosperous economy on earth—dragged down precipitously with the dive of the Dow Jones. 

So he did the first thing that came to his mind.  The first thing that always comes to his mind; his knee-jerk reaction to anything he sees as a threat to his personal bubble of dominance and celebrity.

He lied.

He obfuscated.   He downplayed.  He scoffed. 

And as it became apparent that all those things were not going to stop COVID from taking hold in the US, he ramped up the blame.  It’s the Democrats’ fault.  It’s China’s fault.  It’s the WHO’s fault.  It’s the doctors’ fault.  Along with, “I take no responsibility at all.”

THIS is how a pandemic becomes political.  Put an ignorant, pompous, self-aggrandizing, pandering con man cult leader in charge of one of the premier nations of the world.  And when he’s faced with something he perceives as a threat to his power and position, and he can’t lie or blame his way around it, he creates utter chaos.  All in an effort to save his own ass.  Because that is all he cares about.

That’s how we end up with citizens spitting on each other at supermarkets, screaming about their “rights” when asked to mask up; promoting the idea that old people should be willing to die in order to “save the economy;”  studiously aping the man in the highest office in the land, the guy who shamelessly lies, bullies, obfuscates and points fingers in order to make things go his way. 

We could never have hoped that the dyed orange leopard in the White House would change his spots, get serious and LEAD the nation through this quagmire.  Or understand that he didn’t have the necessary knowledge or experience to do so, and yield the floor to experts who did.  We know that would be far too opposite of his nature to even consider.

But could we not have hoped that he would just do…nothing?

If you can’t fix it, ignore it.  It will go away.

All he really had to do was SHUT THE FUCK UP.  Then we might at least not have made a deadly disease an internal war.  An “Us vs Them” situation.  We might not be throwing “COVID parties” and ripping masks off our neighbors’ faces and hiding in our homes because our fellow citizens think it’s their patriotic duty to laugh off a pandemic and act as if it isn’t happening.

But no. 

He started out lying and agitating and bullying.  And he’s going to go right on with that strategy.  Every day.  Several times a day.

To what end?  We don’t really know.  The only thing we know for sure is, it won’t be pretty.

Maybe the virus has been over-hyped.  Maybe we won’t be overwhelmed with death and long-lasting health and economic effects that will cripple the country.

But the politicization of COVID19, if not the virus itself, has done lingering, devastating damage to the spirit, the soul, of the United States of America.

Because a vain, ignorant cult-leader “president” couldn’t leave it alone.

Ten Things About COVID-19: Number Two

2.) It's The Stupid Economy 

Back in February, when COVID-19 was already decimating cities in China and was just starting to affect the performance of global markets, Donald Trump chose the horse he was going to ride to the finish line: the stock market. As the Dow Jones plummeted, Trump believed that his reelection campaign tanked right along with it.  His go-to self-promotion for his entire term has been the “record stock market.”  He (erroneously) used the performance of the Dow as proof positive that he and he alone had saved the economy and was going to keep America rich and prosperous.

Never mind that the Dow Jones Average has N.O.T.H.I.N.G. to do with the health of the economy. Never mind that the 98% haven’t yet recovered from the crash of 2008. 

Never mind that the “recovery” of the job market only looks at how many jobs, not what kinds of jobs have been added to the economy.  Never mind that decent, living wage blue-collar jobs are almost non-existent in the USA…all those jobs have been outsourced overseas, so corporate executives could put more money in their pockets and off-shore accounts.  Never mind that the typical white collar job no longer offers full benefits, regular pay raises, pension plans, or incentives of any kind.  Those of us not in the 2% top-of-the-food-chain economic stratum are STILL, after 12 years, toiling in the “lucky-to-have-a-job” chain gang.

I will concede that COVID-19 is having a devastating effect on the American economy. But I’ll insistently point out that our economy was completely fucked up to begin with.  What the hell is a “consumer economy” anyway? Is that a polite term for, “We’ve sent all the real work overseas where we can get it done poorly and cheaply, so all that’s left for regular people to do is work as servants in retail, restaurants and hospitality, or as underpaid, under-trained “health care” workers because we can’t outsource those industries (and believe me, we’ve tried…)?”

A “consumer economy” is never going to be disaster proof. It’s always going to be subject to the burps and groans and whims of the global market; it will never provide stability for a country that has to isolate from the world for a time during a disaster—like a pandemic.  As long as rents and mortgages and cars and utilities and food and gasoline cost more than one person can earn, and people have to work two or three service jobs to put a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and clothes on their backs, it’s all going to come crashing down when the service industry crashes. 

We can’t make those over-worked, underpaid people, and the kids they’re toiling to raise and support, the sacrificial lambs for “getting the economy back on track” during a pandemic.  We can’t make them literally risk their lives for $10/hr so Karen can get her nails done or Kevin can get a haircut.   And we can’t make them risk their children’s lives by sending the kids back to school so the service industry can roll again.

We have to FIX our seriously broken economy.  We have to bring industry back to our own shores.  We have to make stuff, not just buy stuff.  We have to have living wage jobs for families, so if kids can’t go to school, the rent will still get paid.  We have to have health care that doesn’t eat 30 cents out of every dollar everyone earns, so that everyday Americans have to choose whether to eat or go to a doctor.         

It’s not, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

It’s “Fix the stupid economy.”

Or our future looks very grim.

A Slow but Sure (I Hope) Ten Things

Back in the halcyon days of “Coming to Terms,” I had a vehicle called “Ten Things.”  It sprang out of my compulsion to continue to write even when I had no time or little motivation to do so.  There were always little scraps of ideas circling like a whirlwind in my brain, and the only way for me to have peace was to let them out, even if I hadn’t the time to fully develop them into finished, fleshy essays.   

In these bizarre days of COVID19, I’ve once again found myself with whirlwinds of ideas crashing around in my brain, and the apparent inability to catch any single one and develop it into anything resembling a coherent essay.  And it’s not that I don’t have the time; I have nothing but time.  I just can’t seem to tap into a strong, consistent stream of motivation.  My defense against anxiety has manifested as avoidance of deep thinking of any kind.  If I focus on anything enough to try to make sense of it, I’m in danger of falling into the hole of paralyzing fear out of which I so recently dragged myself.

So “Ten Things” looks like the path forward.  And I’m going to start with baby steps, and only concentrate on churning out ONE per day. 

Let’s do this:

Ten Things About COVID-19

1.)We are a nation of spoiled, entitled children. We don’t want to be told “no.”  We don’t want to be told, “You have to do this to this in consideration of others.”  We are the center of the universe…all things revolve around our wants, our needs, our comfort. This isn’t new…it’s been going on at least since the early 2000’s. It’s one of the chief reasons I got OUT of the restaurant business in 2011—I simply could not tolerate the attitude of 21^st century customers.

And it’s one of the chief reasons Trump’s denial and avoidance of the pandemic has resonated with a larger portion of the American citizenry than any of us wants to contemplate.  People want COVID-19 to go away, or better yet, to never have happened. They want their privileged, entitled lives—to the extent that they were privileged and entitled—to go on exactly as they have been for the past few decades.  Laws are not for them; responsibility is not for them; ignore ugly things and they just *poof* fade away.  Even better when national “leadership” broadcasts that narrative from the highest levels of government.  SO easy to choose that reality and run with it.  “The President of the United States says it, so it must be okay.  He wouldn’t say anything that wasn’t true or that might be dangerous to his citizens.”   Actually, I don’t think folks even reason it that far.  They just hear what they want to hear and create their reality around it.

COVID-19 isn’t going to go magically away.  And even when it does finally recede—IF it ever does recede—there is likely to be another pandemic close on its heels.  It is going to be a national disaster of historic proportions.  It already is.

But, here’s the thing:

Disasters serve to make drastic changes to a culture, to a nation, to a people. 

Like the disaster of World War II, they can make us better people.  Leaders can step up and lead with courage.  People can work together for the common good.  We can become closer, stronger, braver, more determined to create a better world for ourselves and our children.

Or, like the disaster of 9/11, they can tear us down.  Leaders can exploit the fear of the people; manipulate the horror to sow hatred, racism, xenophobia, distrust…TERROR.  Serve their own ambitions and agenda by making the people afraid and causing them to trade their rights and freedoms, even their lives, for “protection.” 

It’s a matter of leadership.  Who’s in charge?  Are they guiding the nation on how to step up to the challenge?  Or are they exploiting it for their own gain?

I don’t think I have to tell you what direction we’re heading with the COVID-19 disaster.

Truth to tell, we were already in the middle of a long, slow, inevitable disaster when COVID-19 came along.

Doesn’t bode well for us, does it?