Category: Health

FREEDOM FROM MASKS: THE RIGHT TO INFECT YOUR NEIGHBOR

In the name of liberty, unmasked MAGA heads are freely emitting oral and nasal droplets of God-knows-what. Welcome to Donald Trump’s America. In this bizarre upside-down moment, a former germaphobe has used his presidential power to turn unprotected coughs and sneezes into acts of patriotism.  Mandatory masking, Trump argues, is an attack on liberty.

Speaking of liberty, do you think Patrick Henry would have worn a face mask?  He’s the guy who, in 1775 created the rhetorical predicate for the Revolutionary War with his “Give me liberty, or give me death” speech. It’s hard to imagine those infamous words being uttered behind an N-95 facial covering. So weak and low energy, as our Twitterer-in-Chief would say.

But little did Henry know that, 245 years later, his precious aspiration for liberty would be used in another lethal battle, this time to preserve the Republican right to forgo wearing face masks during the most deadly pandemic in a century. 

In a year overflowing with specious and spurious arguments, comes this granddaddy of insipidness:  In the interest of personal liberty, nobody should be required to wear a face mask in mitigation of a virus that has infected more than 8.6 million Americans and left more than 224,000 of them dead. 

Reasonable people can differ over the closing of schools and businesses.  But to the medical professionals and other scientists tracking this epidemic, there is no dispute over the efficacy of masks. They work. And they are becoming more essential every day. 

Despite Trump’s claim that we have “turned the corner” on this virus, we are actually moving into another crisis stage. There were 82,600 new cases on Friday, the highest since the pandemic began. More than 1,000 Americans die from this disease every day. Hospitals in 38 states are at capacity or near-capacity levels. Yet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the virus could be brought under control in two months if everyone wore a mask. Between now and February, universal masking, according to another expert, could save at least 100,000 lives.

But there’s this liberty thing.  A quick sampling of GOP governors:  

Greg Abbott of Texas: “Requiring everyone to wear masks is an infringement on liberty.”  (Texas liberty fun fact: You can be fined for selling Limburger cheese on Sunday.)

Ron DeSantis of Florida: “(Masks are) a matter of personal liberty.” (Florida liberty fun fact: Women who fall asleep under a beauty salon hairdryer are subject to fines.)

Brian Kemp of Georgia, “(Masks) must be a personal choice, not a requirement that infringes on people’s liberty.” (Georgia liberty fun fact: It’s a crime to give away goldfish as a prize in BINGO games.)

Doug Burgam of North Dakota: “(Mandatory masks) are not a job for government because people have liberty.”  (North Dakota liberty fun fact: In Fargo, you can be arrested for wearing a hat while dancing.)

All of these red states have a plethora of laws regulating human behavior in order to protect the health and safety of its citizens.  Drivers there stop at red lights and obey speed limits, not out of personal responsibility, but because they don’t want to be fined. Stroll through their liberty-loving parks and you will see signs mandating “No Bicycling; No Rollerblading, No Skateboarding; No Loitering.” 

Yet, in the name of liberty, they will not post a mandatory mask sign that says “No Public Release of Potentially Infected Spittle.”  Encouraging the spread of a deadly virus for reasons of political expediency is bad enough. But falsely and shamelessly cloaking it in the garb of a noble-sounding political philosophy is about as low as you can get.  

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a piece this week under the heading of “How Many Americans Will Ayn Rand Kill?”  With tongue planted at least partially in cheek, Krugman suggested that this anti-mask liberty nonsense was derivative of the late conservative philosopher who advocated that selfishness was a virtue.  

There has been speculation that Trump is an Ayn Rand fan.  After all, she did create this sentence:  “Man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others.” It is hard to imagine The Donald as a Randian scholar – or any type of scholar, for that matter.  My guess is that someone might have highlighted that sentence and read it to him. Probably during a Fox News commercial. 

As we have learned these past five years, nothing with Trump is ever remotely profound, deep or even thought-out. This, I believe, was the impetus for mask liberty:  He needed optics to match his lie about the pandemic petering out. He got the word out to those GOP governors who think they need his blessing.  And they used the liberty gambit because . . .well, because they didn’t have anything else to justify their position in the middle of a punishing pandemic. 

Sadly, this approach has falsely and dangerously ignited a violent righteousness in whacked out and frequently armed ruffians who delight in defying mandatory mask rules at grocery stores, restaurants and other public places. There have been countless examples of low-wage workers shot or otherwise assaulted by these thugs asserting their Trumpian-blessed liberty (here, here and here).

The fact of the matter is that the concept of government imposing restrictions on citizens for the public good has been a pillar of democratic governance for more than 200 years.  Nineteenth century English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, an advocate of individual freedom, once wrote, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”  The U.S. Supreme Court, in a long line of mandatory vaccine cases, has upheld the same principle. 

Patrick Henry would have shuddered at the notion that liberty means allowing people to freely disperse their droplets during a deadly pandemic.  Yet, for those unmasked Trumpian warriors who insist on baring their full faces in every crowd, a simple conjunctive change in Henry’s memorable line would cover them.  It is this:

Give me liberty, or and give me death.  

TALE OF TWO DISASTERS: THE VIRUS AND TRUMP’S WAR AGAINST IT

As the superman of divisive politics, Donald Trump is faster than a seething bullet point. He emits more steam than a powerful locomotive, and is able to leap over truth, justice and science in a single bound. 

The good news?  COVID-19 may well be his kryptonite. The man who wormed his way into the White House on the premise that “I alone” can solve America’s problems, has choked badly and publicly at the pandemic’s every turn.  

Up until now, the singular distinction of this misbegotten 45th presidency has been Trump’s Houdini-like escape work in separating himself from the shackles of his many vile, dastardly deeds.  He grabbed pussies, caged children, praised neo-Nazis, paid hush money, sought election interference, told endless lies. With each repugnant move, we waited for him to fall, as did mere mortals before him for acts far more benign. Yet, he not only carried on, he became more brazen in his odiousness.

Then came the novel coronavirus, radically and permanently altering the terrain and architecture of our lives. Everything changed. The rhythms of our days. The sleep quality of our nights. Our thoughts, emotions, plans, uncertainties.   Sometime between early and late March, life was scrambled, turned on its head and, for far too many people, ended.   

The uniqueness of this fragile and perplexing moment is that we are all experiencing the adversity together in, as the cliché goes, real time. To be sure, our pain levels vary depending on circumstance. Yet we share the agonizing sense of loss, of grief, whether over a COVID death, job loss, separation from those we love, decimated retirement accounts or the inability to envision better days ahead. 

Against that backdrop, Donald Trump trotted out his old theatrical, make-it-up-as-you-go routine designed to cast himself in the best possible light. The virus, he said, was no big deal and would soon disappear. As infections increased exponentially, he changed character and became our “war-time president,” pledging to eradicate the enemy.  As the death rate surpassed 1,000 a day and the economy began to tank, he waved the white flag and said it was time for the country to get back to business.  

There have been dozens of role changes since then. One day he was the all-powerful Oz who would tell the governors what to do. The next day, it was all up to the governors, with Trump blasting them on Twitter if he didn’t like what they did. He even managed to encourage and embrace protesters fighting social distancing guidelines issued by his own administration.  Then came his death-defying Mr. Science act with Clorox Bleach, and pill-popping an anti-malarial drug the FDA says can result in death. 

The fact that The Donald was acting erratically and doing dumb stuff wasn’t new. His schtick hasn’t changed in years. What changed was us, his audience.  Most of us had acquired a pre-COVID immunity to his verbal regurgitations. Sure, he told us Mexico would pay for the wall and that his call to the Ukrainian president was perfect. We might roll our eyes and create a meme, but we didn’t lose sleep over it.  

We are now in a whole new ballgame, the worst crisis in a century. We’re holed up at home while this plague ravages the country. For the first time in more than three years, many of us looked at this president through the lens of neither the resistance nor MAGA. We simply wanted him to lead us out of this mess.  Instead, he failed miserably, day in and day out, on national television, where his ratings were high but his leadership nonexistent.  

As the president performed in his daily televised briefings, these were the stats weighing on his audience:   COVID deaths, nearly 100,000; infections, 1.6 million; jobs lost, 38.6 million; families with young children that don’t have enough to eat, 40 percent; increase in cases of serious mental illness since start of pandemic, 300 percent. 

But hark, comes now President Donald John Trump to address the American people on the crisis that has paralyzed our lives.  He looks directly into the Klieg lights and pauses a bit for effect before uttering his momentous declaration:  “We have met the moment, and we prevailed.” 

PREVAILED! Really? Never in the history of the English language has a word been so tortured, so drained of meaning.  Our country is overcome with massive deaths, infections, unemployment and hunger. And this guy takes a victory lap.  Sure, Trump and truth have had a difficult relationship. He said Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a fraud, that Meryl Streep is over-rated and that his IQ is one of the highest. We’ve grown accustomed to his lies.  But this is different. 

We are all feeling the pain of this pandemic. Trump’s claim that he has “prevailed” over it, is a profane rejection of our experience. So is his campaign’s rant about the virus being a political ploy to make him look bad.  This president, based on recent polling (here, here and here), has made himself look bad. About 75 percent of us remain vigilant about social distancing and hold tight to our anxiety over falling victim to this disease. Add to that the fact that Trump’s approval ratings have reached new lows and that Joe Biden is out-polling him. There is every reason to believe that most Americans know full well that the only thing this president has prevailed over is his total diminishment and failure as a leader. 

It would be foolish, of course, to count Trump out for reelection.  We know from 2016 that he is a master of grievance politics, adroit at igniting the passions of those intent on clinging to the unsung glory of white male privilege. 

Still, his cataclysm in dealing with this pandemic leaves us with hope. Some of his softer votes four years ago came from folks who were fed up with both political parties and took a chance on Trump because of his aura of a rich business leader; a guy who could get things done.  That illusion has now been laid bare.  While tens of thousands died, while millions lost their jobs, while families went hungry, Donald Trump worked desperately to protect only himself. The I-alone-can-fix-it guy completely blew it. 

In order to turn the corner on our dual disaster, we need two things in 2021:  a vaccine and a new president.

SEARCHING FOR HOPE IN A PANDEMIC

I was drunk through most of the 1970s. As I twelve-stepped my way into sobriety 40 years ago, I severed all ties with pessimism.  Granted, there wasn’t much about the ‘70s to get all giddy and gaga about, unless you really adored leisure suits. My negativity and cynicism mixed much better with a beer and a bump than it did with AA meetings and bad coffee. The lesson learned was that we can’t always control the events in our lives, but we can chose how to react to them.  So I’ve been a registered optimist since 1980 and, as a result, a lot happier.  

These past couple of months, however, have posed the single largest challenge to that world view since my conversion to hopefulness. With apologies to Thomas Paine, these are the times that try the optimist’s soul. 

How do you find even a thin ray of light in the darkness of our new existence? The soaring numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths are baked into the daily metrics of our lives, like the pollen count and chances of measurable precipitation. More than 26 million American jobs have been lost. Economists predict that 21 million of us will be pulled into poverty.  Food bank waiting lines stretch for miles throughout the country.  Not exactly the kind of stuff that lends itself to an optimistic spin.

The basic contours of any crisis are pollenated with an abundance of pessimism.  Yet, with effective, focused, purposeful leadership, we can optimistically and hopefully work our way out of the abyss. On a national level, however, those were not the cards we were dealt.  Instead, 2020 will forever be known as the confluence of two hideous events: the most deadly pandemic in a century, and the reign of our most unhinged and incompetent president ever.  

Donald Trump addresses the crisis in protracted daily news conferences.  I challenge you to find even the tiniest needle of genuine hope in his haystack of delusions, reversals, fabrications and other cognitive constipations he brings to the table.  The diabolical intersection between Trump and this pandemic was on full display Thursday when, on that single day, our country’s COVID-19 body count surpassed 50,000, and warnings rang out to ignore the president’s soliloquy on injecting bleach. 

It’s not just his crisis management incompetence that clouds any path to optimism. Trump failed miserably at what should have been his easiest task: pulling this fractured and wounded nation together, united – despite political differences – in the singular goal of working together to survive this virus.  History offers an abundance of precedence for that approach. For most of us, a threat to our survival outranks partisan and policy differences. Our humanity, in the broadest sense of the word, becomes our loadstar.  

Donald Trump, however, was born without a humanity gene. Not once has this president showed a modicum of empathy for those who lost their lives or their livelihoods in this pandemic.   The closest he comes to expressing grief is when he ruminates about the loss of an economy he thought would buy him reelection. 

It’s the same old story. Unable to pivot, Transactional Donald sticks with the schtick that brought him to the party: an unnatural enthrallment with himself, and intense grievances with everyone not wearing a MAGA hat.  Although the virus infects without regard to party affiliation, the national response is all tangled up in red and blue.   To mask or not to mask became a political litmus test as soon as Trump announced he wouldn’t wear one.

Given all that doom and gloom, you may be wondering whether I have abandoned my vow of optimism.  No, not even close.  The optimistic viewpoint is not a snapshot in time. It’s not looking at a train wreck and calling it “fantastic,” (as Trump might if he thought it would get him votes).  That’s being delusional, not optimistic. Optimism is being hopeful that the horror of now can eventually be converted into a better place.  No successful movement for change has ever been propelled by the hopelessness of pessimism. 

The most hopeful sign lies in the answer to this constantly asked question:  When will we get back to normal?  Never.  When normalcy left us, it did not buy a return ticket. It’s not coming back. And that is very good news.  What is happening to us right now is so deep and pervasive that it will change us in profound ways, and give us a unique opportunity to create a brand new normal. 

Those New Deal programs of the 1930s that lifted up millions of poor and working class Americans didn’t just serendipitously appear one day.  They evolved as the new normal from out of the ashes of the Great Depression, a disaster every bit as devastating and painful and game-changing as this pandemic.  Then, like now, the crisis dramatically identified the cracks, strictures and gaping holes in our body politic.  There was no going back to normal again.

Through the audacity of pain, this pandemic has drawn us a road map for change. Things like wealth redistribution, universal health insurance, paid sick and family leave for workers were mocked as “socialist tropes” by many on the right just months ago. Yet, the multiple trillion dollar relief bills passed by Congress recently made strides in all of those directions. Even some Republicans are pushing the Trump administration to confront the pandemic’s disparate impact on people of color and to address racial disparities in health care. As we eventually attempt a reset on normal, it’s hard not to see momentum on those issues continuing.  

There is something else to be guardedly hopeful about.  For the first time in his presidency, Trump is struggling – really struggling – to shake off his brazen ineptness and idiotic stumbles. This is decidedly not normal.  This is the man who boasted about sexually assaulting women. He put children in cages. He colluded with Russia. He obstructed justice. He tried to force foreign countries to help him win reelection. He was even impeached, and then acquitted.  Through it all, his approval ratings, although low, were relatively constant.  Recent polling shows that the president is rapidly losing the public’s confidence in handling the pandemic.  

Just think about that: The guy who says he could get by shooting someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue is politically done in by a virus he said would be gone by April.  That’s the meaning of – that’s the beauty of – optimism. 

OUR COMPOUNDED VIRAL CRISIS: COVID-19 & TRUMP

And on the 56th day of the pandemic, Donald Trump crawled out from under his rock of make-believe and denial, to declare: “This is a bad one. This is a very bad one.”  Gone was talk of the coronavirus being a “Democratic hoax.” Gone were assurances that “it will work out well,” and will soon “just go away.” Could it be that The Donald has finally seen the light? Either that or, as the New York Times reported, he saw a new scientific warning that, without drastic actions, 2.2 million Americans could die. Worse yet (for him), he could lose the election.

Many of us thought Trump hit rock bottom when he had children snatched from their parents’ arms and tossed into cages. Wrong. For this volatile and mercurial president, there is no bottom in sight. All we have, as the past few weeks have shown, is a metastasizing obliteration of everything we value in a leader. Like decency, humanity, empathy, humility, insight and competence.

Historians will one day divide the Trump administration into two chronological periods: before and after the plague of COVID-19. Americans rarely experience the fear and pain of a crisis at the same time. Hurricanes, fires, tornadoes and the like devastate regionally, leaving the rest of us to breathe an empathetic sigh of relief as we send thoughts and prayers to the victims.  Not since the 2001 terrorist attacks, have we suffered together as a nation, experiencing the same foreboding – over both the present and the future. There is now, as there was then, a dramatic loss of social equilibrium.

Our world, as we know it, is shutting down.  Churches, schools, restaurants and workplaces have been shuttered. Flights, sporting events, Broadway plays and community festivals have been canceled. From the dark depths of our existential isolation, we ponder the unknowable and unthinkable: How long will this last? Will I lose my job? Will my 401(k) come back? Will I, or people I love, get this virus and die?

This national angst and anxiety cried out for leadership, someone to soothe our souls, acknowledge our pain and provide us with credible information and constructive steps to deal with the crisis.  Bill Clinton did that after the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed. George W. Bush did that after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Barak Obama did that after the Charleston church shooting.

Donald Trump, however, will go down in history as the only president who grabbed hold of a national crisis and made it worse.  Rather than trying to unite the country by appealing to “the better angels of our nature”, as Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War, Trump turned a deadly virus into a bitterly partisan litmus test. He insisted that talk of an epidemic was designed to hurt him politically.   Until just recently, when U.S. cases of the virus began to grow exponentially, national polling confirmed the absurd and unprecedented results of this politicization of a disease.  Democrats were seriously concerned about the coronavirus. Republicans were not (here, here and here).  

To be sure, Trump did not cause this virus. What he did, however, was inexplicable, inexcusable and downright dumb. This president totally shut down the very essence of who he is. Gone was the bombastic, I-alone-can-fix-it authoritarian, a guy who routinely abandons the rule of law in order to have his way with the world. 

This is the same president who told border patrol agents to break the law in order to keep immigrants from entering the country, promising to pardon them if they were arrested.  He started his presidency by slapping a constitutionally dubious Muslim travel ban together, letting the courts sort it out later. He did the same with cutting off funds for sanctuary cities, placing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, funding his Mexican wall, among many other issues. He moved quickly, unilaterally and often illegally, but won more than he lost in subsequent litigation.

Here’s a thought experiment: Turn back the clock to January 21, when the first U.S. coronavirus case surfaced. Imagine Trump, in his finest bellicose and authoritarian persona, doing what he did Monday with his “bad one” rhetoric, and ordering, in an abundance of caution, a ban on groups of 10 or more gathering together.

Imagine further that he declared a national emergency back then, instead of waiting two months, and issued an executive order closing all schools, non-essential businesses and public transportation, all to protect Americans from the tragic experiences of other countries.   Sure, some of us liberals would have yelled about his authoritarian overreactions. The ACLU might have gone to court.  But, if come May or June there was a substantially smaller spread of the virus here than in other countries, Trump would claim hero status. And for the first time in his life, such self-adulation would have credibility. With mere months to go before the election.

Of course, that would have involved concepts foreign in Trump’s orbit, like strategic thinking, science and planning ahead.  This is a president who lives only in the moment. All that matters to him is how he looks in that moment. He didn’t want the stock market to tank and make him look bad.  So when the Dow took a big dip, he insisted the Democrats created the virus as a hoax to torpedo the economy and hurt his reelection chances.  He insisted there was nothing to worry about and encouraged people to take no precautions.  As the number of infected Americans began to rise, he told one lie after another. When there were 14 cases, he claimed the number would soon drop to zero. The number is now more than 5,000.  He insisted millions of people would be tested. The United States, to this day, remains the least tested among industrialized countries.  He said a vaccine was at hand. It is not.  

As a result, our country is engulfed in two crises of astronomical proportion.  One is COVID-19, a disease caused by a fast-spreading virus that will, according to medical experts, infect at least a third of the country, potentially killing millions of us. The other crisis is one of deplorable and morally bankrupt leadership, a president who can’t see beyond his own ego needs, one who – slogans notwithstanding – has never put the American people first. 

Scientists are confident that the virus will eventually be controlled.  As for our other crisis, the only shot we have at eradicating the poison from our democracy is the ballot box.  May November 3 bring us the vaccine we need to restore dignity and decency to the American presidency.