Trump, the Republicans, and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Revisit
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
20200401 Trump coronavirus quote timelines - Washington Post.svg.
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Trump on the on-coming pandemic, in its early days. (See the quotes from CDC staff, towards the end of the column.)
Introduction: Bringing us Up-to-Date
First, in terms of the major controversy now, referencing how the pandemic was handled by the Trump Admin. in the pandemic's first year, it makes no difference whether the virus entered the human population from a Chinese "wet market" or a Chinese virus lab. (Yes, the latest nominee for "animal carrier" is the "racoon dog," which is actually not a dog but a breed of fox. Really cute, but you wouldn't want to have one as a pet.) The mis-handling that was done by the Trumpists, which has reverberated down to the present day, would have happened regardless of the source of the virus. For example, Dr. Deborah Birx, who stuck it out with Trump until the very end, trying to bring some modicum of science to what his Administration was doing about/to the Pandemic, estimated that Trump policies cost 150,00 U.S. lives. Her book can be found here.
Second, what will not come up in the current controversy is Trump's role in preventing the institution of such measures that could have diminished the diseases-toll during his time in office, such as a national testing program. What will not come up (unless one or more Democrats bring it up) is Trump's much larger role in creating the Red/Blue divide on vaccination and its benefits. Trump didn't want cases. As I said in one my earlier columns on Trump and the Pandemic: "To get an idea of how Trump thinks, and doesn't, about the pandemic, let us first refer to his famous statement that: "When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing, we would have very few cases." There is no indication, nor to my knowledge has there ever been one, that these three sentences are not an entirely accurate representation of how Trump thinks --- about the pandemic and about many other issues as well."
(Further on failed opportunities for prevention, are certain styled "left"-elements spreading conspiracy theories about what vaccination will negatively do to one. See, e.g., Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s totally against all vaccination "Children's Health Defense," and the Canadian Center for Research on Globalization. Left-elements are also still promoting the still-used-in-certain-quarters ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, as well as a vast mix of vitamins not known to be anti-virals. Certain left-elements are also trumpeting against vaccination-against-COVID because of its well-imagined but not proven-in-any-way harms.]
Third, a major focus of the Republican/Congressional hearings will be on distract, distract, distract from the real harms that have been done from Trumpist policies: let's-do-everything we-can-to-direct-attention-away-from-Trumpite-policy-that-has-set-the-nation-so-far-back-in-dealing-with-COVID." Among Trumpists those effects range those low vaccination rates to what some folk think about COVID --- "you know; it's just like the flu." The attempt, now, is to make out that everything is bad, or at least look like it's really bad, for the Biden Admin. Of course, such efforts are at the center of every Republican policy on every issue.
Fourth, on distraction, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had no administrative responsibilities, and was simply an advisor to Trump until he was kicked off the White House Task Force because he kept saying what the Trumpists, has become a convenient target for Republicans, even down to the present day (of his retirement). A variety of sources, both Left and Right, have bruited about the "Fauci hiding the lab leak story" since the summer of 2020. And Ron DeSantis is using him as a target against Trump (if you can believe that): "I would have fired somebody like Fauci. I think he got way too big for his britches, and I think he did a lot of damage." For what, exactly, he would have "fired Fauci," he does not say. And neither do folk like Sen. Ted Cruz, for whom Dr. Fauci is a convenient enemy, instead of the person who was majorly responsible for causing the mess that we are now in.
Fifth, the 'International Conspiracy" (which may or may not come up at the hearings) has supporters on both the Left and Right. Could any variation of it be correct? Sure. The "Elders of Zion" of the Protocols could be alive and well. The Holocaust could have been a fake, and so on and so forth. Indeed, this could all be a gigantic plot created by one or more of, Bill Gates, George Soros, the international banking system, the World Health Organization, you name it.
Early thoughts of mine on the Impending Pandemic
Going back to those thoughts, I opened my very first column on the subject in March of 2020 on the already developing pandemic with the following observations:
"Apparently the COVID-19 virus broke out publicly in epidemic form in China sometime in early January 2020. At least its existence became public at that time. Given the power of the US international intelligence services various authorities in the United States likely knew of it before then. And that knowledge ought to have made it to the desk of the Director of National Intelligence, and then to the desk of the President. However, nothing much happened in the U.S. in terms of a response until about a month later. At the same time, there was significant international spread, to countries such as South Korea, which, for example, undertook a swift and massive response to the threat.
"However, while both China and South Korea were responding vigorously to the rapidly expanding epidemic, as is well-known the U.S. President was telling his people and the world that there was nothing much to worry about. This in the face of the fact that various infectious disease/epidemic experts outside the government were sounding the alarm very loudly, both about the possible extent of the epidemic and the likely major deficiencies in the U.S. response to it were it to occur here. For example, in a Jan. 28, 2020 article entitled "Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic," from the American Enterprise Institute of all places, published in the Wall Street Journal (https://www.aei.org/op-eds/act-now-to-prevent-an-american-epidemic/) of all places, Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb said:
" 'The novel coronavirus now epidemic in China has features that may make it very difficult to control. If public-health authorities don't interrupt the spread soon, the virus could infect many thousands more around the globe, disrupt air travel, overwhelm health-care systems, and, worst of all, claim more lives. The good news: There's still an opening to prevent a grim outcome.' "
Obviously, that did not happen.
Additional Elements of the Trumpite Intervention/Management
Of course, all through 2020 Trump was pushing the development of a vaccine hard, not so much because he had thought through a mass-vaccination program and how it could help the U./S. population as a whole, but rather what achieving a vaccine (developed by private interests, of course) before the 2020 election could do for his chances in it. Funnily enough, when the first vaccine was made available for mass distribution in the winter of 2021, all of a sudden certain Republicans (as well as certain leftists) were beginning to come out against mass vaccination as "a means of social control" by those dastardly Democrats. And as for requiring vaccination for participating in certain occupations and entering certain places . . . WELL!! What Trump purposely did not do was immediately start an organized testing and contact investigation program, which could have led to several measures that could have limited disease spread in the early days. The U.S. still does not have such a program.
Some Trumpists (and Leftists as well) have talked about "natural immunity" that is the immunity acquired by a person who has had an infectious disease and recovers, as a substitute for immunization. Of course, it works. The problem is that one has to get sick first. So does "herd immunity" work. But this is the product of the immunization of a large proportion of a given population, so that the infectious agent has fewer and fewer places "to land." It was first observed in France, about a century ago, with development of the early BCG vaccine, for cows, in herds of them.
On Mask Wearing and Vaccination Programs
As for requiring mask wearing for being in certain locations, Trump dramatically delivered his message on that one when he reached the back White House balcony following his release from Walter Reade Hospital. What is a "mask mandate?" (Certain members of the Left have screamed and yelled on this one as well, and as time has gone one, have screamed and yelled even more loudly that vaccination should not be carried out, it's all part of an international conspiracy, and actually vaccination kills people. If you want to learn more about this line of thinking --- actually the latest, latest on any COVID-conspiracy theory and any COVID-management scheme other than the conventional, science-based, public health one, the best place to start is a Canadian institution called "Global Research," headed by one Michel Chossudovsky. What the sources of funding for this institution are, are not readily apparent.)
Masks are the simplest way to control the transmission of air-borne viruses from person-to-person (DUH!) They do not represent a diabolical method for controlling persons. When and where they should be worn is, on the scientific side, a matter for publica health policy. Unfortunately, voices, some very loud, on both the Left and the Right, made it into a hyper-political issue.
On the CDC
As for our nation's number one public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gets so much grief from certain members of the Left and as well as from the Right, here is what the Trump Administration did to it:
"Which brings us to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, colloquially known as 'The CDC' (without the "P"). Ah yes, the perfect villain, as one Michael Lewis told us in his book 'The Premonition: A Pandemic Story.' It wasn't Trump so much; it was all the CDC's fault. You know, all those 'government scientists' who don't know what they are doing. (The Trump apologists conveniently skip the career CDC officer Nancy Messonier, who did get it right, early, who did speak out and of course was severely shut up by Trump and her the Trump appointed bosses ---which major-league, very public put-down by the great scientist Trump, effectively silenced every other career civil servant in the agency.) And so, we have Lewis' big conclusion that is being trumpeted everywhere (that is when the column from which this excerpt was taken was written, in 2021): Trump was just 'a comorbidity' in the pandemic that has killed so many U.S. It was all the CDC's fault. Oh really?
"Let's just take a quick look at what Trump and the Trumpites did --- to the CDC on which Lewis puts so much of the blame (and the current Republican Congressional leadership still does). Over time they (the Trumpists) cut its budget by about a third. They functionally closed the pandemic-preparedness office that Pres. Obama had created in the White House, presumably because it had Obama's name on it (and after all, Kenya is the source of many infectious diseases, is it not?) They chose as the new Director one Dr. Robert Redfield, who a) had no experience running a large organization (which the CDC is), b) was a well-known Christian Rightist (probably his leading qualification for the Trumpsters for whom Lewis is apologizing), and c) was (believe it or not) dumped off Reagan's very tardily-appointed AIDS task force for proposing that the single most important intervention for dealing the HIV/AIDS epidemic was abstinence. Then there was, also from the outside, the Dr. Debra Birx, also prominent on the Trump Team as an original member, even though it must be said in all fairness she was in a very difficult position and did try to inject science into the Trump Tank without success. As she recounts in her book, she was eventually side-lined."
Some Final Thoughts:
As it happened, after I finished the bulk of the writing for this column, an article appeared in The New York Times on what the reaction of the professional staff inside the CDC was to Trumpite policy in the early days of the pandemic. Here are a few relevant excerpts for that article: "'[One] Dr. Wozniczka, 35, . . . testified before a House subcommittee on the pandemic last August and October, describing a disconnect between what the C.D.C.'s scientists were learning about the coronavirus in early 2020 and the agency's public stance on the risks.' 'Dr. Anne Schuchat, the C.D.C.'s principal deputy director until her retirement in May 2021 [said that] if they were silent about the risks to the public, it was only because government researchers were muzzled by the Trump administration. But 'most of the media was vilifying the agency.' " "The first big shock came in February 2020, when the Trump administration reprimanded Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a senior C.D.C. official, for warning Americans to prepare for a pandemic." "Morale plunged after a May 2020 report estimated that imposing social distancing measures one week earlier in March 2020 would have saved 36,000 lives."
Finally, when I first started addressing the pandemic and its issues, my son asked me if there had ever been an epidemic/pandemic that had been politicized like this one had been (and continues to be in certain quarters). I told him that while my field is public health, and in my education in it I had of course been exposed to the study of earlier pandemics, I certainly was not familiar with every one. But to my knowledge, none had ever become politicized like COVID-19. In my estimation, that politicization, especially in the United States, will have cost tens of thousands of lives that otherwise would not have come to a premature end.