Tag Archives: pandemic

Woodward Nails It

Leave a reply

Disclosure: Bob Woodward and I knew each other in college, a long time ago. He was in the class behind me. We were friends then, and I still consider him one. We do not, however, socialize or otherwise see each other on a planned basis. This has been true since we talked occasionally during the Watergate crisis. He once generously referred to me as an advisor. I don’t know about that, but I do have high regard for his achievements as a consistent and reliable reporter on the inside stories of Washington into which he has had unique access and insight over many years and 23 books. If I have criticized (rarely) some of his conclusions, I have never questioned his commitment to truth as best he could discern it, a challenging undertaking in a place like Washington. One doesn’t earn two Pulitzer Prizes for fake news.

I have just finished War, his latest. As I read the book’s treatment of two international crises during the Biden administration (the latest and ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023), my first thought was how vivid was the portrayal of the complexity and stress of the nation’s international relations. The step-by-step negotiations, the dissembling, the uncertainty, the constant risk of escalation to unthinkable disaster – all of it — is laid out in remarkable detail.

The other main thought was how masterful Joe Biden was as leader of the United States’ response to these astonishing complex and fraught situations, while Donald Trump was violating US law by interfering in negotiations to enhance his status as an international king-maker. Biden’s constant masterful probing for pathways to success, considering options for de-escalation, serving as a calming influence while influencing often hostile nations to consider options to avoid calamity was extraordinary to observe.

Woodward’s ultimate conclusions bear repeating, but everyone should read this book, War, to get deep insight into how diplomacy is conducted and how difficult and fraught every interaction can be when lives are on the line. In those details is the ultimate proof of why the presidency should never be entrusted to Donald Trump again.

Woodward quotes Jake Sullivan’s assessment that seems exactly right:

The president has essentially created the necessary permission structure for sustained American support to Ukraine…. Would there be a war in Ukraine today if Trump were president? I would say probably not. Why? There’d be no war because Putin would be in Kyiv…. Trump would have waved him right in. Because when it comes to these dictators, Trump’s basic view: I let them do what they want….

The legacy of the Biden presidency will be the core national security team that he built and kept in place for nearly four years. They brought decades of experience as well as basic human decency. War shows the traditional and novel ways Biden and his core team pursued an intelligence-driven foreign policy to warn the world that war was coming in Ukraine, to supply Ukraine with the weapons they need to defend themselves against Russia, and to try to tamp down escalations in the Israel-Gaza war.

The real conclusion comes from Woodward himself, just before the end of the book:

Trump’s war was the coronavirus pandemic and his performance revealed his character. These interviews showed a man with no fidelity to the truth, fixated on re-election and unequipped to deal with a genuine crisis.

Trump was warned by his national security advisers that the virus was deadly and a major threat to the country but he never developed a plan to respond. He did not know how to use his extraordinary executive power to prioritize saving American lives. Through defiant pronouncements, he downplayed and deflected any responsibility for handling it. There was no compassion. No courage….

I once asked Trump, “What’s the job of the president?” He said, “To protect the people.”

It’s a good answer, but Trump failed to do it.

And then:

Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the presidency, he is unfit to lead the country. Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon, the provably criminal president. As I have pointed out, Trump governed by fear and rage. And indifference to the public and national interest.

Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024.

Add to that the recent New York Times Editorial Board’s assessment:

Book Announcement

1 Reply


 

 

 

I am delighted to announce the publication of Not to Yield, a two-volume compilation of essays adapted from my blog at http://shiningseausa.com and, to a lesser extent, my retired blog at AutumnInNewYork.net.

This is most important: I do not expect you to buy the book because you know me.

If you are interested, please do buy it, but I will never ask. You owe me no explanation of your decision. Similarly, if you are offended by the contents, I’m sorry for that but the book, in addition to being a political and legal history, is replete with my opinions about many subjects. They are my opinions, and that’s that. I have explained the basis for them in, I hope, every case. If you agree, wonderful. If not, you are entitled to. This is the United States, after all. At least for now. One thing seems certain: if Trump loses the election, he will not accept the loss and just retire quietly to Mar-a-Lago. Many of the essays in this book will remain instructive for some time to come.

How to buy Not to Yield”
 
The books are now available at Barnes & Noble:

For Volume One: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/not-to-yield-paul-m-ruden/1146438480?ean=9798823034661

For Volume Two: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/not-to-yield-paul-m-ruden/1146448160?ean=9798823034685

You may qualify for a Member Discount and Free Shipping.

If you prefer to buy from the publisher, here is the AuthorHouse website:

For Volume One: https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/863010-not-to-yield
For Volume Two: https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/863011-not-to-yield

There may be shipping and handling charges.

In the relatively near future, they will be available through Amazon, among others. If you want to know when that occurs, state so in a comment  and I will advise at the appropriate time.

The e-book version of the volumes will also be available in the near future on the AuthorHouse website, as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, for a lower price and useable on any e-platform. If e-books are your thing, you may wish to wait. In all events, if you buy it/them, I hope the reading will be stimulating and thought-provoking. Remember that experience (history) keeps a dear school …. [Ben Franklin]

If you think you might want to read some of the essays but not all (each volume is long), you may want to consider buying the book, reading what you like, and donating the books to a local library, perhaps for a tax deduction.

To assist in deciding whether you want to buy one or both volumes, I have set out below a list of the main chapters, each of which usually has multiple essays within it.

From the Back Cover:

“This raw, provocative book of essays adapted from the blog ShiningSeaUSA pulls back the curtain on the Trump presidency, providing a panoramic view of his turbulent time in office, the legal implications of his actions, and the inactions of those surrounding him, enabling him, or standing by. The book includes memoir about life in New York City, legal analyses of major political developments since Donald Trump emerged, deep dives into what went wrong in the Mueller investigation, Trump’s mishandling of the COVID pandemic, and the threat to American democracy from Trump, the Republican Party he has captured, and the “conservative” Supreme Court. Not to Yield exposes the corruption and incompetence that dominated Trump’s presidency, his denial of his 2020 election loss, the January 6 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s attempt to return to power, all observed through a legal lens that spotlights blatant disregard for the law of the land and our democratic system.”

Chapters Volume One: Chapters Volume Two:

 
1 NEW YORK CITY MEMORIES 16 TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY 2017

 
2 PEOPLE 17 TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY 2018
3 CLIMATE, ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, & SOCIETY 18 TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY 2019

 
4 CONGRESS 19 TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY 2020
5 DEMOCRACY 20 PANDEMIC 2020
6 LAW & COURTS 21 ELECTION 2020
7 TERRORISM 22 TRUMP IN 2021
8 MEDIA 23 TRUMP IN 2022
9 REPUBLICAN POLICY 24 TRUMP IN 2023

 
10 GUNS IN AMERICA 25 ELECTION 2024

 
11 POLICING IN AMERICA
12 RACISM & MYSOGNY
13 ELECTION 2016
14 MUELLER REPORT
15 TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY 2016

Can We Please Stop Blaming Everything on the Pandemic?

1 Reply

A short while ago, Vox.com published an article decrying how people are acting in public now: People forgot how to act in public https://tinyurl.com/mur5rx3x Reports describe concert attendees throwing phones & other items at performers (I cheered when I read about Cardi B launching her microphone at the person who threw a drink at her), Broadway audiences engaging in grotesque displays, and people using cell phones disruptively during movies. The conclusion, after consulting some “experts,” was that this behavior related to the forced closures and isolation everyone experienced during the pandemic.

I found the article confusing.  On the one hand, it claimed people during the pandemic had simply “forgotten” how to act. Now that they can return to these collective experiences, “[w]hen someone makes a scene in public at a group event, we’re disturbed in large part because these gatherings are extremely important to our intellectual and emotional selves …. The “collective effervescence” of live events is something humans crave, whether they know it or not.”

The quoted term apparently refers to the fact that while we’re buying a ticket for the performance, we’re also “buying that electric feeling of a crowd of humans appreciating the same thing …. these events are moments of highly pleasurable social connections.” The idea seems to be that in addition to our personal experience of the performance, we are also stimulated by the enjoyment of others around us, even though we don’t know any of them, and we resent the disruption of that collective and connective response by people who seem more interested in what’s on their phones.

I readily admit that I prefer the other people attending a show to actively enjoy it, but only up to the point just before their “enjoyment” lapses into hysterical enthusiasm that detracts from the show. We experienced this during the musical MJ in New York a while back. Some members of the audience, seated near us, apparently came to believe that the actor playing Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson inexplicably risen from the grave and there for their personal entertainment, in return for which they were obliged to scream and shriek at every cool move the actor made to imitate the real MJ. The noise was overwhelming and detracted from our experience of the show. The “collective effervescence” spilled over into something else.

Tne academic cited in the Vox article thought that “the lockdown’s impact on social gatherings has affected our social skills, such as conversation and general awareness … and I’m sure it has impacted social skills.”

The pendulum swing from gathering in real life to being relegated to social media to now, in 2023, coming back to real-life events may explain why some people are being disruptive and not fully comprehending the impact they’re having on their fellow audience members. They’re using the modes of social connection they got accustomed to — posting a video from a movie theater, scrolling through social media during a Broadway play, or treating a concert like a performance they’re watching from home — in a setting that’s inappropriate. In some cases, it’s an upsettingly tangible example of the self-interested behavior we’ve come to call “main character syndrome,” wherein a person seems to believe that everything that happens around them only contributes to their own story.

That is a bridge too far for me.

I suspect the explanation lies in a broader social phenomenon associated with generational attributes that lead some groups (broad generalization here) to only be seriously interested in things that are about themselves. They therefore can easily block out the interests of those around them. This explains the hysterical laughter and ultra-loud conversations in restaurants that ignore the impact on people at adjoining tables. These people simply don’t care that their “good times” are affecting other people’s “good times,” because everything important and relevant is just about them and them alone.

Make all the excuses you want, but I reject the idea that people in the space of one year lost entirely their awareness of the people around them to such an extent that upon returning to a movie theater, for example, they think it’s fine to text and even talk. We’ve attended three movies in the past month and in every case the end of the previews includes a prominent, loud warning to “don’t text, don’t talk, don’t ruin the movie.” That same warning was played at movies well before the pandemic closed everything. People who violate that warning simply don’t care much about anyone else. They didn’t care before or during the pandemic either. They saw the pandemic as an unjust inconvenience in the world that should still be revolving around them exclusively.

As for the “fans” throwing things at performers, I have tried to understand what might cause such odd behavior. Several possibilities came to mind:

  1. The throwers are obscenely wealthy, which explains their up-front seats, and don’t place real value on their phone – they have more than one or can easily afford another.
  2. The perps are resentful of the notoriety of the performers and want to show them they’re not so special compared to the anonymous ticket-holder in the audience, so “take that, Taylor Swift; you’re not so special.”
  3. The perps have been suppressing their violent hostility toward everyone in authority and now they can release their angst against a live target who is “up” on the stage while they are stuck “down” here with the other screaming masses.

There is no way to sort this out. The truth probably is “all of the above and more” for many people in the audience. But it’s not the pandemic.

So, please, let’s stop with the overreaching explanations for why people behave like inconsiderate boors. It’s most likely because they are inconsiderate boors. The pandemic may have made us more aware of their presences because collective activities still seem “new,” but these particular people are the same as they always were. Once a boor, always a boor, someone once said. You can see them taking videos at the ballet immediately after being told to turn off their phones and put them away because videoing the performance is “strictly prohibited.” Better not sit near me ….

 

Failure to Communicate

Leave a reply

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it.

If you don’t recognize those famous lines, they are from the movie, Cool Hand Luke. A young Paul Newman plays Luke, a prisoner on a chain gang. Luke is unable to submit to the authorities that now control his life, even if the inevitable, foreseeable outcome is his death.

The setting is simple enough: the Captain (the warden) warns Luke:

You gonna get used to wearing them chains after a while, Luke. Don’t you never stop listening to them clinking, ’cause they gonna remind you what I been saying for your own good.

Never one to pass up a chance to resist authority, Luke responds with,

I wish you’d stop being so good to me, Cap’n.

After a moment’s pause, this retort unleashes Captain’s fury – “Don’t you ever talk that way to me,” then lashing Luke with a baton, knocking him into a ditch. Captain then delivers the iconic lines: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach.”

That, it appears, is where this country is with the anti-vaxxer, anti-mask crowd. They have chosen – yes, chosen, because belief is a choice, not a biological imperative – chosen to believe false prophets whose statements are resulting in thousands more avoidable COVID deaths. Arguing with these people about the science, the data, the facts is just like trying to tell Cool Hand Luke that he needs to shape up and make his life easier on himself and those around him. Luke can’t hear it and neither can the anti-vaxxers.

It is, therefore, time to change tactics. Beating the anti-vaxxers, while tempting, is not an acceptable solution. But thus far, with one or two notable exceptions, the government’s health authorities have proceeded by burying everyone in obscure and largely irrelevant information. If you don’t believe me, look at the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker website:  https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

This information is picked up by media and reported, more or less, in op-eds and other articles in the hope that the anti-vaxxers may read and be persuaded. There are other websites — CDC, New York Times and others – displaying vast quantities of COVID data, often in complex diagrams and charts that are difficult, if not impossible, for ordinary people to digest. The very complexity of the information makes many people leery of what the data says and, more importantly, often leads to inaccurate conclusions. Statistical skills in the general population are not a strong point.

The standard approach is not working, and it’s time for another approach. I recommend what I will call RealCOVID.

Here’s what I think should be done.

  1. COVID data should be reduced to its simplest essence, showing the most important information. At this time that is a comparison of deaths of vaccinated versus unvaccinated patients. Another useful analysis would be to add a simple presentation of the number of COVID infected survivors who continue to suffer adverse health effects and what the top ten or twelve such effects are. Keep it simple.
  2. The government should obtain, by whatever means necessary, prime-time space to display the latest death-data comparisons, as defined above, AND video from hospitals in which real doctors, real nurses, real EMTs briefly state what they have just experienced.
  3. Example: “I’m doctor LifeSaver and I work in the ICU. I just got off for the evening. I was attending to 12 COVID patients. Three, all unvaccinated, died during my shift. No vaccinated patients died. One of the other doctors and two nurses, all near physical and emotional collapse, had to leave the ICU early. That’s where we are.”
  4. The video should show, behind the doctor, a patient being intubated or perhaps even being prepped following death. In other words, show what is happening in the hospitals – give heft and bite to the statistics. Show the reality of COVID as it is happening. RealCOVID.
  5. The government, in cooperation with hospitals and clinics around the country, should have a daily COVID Report on prime-time cable and networks explaining what is happening and what is required to change the course of the pandemic.

I cite as an example the daily briefings that former Governor Cuomo conducted in New York during the peak of the pandemic in 2020. Those reports were seen all over the country. Whatever you may now think of Cuomo as a leader or whatever, the fact is that those briefings were authentic and, I believe, changed for the better the understanding and behavior of many, perhaps millions, of Americans. And they were a source of hope during the worst of the initial pandemic in New York, the then-epicenter.

These reports should not be presented by politicians nor by Dr. Fauci, but by in-the-trenches medical personnel who are qualified to speak in plain terms about the data and the proper defensive tools. We are blessed with many experts in epidemiology and other relevant fields of expertise regarding pandemics. Let’s use them.

No doubt many anti-vaxxers will remain unpersuaded. They have, for whatever reasons, become convinced beyond all reason that vaccines are evil and/or that government attempts to regulate behavior are an assault on freedom. We’re not likely to change their minds but instead of debating them, let’s just show them – every day, in every way. Maybe, just maybe, seeing the devastation will have an effect that complicated multi-page data/charts/diagrams will not.

What do we have to lose?

 

What If There is No End to the Pandemic?

Leave a reply

We are all naturally inclined to think about important events as having relatively clear beginnings and ends. Especially when the subject is troublesome, our innate desire for clarity and safety often leads to unrealistic expectations. This is likely part of our psychological conditioning throughout life.

Summer, like the other seasons, starts and ends. Bad weather can be terrible, but it comes and then ends. We get comfort from knowing that it will.

We also know that illnesses “recycle.” We know we can catch colds and the flu. So, most normal people bundle up against the elements, take cold medicines (mostly to relieve symptoms until the body’s systems kill the cold virus), get flu shots. Other illnesses are different. Cancer, emphysema, kidney failure and many others do not just go away after a simple medical intervention. No one is immune to them.

We also know that the weather is changing, driven by climate change. Storms in many places are more frequent and more severe. A few people, some never heard from again, decide to “hunker down” and “ride out” such storms. Most run when told to evacuate and live to run another day. We don’t want the bad weather to return but we know that it will. We want it to go as soon as possible. Many people thus drive their cars immediately after a bad snowstorm, apparently just because they think they can. I suspect it’s their way of reassuring themselves that the bad news ends.

This phenomenon is present in the response to COVID. We desperately want it to “end” and to have life return to “normal.” For most of us, the year 2020 will be the worst in our lives, one we desperately don’t want to repeat. Unfortunately, the evidence indicates that may be an illusion when it comes to the COVID pandemic.

It is now reported, https://n.pr/3c0G5fF, that the COVID virus is present in the nation’s vast and widely dispersed white-tailed deer population (estimated 30 million in US alone, equivalent to about 10 percent of the US human population). The story is getting relatively little attention in mainstream media, compared, for example, to the “gripping” story of NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ lying about his vaccination, then contracting COVID, then being forced to sit out a game that his team lost – oh, yes, the story was extensively reported. Even Forbes covered it. An entranced nation awaits Rodgers’ return.

Meanwhile, back in the world where human lives and the national/global economy is under threat, and as reported by NPR:

A recent survey of white-tailed deer in the Northeast and Midwest found that 40% of them had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Now veterinarians at The Pennsylvania State University have found active SARS-CoV-2 infections in at least 30% of deer tested across Iowa during 2020. The study, published online last week, suggests that white-tailed deer could become what’s known as a reservoir for SARS-CoV-2. That is, the animals could carry the virus indefinitely and spread it back to humans periodically….

During April to December of last year, about 30% of the deer that they tested were positive for SARS-CoV-2 by a PCR test. And then during the winter surge in Iowa, from Nov. 23, 2020 to Jan. 10, about 80% of the deer that they tested were infected. At the peak of the surge … the prevalence of the virus in deer was effectively about 50 to 100 times the prevalence in Iowa residents at the time.

The COVID variants in the deer matched those in humans.

The deer species in question is native to North American, Central America and the northern part of South America. Their capacity to move into and thrive in new habitats is well known.

The NPR article notes that the important questions raised include whether COVID can be transmitted from the deer back to humans or to other animal categories such as livestock. And, of course, the presence of COVID virus in such a large population creates the conditions for further mutations, as has been found in the Netherlands and Poland.

The article does not mention what seems an equally or more important question. Deer are apparently not sickened and do not die from COVID-19 infection. WHY NOT? That issue surely ranks as a critical subject to study. Is there something unique about the deer immune systems that mutes the devastating effects the virus has had on millions of humans? If so, that understanding could be the source of new vaccines to combat what seems like the inevitable persistence of COVID-19 for the foreseeable and perhaps indefinite future.  No matter how much we may wish it were otherwise.

 

First, Nothing – Then ….

1 Reply

In the beginning, the Earth was a void. Just a roundish rock, really. Lots of volcanoes and other nasty things in the early times. How it came to exist, or more importantly, why it came to exist is a question to which mankind will almost certainly never have the answer. Some people are happy to simply believe that some spirit put it here and then planted humans and all the other biological forms. Whatever.

In my worldview, over an unimaginably long time, evolution took its course. Single-celled “creatures” formed, evolved … you know the story in general outline. That’s more than enough for most of us. We could continue to struggle with the question of how to reconcile those biological facts with the spirit mythology but, for me at least, that’s a waste of time. It turns out that evolution gave humans the ability to believe two or more inconsistent concepts at the same time. We live with the cognitive dissonance, partly by compartmentalizing. You can pray on your knees in your worship space on Sunday to the spirit of your choice (there are many to choose from) and then drive in your high-tech car or search for information on your computer/smart-phone and never give a thought to how both are valid. So be it. It’s who we are.

But on this day, this day of terrible memories, on which many say they are inspired to new hope, we should be reminded of the intersection of inconsistent ideas and what that can mean. Men claiming to be men of faith who believed we were evil incarnate decided to teach us a lesson. They used their “faith” to justify killing almost 3,000 people and had hoped to kill many more.

In truth, the actions they took on 9/11 led to many, many more deaths and much, much more suffering. The words of the prince in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet come to mind:

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!

And I, for winking at your discords, too

Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.

Evolution produced the cerebral cortex in the human brain. Over millennia, homo sapiens became the Earth’s dominant species. With that came the capacity to change everything. We could do much more than just kill another animal or eat another plant to survive. We were way smarter than that. We learned agriculture, invented tools and machines, built enormous cities, how to fly in machines, how to write and share knowledge.

But there were hard times too. Times when food was scarce. Times when another “group” had access to resources other “groups” wanted. Dominance rather than sharing was apparently critical to survival and thus the prime instinct, to live on, led to competition, fighting, killing. More for me, less for you. I win, you lose. Too bad. At least for today.

Mankind evolved to be the smartest and dumbest creature on the planet. Able to perform miracles of learning and healing and loving, mankind also learned to hate, to fight even when the fight was self-defeating. To change the planet in ways that now make it likely to become uninhabitable. Yet, we continue. The same mistakes. The same hates.

Compartmentalizing.

Love your fellow man. Love nature. Then kill them both if you think it’s necessary to survive … or maybe just to have more. Acquisitiveness – another human trait. Get more stuff because more stuff is better than less stuff, and it shows other humans your superiority. Your dominance in the hierarchy. Humans are very invested in hierarchies. Animals, too, are invested in hierarchies and one might conclude that hierarchies are essential elements of life. But, of course, animals generally don’t just go invade their neighboring animals’ territory.

Is there another way? I don’t know. As a species, humans have the capacity to do the right thing. We’ve created countries, nation-states, wrapped ourselves in “national identity,” “ethnic identity,” “cultural identity,” “sexual identity,” take your pick. So many identities.

Identities help us know who is in our group and it doesn’t take much thought to see how this can be important in the world we have made. But identities are, by their nature, separating. Categorizing. If you’re X and I’m M, we’re in different groups and never the twain ….

So, here we are. Smart and stupid at the same time. Victims of our own intelligence. Suffering now from an unseen enemy, the coronavirus. Most of us are grateful for the science and scientists who brought us a life-saving vaccine. We are grateful for the healthcare workers who put themselves at risk when we are most desperate for their help and comfort. And some of us, a remarkably large number, believe in conspiracies, in dark images of evil people doing insane and immoral things. This group turns away from vaccines and other established public health measures and consumes instead known poisons and unknown other substances, placing their faith in politicians rather than scientists.

Those people walk among us. Many are our friends and neighbors. Many are dying. Yet they persist in believing the unbelievable. Compartmentalizing to prevent being told what to do or to have their “rights” diminished. These people don’t care much about the rest of us, though many often attend religious services and say many prayers. When there is a mass shooting, they send “thoughts and prayers,” but they resist meaningful measures to control violence, and the poverty and desperation that often precedes it, because … they have “rights.”

I am rambling so I will stop soon. I am distraught, I confess, at the idea that years of my inevitably shrinking future life are being stolen by ignorance and deceit. I’ll never get those years back. Neither will the victims of 9/11, the dead and the families and friends of the dead. Never get them back. The permanent silence that awaits us all draws closer by the day, and I wonder why it is that the smartest creatures on the planet continue to be the dumbest. I wonder why we can’t see and correct the self-destructive paths down which our evolutionary history has driven us. We can look back and see history. Other animals can’t. We can look ahead and predict the future. Other animals can’t. We don’t have to wait until the planetary water hole has completely dried up before figuring out a way to stop the loss. What is holding us back from using our intelligence to do what intelligence demands?

Maybe we’re just not intelligent enough. I don’t know.

 

Facing the Abyss – What Should CDC Do Now?

Leave a reply

The COVID-19 virus that Trump predicted would “just go away” has now killed More than648,000 Americans out of more than40 million cases. https://wapo.st/38PnK3N

The leading states in new deaths are, unsurprisingly, South Carolina (+36%), Florida (+32%) and Texas (+24%). As cooler weather approaches and more people stay indoors more of the time, the cases/deaths toll can be expected to rise, especially in places with low vaccination rates and persistent refusal to follow national health guidance on masking and distancing. It is what it is.

Predictions now always face opposition from the determined crowd of COVID deniers, anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers who are doing their best to ignore reality and push the country closer to the abyss. This is happening despite the overwhelming evidence that the vaccines are safe and effective and that masking works to reduce infection rates. The excuses offered for rejecting vaccines, masking, etc. are too well known to warrant recital.

The CDC and the leaders of the healthcare community that know the most about all this have, to be sure, made “mistakes” during the runup from early 2020 to now. Those mistakes are an inevitable part of the steep learning curve during a novel virus epidemic, especially when combined with inept and corrupt national leadership promoting bogus cures and inspiring resistance to promising candidates to contain the spread. We are where we are.

The question now is what could be done to change the national narrative. I address this with full awareness that millions of Americans would rather risk a horrible death than be seen to “comply” with national health guidance. There may be nothing we can do about them, but I think there are some things we haven’t tried yet.

Starting with the CDC, setting aside the chaotic approach in the early days when Trump’s political pressure seemed to influence CDC’s public posture, I have been troubled by what I label “website data bloat.” The CDC Data Tracker [https://bit.ly/3hd72A0] is the object of my derision. The site is an extraordinary trove of information for Job and others with much patience, consisting of a multitude of boxes and lists and maps, many of which are redundant or require some study to fully understand what is being shown.

I speculate that the site is the product of turning over the communication function to programmers who believe more is always better and just don’t know where to stop or how to organize information to tell a story rather than “show what we’ve got.” But, whatever the root cause, the site, for all its robustness, does not communicate the story as dramatically as it could. And if anything cries out for dramatic storytelling, it is the continued, and avoidable, rampage of COVID through America.

It should come as no surprise at this late date that, having been blunted in impact among most older people (who, generally, have a higher percentage of vaccinated individuals than other cohorts), is turning its mindless “attention” toward other groups, including children, many of whom are too young to be vaccinated according to the latest protocols.

In my view, parents of young children who refuse vaccination should be prosecuted for child endangerment, but we know that’s not going to happen. We can, however, more effectively communicate the danger.

This is how. It will require a fundamental change in the way the government does things.

Instead of presenting a vast array of charts/graphs/pathways to still more charts/graphs and offering data in various formats (gross, per capita, per this and that), focus on one thing: the message. This is a situation in which the data should be used not just to inform but to persuade. To teach. To affect.

So, what to do?

First, move all the “just data” charts/graphs to the back of the site with a simple index of what’s there.

Second, in the front, using graphs backed by data, show the key facts in a direct comparison of, for example, deaths of vaccinated versus deaths of unvaccinated people over time. Include data on adverse effects of vaccinations to the extent it exists.

Third, add to the data on cases and deaths, the data on known cases of adverse health impacts (heart, lung, brain, etc.) for COVID “survivors,” information that has largely been ignored.

Fourth, stop focusing on the number of people with one shot. We know that for the main two vaccines, two shots are essential and that’s the key number to show. Focusing on one shot is misleading.

Fifth, show the damn videos!

A wealth of videos exists showing, especially, the end stage of COVID experience in hospital ICUs: the ones where the unvaccinated, wired and tubed beyond recognition, are facing intubation and medically induced comas and are begging doctors and nurses for vaccination and “do anything to save my life.” Show those videos in TV ads in lieu of the bland “please do the right thing” messages now in use. Show the healthcare providers, dressed like aliens from Planet X, saying, “I’m sorry but it’s too late. Vaccines can’t help you now.”

 Some people will see this as unacceptably harsh. To them I say, if you don’t like it, don’t watch. But if done properly (get some experts in this kind of dramatic communication on the task), this stands some chance of jolting resisters into doing the intelligent thing and rushing to get vaccinated.

Make the message simple and clear and unmistakable – if you don’t get vaccinated, this is what may await you. Or your family. Your children. Do it now.

We know from experience that presenting the public with vast quantities of unconsumable statistics is not achieving the level of success we need to stop the pandemic. It is time to pull out all the stops. Stop acting like the government and act like you’re trying to sell something: public health. Survival.

Do it now. We’re almost out of time. The abyss is nearer by the day. It doesn’t have to be this way. Act like it’s the emergency it really is. Just do it.

American Ignorance is Killing Us

Leave a reply

Dr. Anita Sircar, an infectious disease physician and clinical instructor of health sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine, has published an opinion piece in the LA Times, “As a doctor in a COVID unit, I’m running out of compassion for the unvaccinated.” https://lat.ms/2W9yrLp

I’m with Dr. Sircar.

Conditions continue to deteriorate in Florida and other states of the former Confederate States of America. The Governor of Florida continues to act like Donald Trump – basically taking the position that this virus is no more than a common cold. He preaches that some vague idea of “freedom” is more important than stopping the worst pandemic in modern history that is now, once again, ravaging the country. #DeathSantis, as he is often called on Twitter, claims that parents should be able to make all decisions regarding the health of their children, just because they’re parents, without regard to their knowledge or the impact their decisions may have on others.

Florida seems to have adopted as its unofficial motto: “my body, my choice,” a favorite mantra of the anti-vaccination mob. Ironically, Texas simultaneously has placed into law SB8 that effectively bans abortions regardless of rape, incest and so on. So much for “my body, my choice.” But that’s for another time.

Here I want to address the widespread ignorance that has left the United States and much of the world in a position of failing to stop a deadly viral pandemic even though the means to do so is readily available and free. I readily confess up front that at my late stage in life I am profoundly resentful of the arrogant and ignorant decisions being made by people that have effectively stolen two years of my life and threaten to continue doing so indefinitely.

Dr. Sircar’s op-ed tells a gruesome story of a patient under age 50, normally in good health (just some mild blood pressure issues). He tested positive 10 days before, began coughing with severe fatigue 8 days before and, after doctor-prescribed antibiotics did nothing, turned to … hydroxychloroquine, the drug promoted by Donald Trump and multiple medical quacks despite compelling evidence of its ineffectiveness against COVID. That, of course, also failed. As his health continued to decline, he was, Dr. Sircar reports, a “shell of his former self.” By the time he arrived at the clinic, treatment with monoclonal antibodies also failed.

He finally ended up in the ER with dangerously low oxygen levels, exceedingly high inflammatory markers and patchy areas of infection all over his lungs. Nothing had helped. He was getting worse. He could not breathe. His wife and two young children were at home, all infected with COVID. He and his wife had decided not to get vaccinated. [emphasis added]

Dr. Sircar goes on,

Last year, a case like this would have flattened me. I would have wrestled with the sadness and how unfair life was. Battled with the angst of how unlucky he was. This year, I struggled to find sympathy. It was August 2021, not 2020. The vaccine had been widely available for months in the U.S., free to anyone who wanted it, even offered in drugstores and supermarkets. Cutting-edge, revolutionary, mind-blowing, lifesaving vaccines were available where people shopped for groceries, and they still didn’t want them.

Outside his hospital door, I took a deep breath — battening down my anger and frustration — and went in. I had been working the COVID units for 17 months straight, all day, every day. I had cared for hundreds of COVID patients. We all had, without being able to take breaks long enough to help us recover from this unending ordeal. Compassion fatigue was setting in. For those of us who hadn’t left after the hardest year of our professional lives, even hope was now in short supply.

The man claimed not to be anti-vaxxer.

I was just waiting for the FDA to approve the vaccine first. I didn’t want to take anything experimental. I didn’t want to be the government’s guinea pig, and I don’t trust that it’s safe.

Dr. Sircar, notes that,

The only proven lifesaver we’ve had in this pandemic is a vaccine that many people don’t want. A vaccine we give away to other countries because supply overwhelms demand in the U.S. A vaccine people in other countries stand in line for hours to receive, if they can get it at all.

Dr. Sircar turned to remdesivir, explained its status among approved treatments with long-term side-effects unknown:

“Do you still want me to give it to you?”

“Yes” he responded, “Whatever it takes to save my life.”

It did not work.

 Dr. Sircar concludes the story:

My patient died nine days later from a fatal stroke. We, the care team, reconciled this loss by telling ourselves: He made a personal choice not to get vaccinated, not to protect himself or his family. We did everything we could with what we had to save him. This year, this tragedy, this unnecessary, entirely preventable loss, was on him.

She is exactly right about that. The op-ed goes on to lay out the likely outcomes for the unvaccinated going forward. If you, or members of your family, are like the patient described here, read the full story at the link above.

We are headed swiftly back into the abyss of a raging out-of-control pandemic, widespread deaths and long-term impairments, loss of businesses, collapse of the economy, failure of the education system and more. Many parts of the world are declining again to admit Americans. The travel industry, among many others, is reeling as business disappears.

The CDC has just issued another warning about Labor Day travel, asking the unvaccinated not to travel this weekend and suggesting that even vaccinated individuals carefully reassess the risks of travel.

Here are the reported facts, per CNN’s summary [https://cnn.it/3kIudDh]:

US is surpassing an average of 160,000 new Covid-19 cases a day

38.6% of eligible people (everyone 12 or older) are not yet fully vaccinated

Hospitalization rates for unvaccinated are 16 times higher than for vaccinated people

180 new COVID cases were traced to a multi-night church camp and a men’s conference, neither of which complied with CDC recommendations

More than 200,000 kids test positive in a week – infection rates in children are increasing exponentially

Less than half of children 12 to 15 are vaccinated with even one dose

More than 200,000 children tested positive for Covid-19 in the last week, a five-fold increase from a month ago, with corresponding increases in hospitalizations

Between August 20 and 26, an average of 330 children were admitted to hospitals every day with Covid-19 — highest rate of new Covid-19 hospitalizations among children in more than a year

Hospitals and staff are again being overwhelmed and some are running out of oxygen

If the virus had a personality, it would be laughing out loud at the folly of humans who are so able and willing to ignore reality in favor of conspiracy theories and myths perpetrated by other humans who have no credentials or other authenticity as authorities on health decisions. What else is there to say?

Well, here’s something. A respiratory therapist, Karen Gallardo, described the Seven Stages of Severe COVID in a Los Angeles Times article at https://lat.ms/3yzlGan. It’s not pretty. Heavily summarized, they look like this:

Stage 1: Debilitating breathing problems force you to the ER

Stage 2: You’re drowning. Transfer to ICU

Stage 3: Breathing is worse. You are put on a “positive pressure ventilator” velcroed tightly to your face

Stage 4: In preparation for full intubation, from which most patients never recover, you are advised to call your loved ones, likely for the last time. Then,

You are sedated and paralyzed, fed through a feeding tube, hooked to a Foley catheter and a rectal tube. We turn your limp body regularly, so you don’t develop pressure ulcers — bed sores. We bathe you and keep you clean. We flip you onto your stomach to allow for better oxygenation. We will try experimental therapeutics.

Stage 5: If you’re not one of the few Stage 4 survivors, you may need special machine that bypasses your lungs and oxygenates your blood, if your hospital has one.

Stage 6 (Ready?):

The pressure required to open your lungs is so high that air can leak into your chest cavity, so we insert tubes to clear it out. Your kidneys fail to filter the byproducts from the drugs we continuously give you. Despite diuretics, your entire body swells from fluid retention, and you require dialysis to help with your renal function.

The long hospital stay and your depressed immune system make you susceptible to infections. A chest X-ray shows fluid accumulating in your lung sacs. A blood clot may show up, too. We can’t prevent these complications at this point; we treat them as they present.

If your blood pressure drops critically, we will administer vasopressors to bring it up, but your heart may stop anyway. After several rounds of CPR, we’ll get your pulse and circulation back. But soon, your family will need to make a difficult decision.

Stage 7 (End Game):

After several meetings with the palliative care team, your family decides to withdraw care. We extubate you, turning off the breathing machinery. We set up a final FaceTime call with your loved ones. As we work in your room, we hear crying and loving goodbyes. We cry, too, and we hold your hand until your last natural breath.

The End

Fix Stupid

Position of Republican Governors who fight to prevent implementation of strong, sensible public health measures recommended by federal and other health experts:

Why Americans Are Dying By the Thousands Under Trump’s Leadership

Leave a reply

Here are a few excerpts from WAPO regarding the federal response to the pandemic as we head into Election Day. https://wapo.st/3oJDI69 They speak for themselves.

“President Trump’s repeated assertions the United States is “rounding the turn” on the novel coronavirus have increasingly alarmed the government’s top health experts, who say the country is heading into a long and potentially deadly winter with an unprepared government unwilling to make tough choices.”

“Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious-disease expert, said: … “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

“Fauci … said the country could surpass 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day and predicted rising deaths in the coming weeks. He spoke as the nation set a new daily record Friday with more than 98,000 cases. As hospitalizations increase, deaths are also ticking up, with more than 1,000 reported Wednesday and Thursday, bringing the total to more than 230,000 since the start of the pandemic….”

“Trump has rallied in states and cities experiencing record surges in infections and hospitalizations in a last-ditch effort to convince voters he has successfully managed the pandemic. He has held maskless rallies with thousands of supporters, often in violation of local health mandates. Even as new infections climb in 42 states, Trump has downplayed the virus or mocked those who take it seriously.”

“… he baselessly said that U.S. doctors record more deaths from covid-19, the disease the coronavirus causes, than other nations because they get more money.”

“By contrast, former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala D. Harris have consistently worn masks in public, and have held socially distanced events.”

Fauci … described a disjointed response as cases surge. Several current and former senior administration officials said the White House is almost entirely focused on a vaccine, even though experts warn it is unlikely to be a silver bullet that ends the pandemic immediately since it will take months under the best of circumstances to inoculate tens of millions of people to achieve herd immunity.”

“Fauci said … he has not spoken to Trump since early October…. He also lamented that Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist and Trump’s favored pandemic adviser, who advocates letting the virus spread among young healthy people and reopening the country without restrictions, is the only medical adviser the president regularly meets with. “I have real problems with that guy,” Fauci said of Atlas. “He’s a smart guy who’s talking about things that I believe he doesn’t have any real insight or knowledge or experience in. He keeps talking about things that when you dissect it out and parse it out, it doesn’t make any sense.”

[Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, attacked Fauci for speaking his mind, accusing him of being a member of the Washington Swamp and repeating Trump’s talking points that the president “always put the well-being of the American people first.” Believe what you will.]

“Some White House advisers … complain [Fauci] is too focused on his personal reputation and is “not on the team,” said one senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. The doctor has become loathed among many Trump supporters, and Fauci has told others that he has experienced a surge in harassment and threats.”

[See https://wapo.st/3kUAOJK for a list of the 184 times Trump has downplayed the pandemic threat, a reality he confessed to on tape in the Woodward interviews].

“Several senior administration officials and outside advisers described a White House overwhelmed by the pandemic, with a feeling of helplessness over the inability to curb its spread without also throttling the economy or damaging the president’s reelection chances.”

“… the campaign trail message that life is returning to normal underscores how little the president and White House have focused on the pandemic beyond pushing for development and approvals of vaccines and treatments. With the clearance of a vaccine unlikely until year’s end, that raises questions about what happens after Election Day, during what is projected to be the worst stretch yet of the pandemic. The Trump administration will be in charge of managing the pandemic until at least Jan. 20, no matter who wins.”

“Trump’s former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Scott Gottlieb said, “If we don’t plan now, we’ll lose the opportunity to prioritize [school]opening what should be most important to us, just as we lost that chance in the fall because we didn’t plan appropriately this summer.”

“And one of the ways to say the outbreak is over is [to say] it’s really irrelevant because it doesn’t make any difference. All you need to do is prevent people from dying and protect people in places like the nursing homes,” Fauci said. “And because of that, Debbie [Birx] almost never ever sees the president anymore. The only medical person who sees the president on a regular basis is Scott Atlas. It’s certainly not Debbie Birx.”

“Fauci said that many people who catch the virus recover “virologically” but will have chronic health problems. “The idea of this false narrative that if you don’t die, everything is hunky dory is just not the case,” he said. “But to say, ‘Let people get infected, it doesn’t matter, just make sure people don’t die’ — to me as a person who’s been practicing medicine for 50 years, it doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“A similar assessment was offered by Tom Bossert, the former homeland security adviser in the Trump administration. “It sounds alluring,” Bossert said. “It sounds so seductive. It’s not possible. Math makes it irresponsible to even try and say it.”

Supreme Court Gives Back of Hand to Voter Protection

Leave a reply

CNN reported last week that the Supreme Court, without opinion or explanation, granted a request by Alabama to prevent voters from dropping off their ballots by handing them to an election official at the curbside. https://cnn.it/3osEjJB The decision in an unsigned 5-3 order, to which Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer dissented, addressed a permissive ruling by a federal District Court judge permitting, but not requiring, willing Alabama counties to allow curbside voting, as they have done in prior elections in 2016 and 2018. The District Court judge’s opinion was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.

The District Court judge reached the following conclusions issued in conjunction with a lengthy set of Findings of Fact & Conclusions of Law:

1. As applied during the COVID-19 pandemic to voters who are particularly susceptible to COVID-19, the requirement under Ala. Code §§ 17-11-7, 17-11-9, and 17-11-10 that absentee ballot affidavits be witnessed and signed by a notary public or two adult witnesses violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

    1. As applied during the COVID-19 pandemic to voters who are particularly susceptible to COVID-19 complications because they are either age 65 or older or disabled or have underlying medical conditions that make them susceptible to COVID-19 complications, the requirement under Ala. Code §§ 17-9-30(b), (d), and 17-11-9 that absentee voters provide a copy of their photo identification with their absentee ballot applications violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
    1. As applied during the COVID-19 pandemic to voters who are particularly susceptible to COVID-19 complications, the curbside voting ban violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
    1. As applied during the COVID-19 pandemic to voters with disabilities who cannot safely obtain a copy of their photo ID, the requirement under Ala. Code §§ 17-9-30(b), (d), and 17-11-9 that absentee voters provide a copy of their photo identification with their absentee ballot applications violates the ADA.
    1. As applied during the COVID-19 pandemic to voters with disabilities, the curbside voting ban violates the ADA.
    1. As applied during the COVID-19 pandemic, the requirement under Ala. Code §§ 17-11-7, 17-11-9, and 17-11-10 that absentee ballot affidavits be witnessed and signed by a notary public or two adult witnesses violates the Voting Rights Act.”

For the highly determined, the court papers may be read at: https://bit.ly/3opiLgI

The Court of Appeals reversed all of the District Court’s conclusions except for the curbside voting issue.

In a classic Trump Republican fashion, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall argued that “Some level of risk is inherent in life and in voting.” Stated differently, if voting in person ends up killing you (there are no mask requirements in Alabama), well, that’s life. The Alabama Secretary of State had earlier expressed concern about the security of ballots because voters “wouldn’t be able to physically put their ballot into the machines that read the ballot since they’re held indoors.” Apparently, the Alabama Secretary of State does not trust the poll workers that the counties employ for the purpose of assisting voters.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent said, in part, “We should not substitute the District Court’s reasonable, record-based findings of fact with our own intuitions about the risks of traditional in-person voting during this pandemic or the ability of willing local officials to implement adequate curbside voting procedures.”

The Supreme Court’s decision is remarkable insofar as it permits a state to disallow voting practices that, at least in a pandemic, could reduce vulnerable voters’ exposure to sometimes deadly health risks, especially for older and health-vulnerable voters. The ultimate rationale for the state’s inexplicable overturning of prior practice was the Republican Attorney General’s view, in effect, that “life’s a bitch and then you die, so who cares?”

In truth, the state position is a form of voter suppression directed at a segment of the population more-likely-than-not to vote Democratic. These types of decisions, especially unexplained, are particularly problematic when considered against the anti-democratic decision of the Supreme Court in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013) that gutted the pre-clearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those provisions compelled certain states to seek prior approval of the Justice Department for any new election or voting laws, because of those states’ prior history of voter suppression.

Shelby County involved one of the worst examples of judicial legislating ever seen, as evidenced by Chief Justice John Roberts’ explanation of the decision:

A statute’s “current burdens” must be justified by “current needs,” and any “disparate geographic coverage” must be “sufficiently related to the problem that it targets.” The coverage formula met that test in 1965, but no longer does so.

Coverage today is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices. The formula captures States by reference to literacy tests and low voter registration and turnout in the 1960s and early 1970s. But such tests have been banned nationwide for over 40 years. And voter registration and turnout numbers in the covered States have risen dramatically in the years since. Racial disparity in those numbers was compelling evidence justifying the preclearance remedy and the coverage formula. There is no longer such a disparity.

As reported in The Atlantic, https://bit.ly/34uqn9C,

The results have been predictable. Voter-identification laws, which experts suggest will make voting harder especially for poor people, people of color, and elderly people, have advanced in several states, and some voting laws that make it easier to register and cast ballots have been destroyed. For many of the jurisdictions formerly under preclearance, voting became rapidly more difficult after the Shelby County decision, particularly for poor and elderly black people and Latinos.

Decisions like the Alabama curbside voting case are the predictable consequence of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority inserting its judgment, without explanation, where only the legislature should go. At the risk of repetition, the current decision affirms the elimination, for partisan political purposes, of a health-based practice that was permitted in two prior elections.

This is what we have to look forward too as the Republican majority of Trump enablers in the Senate affirms yet another right-wing judge to the high court this very day. I don’t know what the solution to the Supreme Court dilemma is, but Joe Biden’s thoughtful and measured approach seems the right way to move forward, provided his commission acts swiftly. The issue has been exhaustively analyzed by many constitutional scholars so we’re not going into new territory here. The composition of the Court has changed before and the nation survived. It’s less clear today that the Republican approach to governance is survivable by anything resembling a democratic republic. Time is therefore of the essence once the Democrats take control of the government in January.