Back when this was all beginning, people referred to COVID-19 as “a novel coronavirus.” That little phrase carried two important pieces of information, neither of which the president of the United States understood. It told us that this infection was not influenza or “the flu,” and it told us that human beings had no immunity against it because we had never encountered it before. What this meant was that the viral outbreak would keep spreading through the population with ease because literally everyone could be infected, and that we shouldn’t expect that it would “magically disappear” over the summer.
Scientists still have much to learn about this novel coronavirus, and they’ve made some mistakes in recommendations and treatments. But they’ve gotten the basics right. That’s why Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic is correct when he writes: “There is no mystery in the number of Americans dying from COVID-19.”
When people are exposed to a sufficient concentration of the virus, they will get infected, which is why anywhere that people concentrate there is a good likelihood of an outbreak. We’ve learned that the virus spreads most efficiently in indoor spaces, particularly any place that doesn’t have good circulation and a fresh supply of air. It spreads from person to person best when people expel the virus a good distance from their bodies, by singing or talking loudly, for example, so choir practice and bars are particularly dangerous.
We’ve all gotten used to the charts that show whether the rate of infection or testing or death is going up or down. We watched the charts grow in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Northeast in the Spring and then fall as hard quarantines had the desired effect. We watched the South and Southwest express skepticism about the seriousness of the problem and ignore this hard won wisdom. Now they are the ones experiencing the spikes in infections. It’s their hospitals and morgues that are overflowing. And they ought to know exactly what to do, because they witnessed what worked in the first instance.
But they’re struggling. Partly this is a simple reflection of a regional difference between secular and religious culture. Partly it’s a reflection of how difficult it can be to admit mistakes and correct course. Mostly, it’s due to Republican leadership being afraid to contradict the president of the United States, especially wherever religious fundamentalism predominates. When skepticism about science and the educated elite is instinctual and tribal, it’s hard to get people to listen to reason, especially when their trusted leaders spent a lot of energy giving them bad information.
As cases began to rise in the Sun Belt, some people at first took comfort that there wasn’t a corresponding rise in deaths. This was in part due to some improvement in treatment, so that some who would have died had they been infected in March were now surviving an infection in June. But, mostly, it was an illusion, and a simple function of the roughly three to four-week delay between getting sick and actually dying.
As Mr. Madrigal points out, “America’s deadly summer coronavirus surge is undeniable. And it was predictable this whole time by looking honestly at the data.” Once the Sun Belt states opened up their economies, things transpired exactly how we were told they would transpire. First there was a spike in reported cases, which was followed by a spike in hospitalizations, and finally a spike in fatalities. This was predictable because it isn’t remotely complicated. When people congregate, the infection spreads. It spreads because only a tiny percent of the population has already been infected and thereby has antibodies that can fight off the virus. If an infected person gives the virus to an average of more than one other person, the outbreak will grow. The only way to bring that number below one is to practice extreme social distancing. Obviously, masks can reduce the likelihood of person-to-person spread, but they are nowhere near as effective as a hard quarantine. When the outbreak is raging, the only way to get it back under control is to shut everything down and have people shelter in place.
But, this doesn’t make the problem go away. If gets the problem down to a manageable level, where hospitals are not overwhelmed and perhaps testing and contact tracing can quickly identify and isolate future outbreaks. This was done in New York and Boston. It was done in Europe and the Far East. But it is not being done in the Sun Belt, and it’s not even being done consistently in other regions where it proved effective.
The main thing is that the virus will make a comeback as soon as we relax because we still have no immunity. So, even if the Sun Belt gets its act together and gets the virus under control, they can’t think anything has been solved. As things stand, they’re outbreak is going to reinfect the regions that went through this once already.
These are stubborn facts that won’t bend to wishful thinking and rhetoric. So, no, we can’t just reopen our schools. We can’t put kids on school buses and in indoor classrooms and not have outbreaks of the virus. We can’t go to bars or choir practice. It doesn’t work like that. The infection spreads wherever and whenever it has the chance. Medical outcomes may improve, but the complications of the disease are serious and lasting.
If we want to get some semblance of normalcy, we have to do what other nations have done, and that is to shut down until the infection rate is low enough to control through testing and contact tracing. We got half the way there and then we just gave up. It may be frustrating, but the answer isn’t complicated. We have to start over from scratch.
That means people have to admit they were wrong. That means people who were misinformed have to get good information. And, obviously, it means that we have to replace the president. We can do that now, or we can wait until January.
Do you want to know what waiting for January might look like?
New York City is and probably will remain the worst-case scenario. New York City has lost 23,353 lives. That’s 0.28 percent of the city’s population. If, as some antibody-prevalence surveys suggest, 20 percent of New Yorkers were infected, that’s an infection-fatality rate of more than 1.3 percent, which exceeds what the CDC or anyone else is planning for. To put it in the same terms discussed here, New York City saw 2,780 deaths per million people. A similar scenario across the South and West would kill over 550,000 more Americans in just a few months, moving the country to 680,000 dead. It is unthinkable, and yet, 130,000 deaths—the current national death toll—was once unthinkable, too.
Hopefully, better treatment will prevent the numbers from getting quite that high, but the price of leaving Trump in office until January 20, 2021 could be a half a million lives. That’s why I said Nancy Pelosi would be doing the Republicans a favor if she impeached him again and gave them a chance to avoid renominating Trump as their standard bearer.
It’s the only thing right now that can prevent an historic catastrophe.
5
I’m afraid the catastrophe is pretty much baked into the cake at this point. People have chosen their stances, and any doubts that the naysayers have will come to fruition much too late to have any affect. Those on one side trust the science and the scientific process when it comes to predicting the behavior of the virus, and the best ways to mitigate and control it. Those on the other have decided to throw their lot into random chance, and have their own information bubbles to support and encourage their rabid disbelief and raging tribalism. So we are well down the slippery slope, and there is just no fucking way to keep from sliding all the way to the bottom. The sources trusted by the non-believers are telling them that the overflowing hospitals and ICU’s are being staged, and that those are not really sick people in them. And that every conceivable medical organization is inflating numbers or outright making them up. And these views are supported, encouraged and amplified throughout the Trump administration. Literally, we are at war with our government right now when it comes to fighting this pandemic. The U.S. government is conspiring with the virus.
As for any political actions, like the impeachment you suggest, I think we all know that is not going to happen, and the GOP would not take advantage of it, anyway. If you take a step back and look at all that is going on, it seems that as a country it is pretty clear any fail-safe measures that might exist or have existed within our governmental structure or processes to reign this in are long past their sell-by dates. We are in a place today that all but guarantees we are just going to careen wildly for at least the next six months, and no matter how bad it gets the vast majority of the non-believers will not be swayed. The worst is absolutely yet to come. The economic disaster that is in motion is going be beyond imagination. The suddenness with which we implode is going to take almost everyone by surprise.
I dont trust the science or the process. But it is the best tool we have so we need to use it to do the best we can. You do not need to trust something to see that it is your best option.
4.5
I would wish for a miracle, but I have no idea what that miracle would be. In San Francisco, we never ‘opened back up’. We’ve had no indoor dining anywhere, no bars, no gyms or salons, and very little outdoor dining (if you’ve visited SF in the summertime, you know why. Most of the City is too damn cold). And this week, we’re up 33% in hospitalizations! Most people I see within breathing distance are all wearing masks. People are trying, and still the virus is increasing. In southern California, it’s raging, and Orange County has decided it’s A-ok to go back to school. At this point, I have to agree with Mike in Ohio. Maybe we don’t have the gumption, toughness, and brains our forefathers did, for all their faults.
A big part is because your forefathers could comfortably place their boot on the necks of anyone different. I do not mean to denigrate them, but they lived in a far more homogenous society and that makes it incalcuably easier to work together to accomplish things.
I’d take issue with two aspects of the virus’s spread. First, evidence from east Asian countries suggest that masking is more effective than we want to admit. Sure, like abstinence of better than condoms for not transmitting the clap, quarantine is better than masks, but that seems a false choice. The second is community prevalence. The virus has to be circulating. I live in New England and feel reasonably optimistic about going back into my classroom in September (with masks).
As Dr. Redfield said, I think two solid months of masking wearing, we could get this thing into a manageable condition.
The only argument I can see against a second impeachment is that it would make it less clear who is to blame. In January, a future President Biden would have a clear mandate to undue just about everything Trump did. If Trump is impeached a second time (perhaps even removed, though that’s doubtful), it might leave some rhetorical opening and give some energy to the right.
But I don’t buy it. Trump needs to get kicked out ASAP. Everything else is secondary.
But if Trump gets kicked out why would Pence be any better against the virus?
Our citizenry is basically incapable of hard quarantine. We managed a soft quarantine at best. Hell I’m having incredible fights with my wife constantly, since I’m a sure kill if I get it.
The data shows that school closings have extremely minor effects of spread so if we had opened schools instead or bars or restaurants it would probably not be as bad. Of course that assumes you have competent leadership which we don’t. And even if we did have a dem president the GOP would simply go all in on opposing anything they did.
Next, there is increasing evidence that a lightly symptomatic or asymptomatic case does not confer immunity. And we simply do not know how long immunity lasts in other cases. A vaccine may have to be boosted every 3 months, worst case.
But anyhow Pelosi will not impeach. Nothing you say will change that. Just like nothing you wrote about Mueller mattered. Not with people like Slotkin saying Trump’s support is being badly undercounted again.
Having watched all the returns on election night 2016, I too am fearful that Trump’s support is undercounted and/or Uncle Joe will royally fuck up. I may get drunk out of my mind on election night to avoid watching it again. I also am very much afraid, as Mary Trump said tonight, that another term for Uncle Donald could kill many more of us. The man is a sadist and enjoys the pain he can give us all.
Trump has allowed Putin to put a bounty on American boys and that sounds like murder, if not treason. And he saw fit to save himself by letting Stone go free. Sure he can be impeached for those. But I have a hard time believing it will make any difference at all. Maybe he really can shoot someone on fifth avenue and get away with it. His supporters remain strong and there is a very good chance any impeachment will ensure more votes for him.
3.5
4
I understand the sentiment behind the idea of shutting down and dump Trump. But it won’t happen. We have all read and accepted Kelton’s book about the deficit myth and so we are now heading to trillion dollar deficits. Pelosi will pass more spending and so become an unwilling ally of Trump. Those deficits (likely to total five trillion) allow Trump and his minions to spit in the face of the pandemic and for some to get rich. Those deficits allow Trump to carry on with his campaign and continual bullshit and ignore the successful science that Gov Cuomo and a few other governors, Europe and China have all followed. Those deficits allow the assholes to flaunt the mask and social distancing and so cases and deaths continue to rise. No money and we will be forced to follow the science. So the choice is ours. Kill the fucking virus or allow Trump to run the table—— again. Just my opinion from someone who suffered through the last Trump win.
Use the power of the purse to control the assholes, Madam Speaker.