Truman

It was 1952.  Harry Truman was in the last year of his Presidency, and the United States was bogged down in the Korean War.  Almost 40,000 Americans soldiers were dead in four years on the Korean peninsula, and now the battle had staggered to a stalemate along what would ultimately be the demarcation line between South and North.  The United States was a nation at war, but one undeclared by Congress.

And then the United Steel Workers went on a nationwide strike.  Truman, expecting the kind of dedication and sacrifice that Americans made for so long in World War II, was incensed at both union and management for allowing the impasse.  They refused to reach an agreement.  Truman, with typical decisiveness, decided he’d had enough.  He nationalized the steel industry, ordering workers back to the mills, all under his authority as a President at war.

Overreach

The Supreme Court quickly heard the case,  Youngstown Sheet and Tube v Sawyer.  It might be considered the end of the “New Deal” era in one sense.  After years of increasing Presidential power dealing with the Great Depression, then World War II, and finally the new Cold War era of nuclear threat, the Supreme Court restrained Presidential power.  They ordered that the President’s order be withdrawn.

Truman reluctantly followed the Court’s demand, and the steelworkers went back on strike.  It took fifty more days, and threats by Truman to draft the entire steel industry into the army, to force labor and management to an agreement.

Food Crisis

Last Sunday John Tyson, Chairman of Tyson Foods, placed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times.  He said, in part:

“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain. As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.” (Time).

This ad came on the heels of dramatic closures of food processing plants, many in the Midwest, due to COVID-19.  The “poster” plant was the Smithfield Foods Plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where 350 employees, 10% of the workforce, tested positive for the virus.  The plant was shut down.  It produces 5% of America’s pork  (NPR). 

Other processing plants in the United States followed suit, as testing revealed high rates of infection throughout the industry.  Conditions at the plant, including shoulder-to-shoulder workstations, contribute to the contagion.  

Defense Production Act

The question for President Trump was how to protect the American food supply chain, and how to protect the plant employees.  Yesterday he took action similar to Truman’s order back in 1952.  Trump ordered the plants to re-open, using his authority under the Defense Production Act.  His order emphasized liability protections for management, preventing them from being sued by their workers for getting sick.  But there was little in the order to change the conditions that created the problem in the first place.  The workers are still at risk, and are being placed in an impossible position (WAPO).

Workers face a stark choice:  risk COVID-19 infection by going to work, or stay at home and not get paid.  And the communities surrounding the plants are in a similar position. The plants staying open will get paychecks circulating in town.  But they also risk virus contagion throughout the community.

There is no question that COVID-19 has caused a nationwide emergency.  And there is no question that a threat to the American food supply is a serious problem.  But that problem cannot be resolved by simply throwing the workers back into “the disease” without guaranteeing protections.  

Trump

The powers of the Presidency have vastly increased since 1952.  The Congress, both Democrat and Republican, has consistently turned over what used to be legislative authority to the Executive Branch.  While Truman depended on his war making authority to demand that Youngstown Sheet and Tube reopen, President Trump has more specific powers granted under the Defense Production Act.  

But with those added powers should come added responsibility.  The President needs to do as much to protect the workers in those plants as he does to protect the stockholders from liability.  And if that can’t be done, then America may have to do without their skinless, boneless chicken breasts or pork loins or 80-20 ground beef until those workers can do their work, safely.

 

The Court

The Supreme Court, like every other institution in the United States, is dramatically impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.  Oral arguments, the grist of Supreme Court action, were postponed both in March and April.  The Court is now planning to remotely meet in May, and for the first time in history, allow live voice broadcast of the arguments.  That’s because the Justices are holding arguments by phone (NPR).

Two of the cases the Court will hear are about President Trump’s financial records, and whether Congress has the power to subpoena them.  There is also an additional case, a Grand Jury subpoena of Trump’s records from New York.  All three subpoenas were upheld in the lower Courts.

Traditional Conservatives

Traditionally, American conservatives have been in favor of Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch.  Only a decade ago, Congress demanded that the Executive branch answer to subpoenas investigating the Internal Revenue Service for harassing conservative action committees, the Justice Department for a botched Mexican gun buying investigation, and, of course, the multiple investigations into what happened at Benghazi.  With one notable exception, the Obama administration responded to those actions (Attorney General Eric Holder ultimately refused to release some documents, after testifying three times to the Republican controlled committees).

Now Congress is asking the President to turn over financial records, including his tax returns.  One of those requests, made by the Ways and Means Committee of the Democratically controlled House, cites a Federal law that gives them the power to request any individual tax return, written specifically because of Executive Branch corruption during the Teapot Dome Scandals in the 1920’s.  As was pointed here in Trump World over a year ago, it’s clear law (26 US Code § 6103 (f) (1)).

Traditional conservatives, at home in the Republican Party, have always favored the balancing of Constitutional power. Common sense says then that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will uphold that balance.  But don’t hold your breath.

Unassailable Power

The majority Justices of the Supreme Court aren’t traditional conservatives.  They have embraced a philosophy that is far from the traditional conservatism of Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan.  They espouse a theory of massive executive authority, granting the President powers and privileges that would have appalled James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, principal authors of the Constitution.  With that, and the clear partisan split of the Court with five Republicans and four Democrats, and it’s possible the President may gain the power to hide his own finances from any investigating eyes.

The Supreme Court may not be the only ones burning their conservative bridges to protect the Trump Presidency.  The leaders of the Republican Party have remained silent during the COVID-19 crisis.  The follies of the Trump daily briefing, from Lysol to Chloroquine, to the President’s claim of “total authority” have all gone on with little Republican comment.  And the Trump Administration’s amazing silence about the achievements of a fellow Republican, Governor Mike DeWine in Ohio, is deafening.

It is all about November.  Given the choice between a Democratic nominee like Joe Biden, or accepting the botched handling of this existential crisis, Republicans are standing silent.   We see it in the information void from Republican Senators, and the ridiculous “principled stands” of Congressman Tom Massie delaying House response (Politico).

Gaslighting

And we also see it in the Trump Administration itself, who have embraced a policy placing responsibility for COVID-19 testing on the states, instead of making it a national priority.  The reason is clear and political:  the tests aren’t available to determine whether to open the economy.  If we wait for testing, then the economy won’t recover in time for the November election, and there will be no path for a Trump re-election.  And even if there were the tests, the results might show that the economy cannot open.  So open the economy and accept the increased deaths and illnesses that may create, in order to win the political argument:  “it’s the economy stupid”.

This plan is backed up by a social media campaign by Trump surrogates, demanding that the economy MUST be reopened now, or America will be ruined.  This triggers millions who fear that the country will never “return to normal”.  That ultimate nightmare somehow makes the potential loss of life more palatable.

The nation is being “gaslighted”.   We are being distracted, not for economic reasons, but political ones.  And it’s not just Trump, it’s all of the other Republicans, from the Supreme Court to the Senate, who are letting him do it.  They have burned their political bridges.  They are risking American lives.   When the “butcher’s bill” is delivered, they will have no place to retreat.

 

 

 

Class Assignment

I assigned my history classes to write a “Living History Journal” for this last quarter of the school year.  Every week, they add a couple hundred words to their project, telling their story of life in the 2020 pandemic.  I feel like someday, they will want to know what it was like to be twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen when the world came to a halt.

I was tempted to compare the project to the Diary of Anne Frank, but I didn’t want to scare them.  Anyway, it gets them thinking about everything that’s new and different in their world.  In the beginning they wrote about toilet paper shortages (and Raman noodle shortages too) and being able to sleep in.  Now they talk a lot more about missing friends, lost trips and vacations, and struggles to stay on task in “online” school.

And they talk about the crisis.  You can hear their parents’ views echoed in the journals, some saying we need to stay in isolation until we are sure, others talking about how we need to “open up” right away.  You can also hear the fears, from the kids with parents working on the front line as nurses, or a police officers, or prison guards.  And you read the worry they have about losing the “old” people in their lives.

Zooming

But what you hear most is the isolation.  They miss their extended families, and they miss their friends.  We have “Zoom” classes, something I’d never even heard of two months ago.  In case you missed it, the kids all log their computers into a video meeting.  Their pictures are arrayed on the screen like the Brady Bunch (that reference shows some age) and they can all participate. 

There are issues with Zoom.  There’s a time lag in the audio, and only one person is able to speak at a time.  If a dog or someone’s little brother gets in the picture everyone sees it.  But it’s a chance for the kids to communicate “live” with the teacher, and even more importantly with each other.  As a teacher, it’s a frustrating experience (at least for me) but the kids get to socialize, maybe even more than to learn.  In fact I “lost control” of my first sixth grade “Zoom Class”, the kids were talking to each other about anything besides Ancient Indian history.  But that session also served a more important purpose than history, I think.

The kids talk about all the work they are doing around the house.  Rooms are being built, mulch is being laid, gardens planted and lawns mowed.  It’s happening here at my house too, right outside our front window.   It’s good to get out in the sun even if it is to “work”.

Family

It was my oldest sister’s birthday last night, and we had a “Zoom” meeting for our entire family.  We’ve been talking to each other a lot, but it was the first time that my two sisters and I have seen each other for more than a year.   It was great to see everyone:  sisters and husbands, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren.  Like the sixth grade class, it was confusing and disjointed, but it was fun.

My “middle” sister is hunkered down in New Jersey just outside of New York City; my niece is a Nurse Practioner in the Denver area, working in nursing homes.  They are in “hot spots” for the virus; it’s not a “somebody else” problem for them.  But even under that risk, they continue to live their lives.  My New Jersey sister and her husband are artists, and they do their work from home.  And my niece does her job, and then comes home to three young kids.  There’s not a lot of time to worry, though both do. 

Time Served

We are all getting to that point here in the COVID-19 crisis.  It’s been six weeks in isolation, and the kids, and my family, are all getting anxious to “get on” with life.  My family is lucky, everyone who needs to work is working, and the oldest generation, mine, are all retired.  Many of my kids’ families aren’t as lucky financially.  But both from my family, and from the History Journals, the pressure is on.  

This will be the really hard part.  As pieces of the United States open, other parts will need to remain closed.  Folks in Ohio will see people in other states going back to restaurants and bars, and wonder why we can’t do that.  In Florida they are opening the beaches, while in Pataskala they just cancelled high school graduation and closed the local athletic fields.  There’s a lot of mixed messaging going on.  And the folks hearing those messages are anxious to “go”.

But “going” might be too soon, and create a whole new round of COVID-19 illness and death.  No matter how you read the statistics that risk is clear.   Can we suffer more time apart, available on “zoom” but not in real life?  Can we handle the isolation even if it takes until we can all be tested, or even vaccinated?  And if we can’t, are we willing to accept the moral responsibility of the death and suffering premature “opening” may cause?

As the commercial on TV just said, “…we’ve got to get this right”.  

A Career

After a career in education, it’s difficult to say what I’m an “expert” in.  I spent twenty-eight years in the classroom, teaching social studies courses from world history to economics to government.  I was a good teacher, but I don’t know that I’d ever call myself an “expert”.  There were teachers who were better at the “jargon”, and better at the paperwork. And there were teachers who did a better job of communicating with parents.  I was good, and I knew my subjects and I knew kids – but I don’t know if I was an “expert”.

And I spent forty years coaching track and field.  I earned a Masters Degree in the sport. Then, I spent years coaching every event, from shot put to long distance.  I had success in almost every area, but the most important thing I learned is to find other good coaches to work with, and let them do their job.  After all those years, it’s hard to say if I was an “expert” in any one event, except maybe pole vaulting.

Pole Vault

The pole vault is that event where an athlete takes a long fiberglass pole, runs down towards a big foam mat, and uses the pole to jump over an increasingly higher bar.  I started coaching the event in 1982, because I couldn’t find the “good coach” to work with.  I focused on learning the event, serving a kind of broad apprenticeship with some of the best coaches in the United States.  

We had a lot of success, and after all the years, I might be considered an “expert” in high school pole vaulting.  At least, I’m “expert” enough for the state coaches organization to let me teach pole vault safety to coaches all across the state. And I’m “expert” enough for the lawyers that are looking for pole vault “expert” testimony  – though they don’t know anything about pole vault.  It’s easy to be an expert compared to them.

YouTube

Out on YouTube there are other pole vault coaches who claim to be “experts”.  Some of them are, and a few are really the best in the world.  But some of the other so-called “experts” are teaching techniques that will ultimately get someone killed.  Pole vaulting has it dangers.  After all, when you use a fiberglass pole to launch high into the air, you better do it right.  There’s lots of ways to get hurt.  But if you search YouTube long enough, you can find “experts” who ignore all of the acknowledged safety practices.  They promise great success with their “new techniques”. But there is no “disclaimer” that they are dangerous, no “Fact Check” in pole vault warning you off.  

All it takes to be an “expert” on YouTube (or the rest of the Internet) is a post or a website (just like mine).   It’s like that in pole vault, and it’s like that in all sorts of even more dangerous activities as well.  There are sites out there, on the Internet right now, that claim they have “all the answers” to the current pandemic.  They “can prove” with “statistical studies” that ALL OF THE OTHER EXPERTS are wrong. 

The Herd

They claim that COVID-19 is nothing more than the flu.  They want us to just “let if go” and live our lives normally.  Sure, people are going to die, but ultimately we will achieve “herd immunity”.  Most of the population will be immune, or strong enough to survive infection.  The rest – well – it’s just culling the herd, isn’t it?  And meanwhile, we can go back to earning our livings, making money, and live what was our “normal” way of life.

Those YouTube “experts” have decided that all of the real experts, globally acknowledged experts like Tony Fauci who has spent decades fighting pandemics, are just wrong.  And because of our hyper-partisan, conspiracy-seeking political environment today, those YouTube experts are gaining a following.  

Who to Believe

Forces long before the Trump Administration attacked the reputation of our national institutions, like the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes for Health.  It has been politically expedient to say those institutions are corrupted by big business, and tainted with scandal.  Even “experts” with heroic names, like Robert Kennedy Jr., have spent years attacking their credibility.  

So I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that the YouTube “experts” are now calling on Americans to ignore those institutions and the real experts when in comes to COVID-19.  After all, the disease has killed over 50,000 in just a couple of months.  It has come close to overwhelming our healthcare system.  It’s only through heroic efforts (even by the Trump Administration) that hospitals have managed the onslaught.  

The real experts have shut down America, for the purpose of saving lives.  But just like in pole vaulting, there’s someone on YouTube who can tell you how to do it better.  

Better hope they don’t get you killed.

No-Brainer

In my world there is something called a “no-brainer”.  That means it doesn’t take much thought to think that something is a good idea.  For example, Friday night pizza and beer:  a “no-brainer”.  So when I look at the national response to COVID-19, it seems to me that it’s a no-brainer to maintain the strict guidelines that have dramatically lowered the infection and death numbers.

We have done nothing to “stop” the virus; it’s still out there.  But what we have done is protected our population from infection by spacing out, hiding in our homes, and keeping apart.  It’s worked, we see it in the statistic that should mean more than any:  instead of hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths (so far) we are looking at something closer to sixty thousand.  

That number is still abhorrent.  But the actions of individual Americans, staying in their homes and following the “guidelines” have saved many.  

We have been under the “guidelines” since March 16^th, the day before St. Patrick’s Day.  That’s thirty-seven days for those keeping count – a long time to hide out.  Folks are getting restless, maybe beyond restless, and they want to go back to their “normal” lives again.  Who can blame them?

Return to Normalcy

There is another pressure pushing people to “return to normalcy” (thanks President Harding!!).  It’s simple:  money.  Twenty-six million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past six weeks.  The state unemployment offices, designed for maybe a few hundred a week, are now face with an overwhelming number of claims.  Not surprisingly, they are so far behind, that folks are waiting weeks to get any kind of unemployment compensation.

And on the Federal side, the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program), designed to keep people “employed” in their jobs even if they can’t work, ran out of money in forty-eight hours.   It’s being re-infused now by the Congress, but even that will not be near enough to keep folks paid.  The numbers are simply beyond the capacity of the program to quickly handle.

And finally there’s the one-time Federal payment, if they’re eligible.  It’s $1200, maybe enough to cover the rent and utilities for the month.  But that was last month, and now folks are faced with paying bills with money they simply don’t have, and don’t have reason to expect soon.  And that’s if they’re qualified for the payment.

A Gig World

There are a lot of twenty and thirty-something’s working in the “gig” economy.  The cost of healthcare is so great, that many employers won’t hire fulltime workers.  If they did, they’d have to offer benefits, instead they keep more employees on a part-time basis.  This lays bare the flaw in our employee based health care system:  employers have found a way to “dodge the healthcare bullet”.  So a lot of those folks don’t have health insurance at all.  And many are working a couple of jobs, maybe a big-box store for twenty hours, and waiting table for fifteen more a week.  When everything’s going well, it’s enough money to cover expenses, but when everything falls apart, their left destitute.

It’s been thirty-seven days, and many of them haven’t seen a paycheck or a government check.  If they received the Federal payment, it’s gone.  And even though a lot of landlords are cancelling rent payments, it doesn’t mean they won’t owe ALL the rent someday – just not today.  And zero money doesn’t pay for groceries, or gas if there’s somewhere to go.

What We Want

We want people to stay isolated.  We know that if we “go back” to the “good old days” of early March, we will trigger a COVID-19 spike, and be right back in the crisis we avoided.  All of us should remember the story of Philadelphia in 1918. The city dodged the worst of the Spanish Flu epidemic, following the same prescription that Dr. Fauci and the rest offered to us.  They stayed apart, they shut down, and they kept the infection rates down.

But World War I ended, and they wanted to celebrate with a massive parade.  Two hundred thousand Philadelphians came out to cheer “the boys” returning from Europe.  Within two weeks, the Spanish Flu was back and thousands more died.

So the answer is to keep up the work.  But if we’re going to get that done, we’ve got to get money to folks to keep going. We have to take care of those who slip through the cracks, the “gig economy” workers who don’t show up as “regular” employees.  If we don’t, we can’t expect that they will quietly stay at home, with no way for them to financially take care.  

Unemployment offices are overwhelmed – we need to help them.  The PPP is underfunded, we need to put more in.  The $1200 is gone (if it ever showed up).  We need to do that again, and maybe more.  And for those who say the Federal government can’t afford it, the short answer is that the Federal government can’t afford not to.  Yes, the bill will have to be paid, but it’s better to pay a financial bill later, than the butcher’s bill of death now.

Campaign Frozen

Joe Biden is now labeled as the “apparent” Democratic nominee for President in 2020.  There are a lot of delegates yet to be chosen.  Worse, there are a lot of elections that no one knows how to actually conduct.  We already are hearing of voters who got COVID-19 voting in the Wisconsin primary.  We know, inevitably, someone will die because the voters of Wisconsin were forced to line up and vote.  

By the way, the Facebook “meme” claiming that if people can lineup to get into Wal-Mart then they should be willing to line up to vote, is bogus.  Lining up to vote, to exercise your citizenship right as an American, should not be a life threatening choice.  Lining up to get into Wal-Mart may well be a dangerous choice today, but the difference is you don’t HAVE to go to Wal-Mart.  There are always other ways, including online shopping and Wal-Mart’s Grocery Pickup that avoids the line, the crowd, and the risk of getting sick.

But there’s no such thing as a “voting” pickup in Wisconsin.  If you don’t meet the “requirement” for absentee voting, you either show, or don’t vote.  Of course, people could lie to get an absentee ballot, but voting fraud shouldn’t be the only reasonable choice a citizen can make to cast their ballot.

So let’s get back to Joe Biden’s problem.  He’s going to be the nominee, but the elections may not be held to gather the 1991 delegates to win.  Biden currently has 1305.  There will be more elections; Ohio will close its March 17^th vote on April 28^th and those delegates will be added.  But other states may never get around to having a primary.

Virtual Balloons

And while the Convention itself has moved from July until August, there isn’t even an actual date set for the event.  Will it really happen in Milwaukee, or just be a giant “Zoom” event.  And what about all of the free publicity a convention offers a candidate challenging the sitting President?  Will Biden get the rousing endorsement speech we all expect from Barack Obama, or will it be a home televised event from the Obama basement?  Will Biden himself ever get to make that final acceptance speech on a podium to applause and red, white and blue balloons, or will he speak from his home in Delaware?

All of this underlines Biden’s biggest issue:  how to campaign in a COVID-19 world.  I’ve been listening to MSNBC, a Biden friendly zone, for five hours this morning (while I did school work).  For five hours it’s been COVID-19.  There must be NO other news; the virus news has literally taken up all of the oxygen in the air.  Biden’s name was not mentioned.  

Other Democrats have offices and roles that give them more visibility than the presumptive nominee.   New York Governor Cuomo, leading the nation’s greatest struggle against the virus, get’s airtime every day.  Chuck Schumer, Senator Minority Leader comments on legislation.  Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is highly visible with the Democratic agenda.  But Biden is able to only push out some social media from Delaware; little more is getting out in “the world”.

No Campaign Trail

And even as some states “open” it’s not likely that Biden will be able to resume the campaign trail.  Besides, why would Democrats risk Biden’s health to COVID-19?  Just because the Governors of Georgia and South Carolina are willing to risk their state’s population, Democrats shouldn’t put Biden on the block.

So in our brave new COVID-19 world, how does a man run for President?  And even if the virus lifts in the summer, what happens to campaign momentum if, as the scientists predict, the virus re-emerges in the fall?  The President will still have his “bully pulpit” but will the Democratic nominee have a podium?  And finally, how far can a candidate go running against a President embroiled in a national crisis of the first order?

All of these questions are important, if the question of the election is Trump versus Biden.  That’s traditional campaign thought, and what we all expect will happen.  But to upset that traditional paradigm, the 2020 election may not be the man-to-man campaign that both Biden and Trump want.  It’s just as likely to simply be a test of Trump, the popular evaluation of his four years, and particularly the last year. It will by about his competency as President.  

And if that’s the case, then Joe Biden should stay low.  He’s got it in the bag.

Ohio

I’m looking out my front window on a beautiful spring day.  The grass is green (and well manicured, I might add) and the sun is shining.  It’s hard to imagine that I’m looking out at a COVID-19 world, a world of self-isolation, social distancing, and gloves and facemasks.

Here in Ohio, our Governor, Republican Mike DeWine, is doing something that seems unusual.  He’s competent.  Unlike the flurry of mixed messages we are receiving from the daily White House briefing, Governor DeWine is clear in his goals for Ohio.  Let’s get open, WHEN it can safely be done.  He knows businesses, particularly small ones operating on the financial margin.  The Governor knows many of the unemployed have been unable to navigate the overwhelmed unemployment benefit network.

And, he knows people are scared of the virus, but also of not being able to buy food, or pay the bills, or take care of health problems beyond COVID-19.  He knows.

But he also knows that closing our eyes and pretending things are better is not only foolish, but a desperate gamble most likely to end up in more deaths, more quarantine, and more economic ruin.  So he’s telling Ohio, “Go slow.”  The schools are closed for the remainder of the year.  Teachers have shifted to online learning, but many school districts are contemplating ending the year early.  While many students are gamely toiling at their computers, there are thirty percent or more who never made the sudden transition.  They are “lost” to education this year.  

Georgia

If you look far down I-75, you see the Governor of Georgia with both eyes firmly closed.  His President is speaking from both sides of his mouth.  One side is saying:  “follow the plan to reach the ‘first tier’ of re-opening.”  The other side is saying: “rebel against government control, open everything now.”  Unfortunately for the people of Georgia, Governor Kemp is hearing only the second part.  He is opening gyms and tattoo parlors, massage centers, hair-dressers and nail clinics and then demanding that they maintain social distancing.  I haven’t quite figured out how to get a tattoo, a massage, or a manicure without being within the six foot distancing limit.  

What happens in Atlanta doesn’t stay there.  Not only is it a major American city, but also it is a central transportation hub.  Fly Delta: there’s almost no way to avoid Hartsfield Airport.  If Georgia loses control of COVID-19, Hartsfield won’t be accessible.  So Governor Kemp’s decisions aren’t just affecting the people of his state.  His calls are going to impact how the Nation resumes business.

Florida

Just a few miles farther south on I-75 is Florida, the 47^th oldest state in America (Vermont, Maine and West Virginia have older median ages).  Knowing the dangers of COVID-19 to the elderly, one would think that Florida would want to take “re-opening” very slowly.  One would be wrong.

DeSantis already gained notoriety by keeping Florida “open” for Spring Break.  Now some of the beaches are back open again, and DeSantis is looking to begin tourism again.  However, he does have an advantage other Governors don’t seem to have.  DeSantis’ closeness to the President has gotten Florida greater access to testing equipment.  The President even offered one for the Governor himself; so he could, like the President, test everyone who comes in the office.

Florida is ranked eighth in the United States for COVID, with 26,314 confirmed cases.  

Does it Matter

Just because any Governor declares that the state is now “open for business” it really doesn’t matter.  Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, if businesses are open and no one comes, are they really open?  The reality of America is that most are well aware of the dangers of viral transmission.  Even Fox News admits that the reason the original doomsday forecasts of more than a million COVID deaths didn’t occur, is the swift and broad actions by the American people.  We did the right thing, we distanced ourselves, and we stayed at home.

Recent surveys show that Americans aren’t convinced that there is a short-term solution to the COVID pandemic.  Folks aren’t going to crowd into a restaurant, or the tattoo parlor, until they believe it’s safe.  That includes even the folks in Georgia and Florida.

So in the end, it will be Americans who will determine when America is open, not the Governors, or the Doctors, or even the President of the United States.  Like it or not, most Americans are smart enough to know.

Old Dog

I retired from public school in 2017, but that was a long time after I left the classroom.  From 1978 to 2006 I was a high school and middle school social studies teacher.  I then became the Dean of Students at Watkins Memorial High School for the last eight years of my career.  And I was always a track coach, my last job in public education. I retired from that after my 40^th season in 2017.

So when Jenn and I decided to stay home for the winter of 2020, I thought it would be good to do some substitute teaching.  It wasn’t just to make a little extra money, it was also to do something more than workout and write essays through the long winter season.

The classroom changed in the fifteen years since I left.  When I cleared out my room in 2006, the main visual presentation mode was called a chalkboard.  Today, that board is still there, but usually covered with posters and materials.  Instead, you have a “Smartboard”, a video projection device attached to the computer.  It’s remarkable, you can project anything from the computer to the board, and you can write on the board as well, and save the “notes” back to the computer.  

It took some getting used to, especially for an old “I forgot the chalk in my pocket and washed my pants” guy.  

New Tricks

But the real change in classrooms today is that every kid has a computer.  The long lecture I used to give, covering the battle of Gettysburg from the railroad cut to the charge on Cemetery Ridge, won’t fly today.  The kids want to hear the story, but they also want to see it, to hear the bugles and the cannons, to see the movement of the troops.  And they can, on the computer, through YouTube videos and snippets of any of a dozen Civil War movies.  Good teachers today still teach, but they also are adept at directing their classes to resources on their individual computers.

So subbing classes was a big change for me, pushing me to adapt to “modern” education.  But that was “all good”, and I decided to signup for a long-term sub job.  A wonderful teacher, great with students and highly knowledgeable about modern technology, was having her first child.  So in I went, starting the second week of March, ready to teach Middle School social studies for the rest of the year.

And then corona-virus hit.  The schools closed.  And everyone, from the veteran to the rookie, became a first year teacher.

No one planned on learning “online” for the last quarter of the school year.  And for those who say, “Well, there’s been online education for a while,” I’d counter that the kids on online education in the past were willing participants.  No one gave the students of Watkins Middle School or all of the other public schools a choice, they went from the classroom on Friday, to spring break, to life on a computer monitor.

Brand New World

The teachers didn’t plan on being online for the last quarter of the school year.   Those veteran teachers with years of experience in the bag, were thrown right back into the first year again. Nothing was planned, and every interaction was a brand new experience.  And for that poor first year teacher; all of the confidence gained through March was gone.  

Great teachers find ways to reach kids.  It’s personal, a one-on-one outreach to each of the one hundred and fifty in their classrooms.  Great teachers watch their kids come through the door, and know, just from the face, the walk, and the look, what’s going on.  They know it’s time to reach out and ask, “What’s up”?  They even know when it’s time to leave that kid alone for the day, let him or her “slide” for this class.

But the classroom door and the visual check are gone.  If a kid comes in without a pencil, a good teacher makes sure she has one.  If a kid fails to sign onto their computer, “skips digital school,” it’s much harder to make that intervention.  The linkage over the Internet is tenuous, ethereal, and all the visual and emotional cues a teacher depends on are gone.

First Year

Everyone is a first year teacher right now.  All of the planning and experience they depended on are gone.  And even more importantly, many of the things that made them great teachers are gone as well, cut off with the loss of direct personal contact.  

So the great teachers are going back to the beginning, erasing the chalkboard of their experience and writing in new lesson plans.  They are searching for ways to reach their students, even the ones who fail to “log-in”.  Yes, they’re teaching in their pajamas, and even attending staff meetings without pants on.  But they are still doing everything they can to find that connection, to motivate “their kids” to learn.  And they’re doing even more, using their digital “classrooms” and assignments to learn how those kids are doing, worrying as much about their students’ isolation as the are the completed assignments.

It’s that  “first year” all over again.  It’s all new:  all on the job training.  But as I listen into the meetings, and as a “sub” watch what these “pros” are getting done – I know one thing for sure.  They’re doing the job.

Facebook

The cold hand of Brad Parscale, social media guru and manager of the Trump campaign, is all over the Internet.  On Twitter, and particularly on Facebook, he is pushing the Trump narrative. 

Here’s my Facebook “feed” first thing on Saturday morning.

1. “Commonwealth of Virginia now says it’s not constitutional to make someone have an ID to vote.  I need an ID to get on a plane, buy guns, alcohol and cigarettes, but not to vote.”
2. “China made the corona-virus as paybacks for Trump taking a strong stand against them after the last Presidents have let China walk all over us.”
3. “Why are people ‘implementing’ voter fraud? If we can shop in grocery stores right now, we can go to the polls in November.”
4. “COVID death rate is significantly LOWER than reported.”
5. An image of Trump – he can rebuild our country – an image of Pelosi in Nazi SS Uniform  – Minister of Propaganda
6. Meme – Let me get this straight – you are hiding from the virus now, but in a few months you’ll let them inject you with it.
7. How to Legally Decline a Vaccine – a list.

Strategy

The new COVID-19 strategy marks a huge change for the Trump campaign.  Before the virus hit, the goal was to make Joe Biden look as “bad” as Trump.  It was the tactic that led to impeachment, with Trump willing to risk his Presidency to push Ukraine to investigate Biden.  That plan still has a little life; Attorney General Bill Barr and the Senator Ron Johnson haven’t quite given up on trashing Biden’s reputation.  

And, of course, the President could have run on the best Dow Jones Average in history.  The Trump campaign depended on the old James Carville phrase for the Bill Clinton strategy: “it’s the economy stupid”.  But COVID took care of that.  The Dow fell 10,000 points.  Even with a mild recovery, with the Dow back up 4,000, it’s not the glistening achievement Trump depended on.  And an unemployment rate zooming up to near twenty percent makes Trump vulnerable to “it’s the economy, stupid”.

COVID has changed everything.  Getting the economy back on track by Labor Day is a Trump essential.  To do that, people have to “go back” to their old lives. The restaurants have to be crowded, car dealerships flush with sales, planes full of tourists.  That won’t happen overnight, Trump needs the economy to “re-open” by June to even have a shot at Labor Day.

Nonfeasance

To get that done, states have to drop their “shelter-in-place” orders, and let business resume again.  But there’s one problem:  the only scientific evidence we have is that the shelter-in-place orders are only way to keep the virus in some kind of check.  South Dakota shows what happens without any restrictions. They had a 12% increase in cases, the highest in the nation.  

If the President steps forward and demands states relax restrictions and the infection rates soars, his elections chances will plummet.  If the President doesn’t get the economy going again, his chances will still fall.  How can he avoid both?

There is a series of legal terms:  malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance.  Malfeasance is to intentionally do something illegal while holding office.  Misfeasance is to do something wrong, but not necessarily intentional.  Nonfeasance is to fail to act, when an action is required.  The President has a “nonfeasance” position regarding US actions during the crisis.

Strong Leaders

He has claimed the power to deal with the crisis, but then sidestepped action and allowed state governors to determine individual responses.  There are governors like Cuomo in New York, Inslee in Washington, Whitmer in Michigan and Newsome in California who have been aggressive in controlling their states and demanding more national action.  We also have governors like DeWine in Ohio, who is quietly taking the necessary actions to protect his constituents, but avoiding political fights with Washington.  And then, there are governors like DeSantis in Florida and Noem in South Dakota who seem unable to respond to their state’s needs.

Now that those governors are dealing with the problem, the President is quietly undercutting them.  He publicly said that, “…some governors are getting carried away.” His Twitter feed called for citizens to  “liberate” Virginia, Minnesota and Michigan, encouraging armed protests against state interventions.  And he demands that states re-open, but steps back and fails to take responsibility for the viral consequences.

All Credit, No Blame

The Trump campaign strategy is to claim all the credit, and take none of the blame.  If governors find they cannot “open” their states without fanning the flames of COVID-19, it’s their fault.  If they can, it’s Trump’s success.

And the Trump campaign continues their same old plan:  destroy trust in American institutions, the press, the courts, and most importantly, the non-partisan structures of government.  The “deep-state” attack continues, not just against the intelligence agencies, but now against those departments we depend on to protect our health.  It was no mistake that Trump’s twitter repeated a call to “fire Fauci”, and that his media followers at OANN and FOX have continually attacked the creditability of government scientists. 

And when Trump voters don’t like what the scientists say as they stand on the podium beside the President, then the Trump message on social media is go ahead and ignore them.  It’s a plan to win the election, even if it will assuredly cost thousands of vulnerable lives. 

And what about Joe Biden?  He’s presenting a clear Presidential strategy to deal with the crisis, detailed and straightforward.   So the Trump campaign must somehow blame the Biden as part of the Obama administration, and now seems to be trying to tie Biden to China.  

This election should be about competence and accountability.  If it is, then Donald Trump will be a one-term president.  He’s depending on the cold hand of Brad Parscale to change the narrative, and alter the outcome.  After his successes in 2016, nothing can be taken for granted.

Our Crisis

The United States is in crisis, an all-encompassing situation resembling the Great Depression, or World War II.  Over half a million Americans are known to have COVID-19, perhaps millions more were infected, and don’t know it.  Over 28,000 are known to have died from the disease.  

But, because we haven’t developed the testing capacity to know, many more have died from COVID-19, but are listed as dying from heart attacks, or pneumonia, or simply “old age”.  The disease is burning through nursing homes and assisted living centers.  For many there, the only “remedy” given is to sign a “DNR”, a do-not-resuscitate order.  Hospice care may be their only medical treatment. To quote an old Republican, “We don’t know what we don’t know”.

The economy of the United States is literally closed.  Twenty-two million Americans are seeking unemployment benefits.  Economists estimate that the unemployment rate, at three percent as recently as February, will climb to twenty percent this month.  Many are clamoring to “re-open” the economy, regardless of the health consequences.  They say that the impact of keeping the economy closed weighs greater than the deaths that opening it may cause.  

Logic of Death

It’s a cold-blooded logic, a willingness to sacrifice others to end personal economic suffering.  Of course it’s wrong, but more importantly, it’s Un-American.  We cannot, or at the least, we must not, build a new economy on the deaths of the old, and the sick, and the unlucky.  What will our children say – thanks for starting the economy and sacrificing grandma and grandpa?  We must not climb on the bodies of those dead to end our financial distress and our discomfort with social distancing.  

There are solutions.  Many of the state Governors are working on them, developing how to weather the pandemic, and then re-open their businesses.  Those Governors unanimously are calling for a strategy of containment:  testing for the disease, quarantining the infected, and allowing those that are immune or disease free to go forward.   Testing and tracing is the answer for all, except the President of the United States.

Distract and Deflect

The President is bent on distracting the nation from that particular subject, testing.  On Monday he spent hours attacking the media.   Tuesday in the Rose Garden, he tried to place blame for the pandemic on the World Health Organization.  On Wednesday, shivering back outdoors, he blamed Senate Democrats for not approving his personnel requests, and threatened a Constitutional crisis with the Legislative branch.  As if anyone believes having an acting director of the Voice of America is preventing him from dealing with the crisis.

We know that Mr. Trump was let down by many of his “friends” in the business community.  The top executives the Administration who were included as part of the “start-up committee” didn’t know that they were invited, and many don’t want to join in.  And of the ones who are willing to participate, many are warning that a start-up followed by a shutdown because of a rise in infection is worse than no start-up at all.   Most Governors are saying the same thing:  too soon is worse than waiting.

So Trump picks a fight with three “popular” targets:  the New York Times, the World Health Organization, and, of course, the Democrats in the Senate.  All familiar targets, and all far off the point of what our nation needs to do now.

Solutions not Distractions

We have the technology to make all of this work.  Just as we built thousands of ventilators in weeks, we could do the same with blood testing machines.  And while in the “old days” health “detectives” had to do contact tracing, we can now do it through technology.  Yes, the health department would have to access your cell phone, and THEY would know if you had COVID, or contacted someone who did.  “BIG BROTHER IS NOW” the civil libertarians cry out, and I get their concern.

But we allow Facebook, and Google, and hundreds of other private businesses access to all of our personal concerns.  Kroger knows when I walk in the store, they tell me on my phone.  Facebook sends me ads for men’s clothing and used RV’s.  Google has my online sales records.  If we are giving all that information to them for marketing purposes, why in the world wouldn’t we give the Health Department access to our COVID-19 status?  If that’s what it takes to control this pandemic, it’s worth the “risk”.

Should we as a nation fail to test and contain, then we face a stark choice.  If we open, we make the immoral choice of sacrificing others for our financial wellbeing.  Or we stay closed, socially distanced, until we have a vaccine. 

 Then the “anti-vaxxers” can have their crazy say.

The Rose Garden

The White House Rose Garden has been a place of ultimate success.  Kennedy welcomed Alan Shepard, John Glenn and the rest of the Mercury astronauts there.  Richard Nixon’s daughter was married there. It was there that Jimmy Carter shook hands with Begin and Sadat after the Camp David Accords were signed.  President Obama trumpeted the Affordable Care Act there, and announced the recovery of an American soldier captured in Afghanistan.

So the Rose Garden is a special place for the Presidency.  And I have to admit; President Trump’s use of the Rose Garden is jarring to me even on a good day.  I know I carry the grudge, the resentment of his presence in the White House in any shape.  But his use of the Rose Garden, the place where John-John played, always seems to be a special form of defilement.

In the Times

Yesterday, President Trump used the COVID-19 crisis to launch a campaign attack against his favorite target:  the New York Times.  Not only did he literally rant for more than an hour against the Times and the rest of the Media from the podium, he even presumed that the nation should watch a televised campaign advertisement while we waited for real information on the crisis.  

He also used Dr. Anthony Fauci to “lure” us into the briefing.  Fauci went on early, telling us of his “regret” at answering a hypothetical question from that other archenemy of the President, CNN.  Fauci’s thinking with that statement is pretty clear: he used “…all his well-earned politesse…*”.  What he’s doing now is so much more important than Trumpian politics.  Fauci swallowed his honest words in order to stay on the job.  He knows the Nation needs him there, and he’s right.

We have known for a while that the President’s “daily briefs” have taken the place of the Trump campaign rallies.  He can’t go out on the road, but he can captivate millions of Americans, sheltering in place in their homes, by promising them information about the crisis, and the government’s efforts to stop the virus.  As those briefings have continued, we have heard less and less substantive information from him, just a repetition of the same litany, with various compliments to those who praise him, and insults to those who don’t.  

The Daily Disaster

 And yet we watch.  Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci have serious things to say, and even Vice President Pence shows an understanding of the seriousness of the moment.  The President does not.  He serves as what might be called “entertainment”, kind of like watching that NASCAR racer flip over and over at the finish of the Daytona 500 in what seems like decades ago (but was only February).

Monday’s wreck was pretty amazing.   Not only did he, without any regard for legality, use a government employee produced campaign video to broadcast on national free media, but he then claimed that as President, he has virtually “unlimited power” to open the country, regardless of what the state governors say.

This is from a man who has hidden behind an antiquated version of  “states’ rights Federalism” to dodge responsibility for any of the tough decisions in this crisis.  The President “let the Governors” take responsibility for closing down their states, and more importantly, has provided cover for those governors who have failed to do so.  Looming catastrophes in Florida and South Dakota are only two examples of where the President failed to take action.

It’s the Election, Stupid

But now, when the country is tiring of “social distancing” and “sheltering in place”, it’s the President who wants to take responsibility for “lifting the quarantine”.  That he might also be taking responsibility for resurgence of the corona-virus, and the need for those government body bags, is a calculated risk.  It’s all about the election.  Either he gets the economy back before Labor Day, or face overwhelming defeat.

By the way, looking at the Wisconsin results from last week, in an election done literally under the “shadow of death;” Republicans didn’t fare well.  A “liberal” Democrat defeated a Republican State Supreme Court member, one endorsed strongly by Trump.  That does not bode well for the President in that pivotal electoral state for November.

So today we wait, watching the reporters seated randomly in the Garden, looking like students serving time in in-school suspension.  The Rose Garden still looks lovely, a place of success and tranquility.  The President hasn’t come out.

Maybe it will rain.

Postscript

It didn’t rain, and the President showed up.  He found a new scapegoat – the World Health Organization.  The President got to praise half a hundred American businesses.  And he backed away from his “Kingship” – the Governors will make the call on what their states do.  

Testing is his bête noire.  If he had tested at the beginning, back in January and February, we could have contained the virus.  We did not – and because of that, the President won’t take on testing now.  He says – it’s the States’ problem. 

But the roses are still lovely.

*Postscript – Script

Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste…

Use all your well earned politesse, our I’ll lay your soul to waste –

Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones – “Hoo – Hoo”

Barn Doors

There’s an old “country” expression, it’s no good closing the barn door after the horses are out”.  The United States original strategy in dealing with the Corona-Virus was “closing the barn door”.  We tried to close our borders and stop travel from China and ultimately Europe to prevent the COVID-19 virus from getting here.  But, like the proverbial “barn door” it was too late.  The virus, perhaps in non-symptomatic travellers, was already here.

Why didn’t we know that?  Epidemiologists will tell you, if you can’t “close the barn door,” then the next step is containing the contagion.  Containment is simple:  you test until you find the infected, you contain (quarantine) those who are positive, and you trace all of their contacts.  Then you test them, and go through the entire process again.

The key to that is you have to have a test.  If you can’t test, then you are just guessing; guessing that flu-like symptoms are in fact COVID-19, and hoping that everyone who might be asymptomatic recognize they have been contacted.  If this sounds like a lot of maybes and “could be’s” it is.  The formula is simple: if you can’t test, then you don’t know.  If you don’t know, you can’t contain.

Mitigation

So what’s the third step?  You’re living it:  social isolation to slow the spread of the disease, keeping the volume down (mitigating) so that hospitals don’t get overwhelmed with patients.  COVID-19 can kill people, even those who don’t fit the age, immunity or underlying issues profile.  But many of those who might die could be saved, as long as there is hospital space, equipment and care available.   Slowing the spread, or colloquially “flattening the curve” saves those lives.

There was an alternative:  let COVID-19 “burn through” our society.  Eighty percent are likely to survive without serious consequences.  Out of the rest, many will be hospitalized, and because of the numbers crowding in, many will die.  But by letting it burn through, ultimately a large percentage of the population will have had the disease, and therefore be, at least temporarily, immune.  Then we don’t have to “social distance”, our society can go on about our economic life.  We will have “herd immunity”.  But many people will die who didn’t have to die:  they would have been sacrificed “for the common good,” the good of “the herd;” whatever that means.

Of course all bets are off when there’s a vaccine, but that’s still twelve to eighteen months away.  So whatever we’re doing, keep in mind that it isn’t forever.  An effective vaccine and we can have herd immunity, and be literally “back in the ballgame”. 

Testing –Testing –Testing

But many aren’t willing to wait for eighteen months to start life back up again.  Politically the President can’t stand for it.  He has to prove that our current economic and medical condition isn’t anything more than a temporary set back.  If he is unable show that, it’s unlikely there will be a second Trump term.  That’s a huge consideration in what decisions the President will make.

Now you could do this, by going back to step two, containment.  You have a cadre of folks who have had COVID-19, but we don’t know who they are.  Test them, and find out.  We have a group who clearly have had the disease and survived.  Certify them, and let them out.  Those that are still at risk, keep them “distanced”.  But we can’t do this by guessing, or taking temperatures at the front door of the school, or by listening for dry coughs and seeing if you can wake up and smell the coffee.  If we don’t test, then we are effectively going to a “burn through” strategy.

So “opening up” our economy without a testing regimen in place is simply “rolling the dice” and waiting for the “burn through” to start.  Then, it’s social distancing all over again.  That is, except for the bodies sacrificed so that we can say we “opened up”.  

So, now that we are building hundreds of thousands of ventilators and millions of gloves and PPE, why aren’t we producing the machines to test the hundreds of millions in our country?  We literally put “a man on the moon” and can watch a movie or do the quadratic equation on a box in our pocket:  we surely can build testing machines that can test many millions.

Why Not Test

But if you build all those testing machines, isn’t that admitting that we should have tested in the first place?  By making testing the strategy, is this an admission that we missed the opportunity to contain COVID-19 in the beginning?  And if this is that admission, then the ultimate question is:  who’s to blame?

President Trump is not interested in that conversation.  He’s not interested in testing, because it raises the question of his original response to the pandemic.  And that response is a campaign issue:  the question of the Presidential competency in the face of an existential crisis. 

But it shouldn’t really matter.  This isn’t about the election; who will be the President come November. This is all about May 1^st, three weeks from now, and the risks we are all assuming if we “open up” without the knowledge of who is sick, who is immune, and who is at risk.  If we don’t test, we know what the result will be.  We would be making a sure bet on losing lives, maybe others, maybe our own.  Either way, it’s a sure loser.

Grainy Pictures

It was a scene from a black and white 1980’s movie shot in Soviet Russia, maybe after Chernobyl.  The customers line up spaced apart, distances carefully monitored by stripes on the ground.  Almost all are wearing facemasks, and standing in singles or at most, couples: no groups, and few kids. There are no conversations; the line focuses on their carts, or their phones, or how long they have to wait.  Those few without facemasks seem outliers.  Employees monitor the lineup, determining what door, and how many, can enter.  

Inside you get your ID card, and they take a grainy black and white picture.  “Do I take off my mask?  Do I hold my breath if I do?  It seems wrong to smile.”  It really didn’t matter; the picture is so grainy the mask probably would have helped. 

The Corona Dance

In among the shelves people carefully follow the new etiquette:  a dance of six feet around each other in eight-foot aisles. Shoppers focus on the products:  what’s missing?  If they smile, you wouldn’t know, the masks screen emotion.   Someone stops to look for jalapeno peppers, the whole procession grinds to a halt.  There is no way, with the new rules, to get by without violating their space, their aura of corona.

The only normality is the employees.  Some wear masks but many don’t, seeming to live in a different reality, the time “before”.  They stand beside each other, they laugh, and they even touch.  It’s like the virus is only for the “marks”, the customers, and by virtue of their employment they are somehow granted immunity.  Wish it were so, we’d sign up.

Of course, there is no toilet paper.  The worker laughs, it’s one in the afternoon.  The toilet paper he said, what little they had, was all gone by nine.  Get in early, that’s the rule if you want toilet paper.  But there are paper towels, even goods ones, “Bounty”, in massive packages of fifteen rolls.  Better buy those now, who knows when next you’ll find them.

Toilet Paper Conspiracy

Toilet paper:  what’s the magic there?  Is the cure to COVID-19 somehow tied to Charmin?  Since the very beginning, that week before St. Patrick’s Day when the world ground to a halt, everyone has been searching for toilet paper.  Somewhere, in someone’s basement, there has to be millions of rolls of Charmin and Scott’s, sucking up all of the world’s supply.  Procter and Gamble says that there’s no change in production; that simply every roll they put on the shelves is snatched up before nine, squirrelled away in closets and shelves for the day of the toilet paper apocalypse.  

Or is the toilet paper the talisman, the signal?  Is this artificially created shortage some vast conspiracy to focus the citizenry on the reality of the COVID-19 Pandemic.  You may not get the virus: if you live in the right part of the country, you might not even know someone who does. But we all share one suffering.  We all are on an eternal and existential search for Charmin.  The bears on the commercial are a simple reminder:  you could run out, you could be “the home” that has none.  Perhaps there’s a Dark Web sage, “A-Anon” (the Alpha version of Q-Anon) who’s calling for the march to the paper aisle, creating his own version of a toilet paper Pandemic. Only those who link to Reddit know. It’s definitely mysterious.

Reaching the Door

We search the aisles.  If there’s a Starbucks’ French Roast shortage in the world, we definitely started it.  They are three-pound bags, enough coffee to get our two person-two dog household through two and a half weeks.  We bought enough to make June.

Finally we fill our cart, and grab our boxes to stuff into the car.  We line up again, waiting for the checkout.  The cashier is armored behind a newly installed Plexiglas barrier, protected from sneezes and coughs by eight feet of clear plastic.  She asks for the boxes to fill with our groceries, and stacks them at the end of the counter.  You want your groceries boxed – you do it, was her subliminal message.

I insert the card to pay the damages.  Push green for credit, push no for cash back, push green to approve the amount. Who pushed those buttons last?  Is the screen clear of virus?  Does anyone ever clean it?  Did I ever, even care about this, in the time “before”?

We take our cart, and our boxes into the parking lot.  Our masks come off, and with their removal we seem to enter a more genial reality.  We talk, we smile, we breath the cool spring air.  We get to the car, and pack our groceries into the boxes our cashier so clearly disapproved.  Then we go and use our new ID cards to fill the gas tank at twenty cents under the going price.  

Welcome to Costco.

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. – Senator Edward Kennedy, 1980 Democratic Convention Speech

Burlington, Vermont

Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent from Vermont and twice runner-up for the Democratic nomination for President, withdrew from the 2020 race this week.  He has been an avowed socialist since he won his first political office as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1980.   Even before that, he was always on the radical side of the spectrum; working in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s and serving as the statewide candidate of the “Liberty Union” party in Vermont, organized to oppose the Vietnam War.

He took his dream, and his political views, from the mayor’s office to the House of Representatives, and then across the Capitol Rotunda to the US Senate.  There has never been any subterfuge or political compromise in Bernie’s positions (with the exception of his stand on gun rights).  He takes the position that the government of the United States, either Republican or Democrat, has allowed big business, big finance, and billionaires to profit and take control at the expense of the working people.

A Failed Revolution

There is a “theory” of revolution that applies to the Sander’s candidacy.  It states that revolution doesn’t occur when people are at their lowest.  Revolution happens when folks can see that there might be hope for a brighter future, and that hope is then dashed.  Revolution, so the theory goes, is a result of frustration and desperation, not just depression.

To Sanders, the Obama Presidency represented the dashed hopes of the working class.  After decades of Presidents dedicated to improving the financial and business classes, with Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush Jr. all “in the pocket” of Wall Street, the 2008 election of Barack Obama was supposed to be the moment of existential change.  The first black President, a man with a career as a community organizer before entering politics, a campaign run on “Hope”:  all lifted the “common” Americans’ dream of a fair chance. 

But the Great Recession of 2008 meant that instead of uplifting all Americans, President Obama had to make deals with Wall Street to allow those same Americans to avoid financial destruction in Depression.  The Republican Party not only opposed Obama’s candidacy; they were willing to do anything to disrupt his Presidency.  It wasn’t about moving the country forward; it was about keeping the Democrat from any success at all.

Even in his signature piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act, the President was forced to compromise away some of the most important changes, most notably, a public option for buying insurance.  And in his second term of office, Barack Obama was forced to use executive orders to pursue his policy agenda, making them only temporary changes rather than Federal Law.  The Paris Climate Accord and action for Dreamers are two examples of this.

Hillary

In 2016 Sanders saw Hillary Clinton’s candidacy as a return to the deals of old; a Democrat who “says” the right things to the voters, but was financially tied to Wall Street and the billionaire class.  He believed that it was time for his “revolution”, and stepped out in an improbable campaign for the United States Presidency.  It was the culmination of his dream of a Social-Democratic America, and his saw Americans, and particularly the younger generation, burdened with enormous educational debt, as ready for change.

He wasn’t wrong.  Hillary Clinton was tied to the financial class, and the Democratic Party was tied to Hillary Clinton’s money.  It should have been no surprise then that the Democratic National Committee leaned towards Clinton.  That gave fuel to Bernie’s revolutionary fire, claiming that he was revolting against the Party as well as the governmental structure. But Bernie’s failure in 2016 wasn’t about the DNC.  His revolution failed to catch fire with the core constituencies of the Democratic Party, minorities.  In the end, he didn’t win in 2016 because he didn’t get the votes.

Trump

But the election of Donald Trump gave the Sanders’ revolution new hope.  Now it was no longer a contrast between a moderate Democrat and Sanders’ socialism, it was complete opposites. There was a President who claimed to be a billionaire and made no attempt to hide his affinity for big business, versus the working class.   If Hillary wasn’t enough of a “disappointment” to draw the revolution, surely Donald was.

And Sanders saw evidence of political hope in 2018.  The success of extreme Democrats against the establishment, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seemed evidence of the growing strength of the Sanders movement.  2020 might be the opportunity to change everything, and for Sanders, at seventy-eight years old, it would be his last chance to lead the revolution.

Sanders campaign was better organized, better financed, and had more participants than ever before.  His call for revolutionary change resonated with Americans who saw the Trump Presidency as a triumph of everything bad in America, and a loss of all the good.  In the early primaries of 2020, Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada; Bernie looked like the dominant candidate.  For a few days, after Nevada, the Democratic Party was faced with the vision as Bernie Sanders, Independent from Vermont, as their 2020 candidate for President.

Biden

I’m sure there are vast conspiracy theories about what happened in those four days between Nevada and South Carolina.  Somewhere on the web, I’m sure “the DNC put their thumb on the scale” to make sure Joe Biden was the winner.  But that’s not what really happened.  

Two things happened.  Democrats were willing to take anyone that could beat Donald Trump.  They saw the reality of the gamble they were taking on Bernie Sanders. It was Joe Biden, a calming, moderate Democrat, versus the Revolution.

And second was the same problem that stopped Sanders in 2016.  In the end, he couldn’t reach the core constituency of the Party.  Minorities didn’t support him, and neither did the “mainstream” Democrats in moderate states like Illinois and Michigan.  By Super-Tuesday, only ten days after the bright vision of Nevada, Biden was the prohibitive favorite.

The Dream

And whatever chance Sanders might have after that, was crushed by the crisis of pandemic.  Now there was no way to reach people, and Sanders strength on college campuses was dispersed throughout the country.  There was no way back, no way to walk into a “digital convention” in Milwaukee this summer with a delegate lead.

It was Sanders last shot.  It should be no surprise that it took him some time to adjust to this new reality.  But he ultimately did what was right for the Party, and the Country, and conceded the nomination to Biden.  Now the focus is on Trump, and the ultimate issue of the 2020 general election:  competency in the face of existential crisis.

Bernie will continue in the Senate.  His influence on the Millennial Generation is fundamental to their beliefs.  And, as Ted Kennedy said in 1980, … the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die”.

Lincoln

It was the beginning of the Civil War.  Abraham Lincoln, newly inaugurated President of the United States, knew that the Confederate target was Washington, DC.  If the newly minted Confederacy could capture the Union capital, they could end the war before it had even really started.

The states remaining in the Union were pitching in.  Ninety-day recruits from all over the nation were headed to defend the Capital.  The main route though, was through Baltimore, Maryland, and Maryland was on the verge of secession.  Mr. Lincoln determined that it was more important to protect Washington’s lifeline to the North, than it was to follow the normal Constitutional procedures of due process and habeas corpus.

The Maryland legislators who were speaking out for the Confederacy, found themselves locked in Fort McHenry, the home of the Star Spangled Banner.  When they demanded their rights under the Constitution, Roger Taney, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, ruled that only Congress could suspend the writ of habeas corpus.  Since Congress was currently not in session, the President could not hold the prisoners.  But Taney failed to actually order the President to release them (Ex parte Merryman).

So Lincoln didn’t.

Roosevelt

It was the beginning of World War II.  Pearl Harbor had been attacked, and the pride of the US Navy was sitting on the bottom of the harbor.  With the realization of the power of air attacks, Americans saw that the west coast was wide open to the Japanese.  

Many Americans fell prey to racism.  If someone looked “Japanese” then they were seen as a threat to the American way of life.  The fact that many of those Nisei, born and raised in America, were loyal to the United States didn’t stop the widespread fear.  So President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the military to “remove any and all persons from designated military areas”.  Those areas included most of coastal California, including Los Angeles and San Francisco.  112,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were taken from their homes and placed in “relocation” camps.  

In time of war, American leaders have taken extraordinary actions.  Some have proven to be historically accepted, like Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus.  Some are widely condemned, such as Roosevelt’s internment camps.  But in times of crisis, American executives have acted decisively, right or wrong.

DeWine

It was the week when the reality of COVID-19 reached us all, at least here in Ohio.  The Governor, Mike DeWine, was taking step after step, closing down activity in the state to create “social distancing” and prevent the rapid spread of the virus.  On Monday, March 16^th, he ordered the Tuesday primary election cancelled.  His argument:  that opening the polls put Ohioans at risk of spreading the virus to the voters and the poll workers both.  

A local court declared he didn’t have the power, that only the state legislature could alter the election.  So first the election was on, then it was off, then it was on again.  Then the Director of Public Health declared the election process itself a health hazard, and the election was off for good.

DeWine, and his Public Health Director Amy Acton may or may not have violated the State Constitution of Ohio.  But, like Lincoln and Roosevelt, they did what they thought was right in protecting the health of the citizens of Ohio. 

Curves

By now we all know the theory. We could have allowed the COVID-19 virus to simply “burn through” our population. We’ve seen the numbers: 80% of those who caught the virus would get sick, and then get better. The other 20% would get so sick they would need hospitalization. Some 2% of them would die. But if the 20% all hit the hospital in a short period of time, the “surge,” they would overwhelm our healthcare and many more would die from lack of care. By spreading ourselves out, “social distancing,” we could reduce the surge and flatten the curve.

There are some who say we should have just “let it happen”.  They cite “the flu” and other illnesses, and say we would reach “herd immunity” when almost everyone would be immune to the virus because they’ve already had it.  And those that aren’t immune, well, many of them would already be dead.  Our society would survive, scarred by all of the death and suffering, but not destroyed.  

In my early college days, I spent a great deal of time studying nuclear war theory.  One of the early theorists developed a concept called “acceptable losses”.  A country could “win” a nuclear war, as long as the losses weren’t so great that they unalterably destroyed the country’s ability to function.  In a United States of 150 million, that “acceptable” number was under 40 million people.  It seemed crazy in the 1970’s to read these theorists of the late 1950’s, but their ideas were still “in vogue” among some world leaders.  Luckily for all of us, many more had the common sense to realize “acceptable losses” were in fact, unacceptable.

So is the concept of just letting the virus “burn through”.  The “acceptable losses,” aren’t.

Wisconsin

They held an election in Wisconsin last night.  The Governor attempted to stop it, ordering the polls closed.  The Courts claimed he didn’t have the authority, and the state legislature refused to alter the date, or the process.  So, in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic, while the state of Wisconsin is under a “shelter in place” order, folks lined up at their polling places.  Many poll workers didn’t show up, and cities that had hundreds of polls could only open five.  

It wasn’t a “fair” election.  It was one that required folks to take risks, with their health, and some with their lives, to vote.  The Governor couldn’t find a way to stop it, and the legislature, for their own reasons, chose to let it happen.

Everyone followed the law, and the state Constitution.  On paper, everyone did the right thing.  That’s the safe way, the “black and white” rule-follower way.  It put the voters of Wisconsin in an impossible bind:  vote for your candidates, and take your life in your hands.  It required them to become “acceptable losses”.

And it was unacceptable. 

The Governor

I’m listening to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his daily press conference.   He’s personal, he’s empathetic, and he is organized.  He is letting the people of New York, and now America, know what the status of his “hot spot” state is.  He is telling us how many people are in the hospital, how many are on ventilators, how many are dying.  And most importantly, where his state is “on the curve”, and what his citizens can do to make things better.

“We didn’t lose anybody because we couldn’t provide care.  We lost people we couldn’t save,” he said.

His words are deadly serious, and he is convincing.  And though he is telling us dire news, more deaths, he is also leading New Yorkers, and really the nation, “…through this, together”.  

Blue and Red

COVID-19 spreads fastest in the tightest environment.  It is no surprise then, that the densely packed region around New York City, and Seattle, and Los Angeles, and soon New Orleans and others, are the areas that are most impacted by the virus.  That it also happens that those are “blue” regions, Democratic areas; isn’t really a surprise.   Is there an urban area in America that is “Trump Country”?  

That last sentence just led me into a research reverie.  Name a city in America that is “Trump Country”?  I found it – you can’t do “cities,” you have to do “metro-areas”.  By metro area Birmingham, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Cincinnati and Nashville “metros” are the top “Trump” vote getters in 2016. They range from 58% in Birmingham to 55% in Nashville. But that was the metro – the cities themselves (City Lab) were Democratic.

“Trump Country” is by definition not the city.  “Trump Country” is the suburbs, and the long stretches of highway between urban centers in America.  You can see the Trump flags and MAGA signs along the interstates, and flapping in the small towns and villages of our nation.  One’s across the street and down the road here in Pataskala.  They are not the “first strike” areas for the corona-virus.

Once in a Lifetime

COVID-19 should not be a political issue.  We have a nation in crisis, under a threat we haven’t faced in three generations.  It was back in 1918, when we were unsure of the mechanisms of infection and disease that we had the last world pandemic to deal with.  It was the Spanish flu then, and 675,000 Americans died. The percentage was 675000 out of 106 million, or a little more than one half of one percent of the population.  That’s six out of one thousand.  But it was near six times more than the number of Americans killed in World War I at the same time. It would be over two million dead today.

So we have only a vague collective memory of this kind of plague.  And it’s easy, sitting out in “Trump Country”, to think that it’s someone else’s problem.  Here in Licking County there are numbers too:  fifty-seven confirmed cases, nine hospitalized, two dead.  Small when compared to New York: easy to ignore, or worse, to blame.  Is the corona-virus crisis creating just one more “Blue v Red” division in our nation?  We now are finding that the current epidemic is impacting African-Americans at a greater rate than white Americans, is that just one more wedge prying us apart?

The American Way

It’s not that here in Pataskala we aren’t following “the rules”.  We are socially distanced, isolated from our neighbors and community.  The street conversations now take place from either side, voiced across the stretch, rather than a huddle in the middle.  The five in the morning traffic is way down, people working from home, or perhaps not working at all.  And the kids, all pent up in their homes “going to school” in a way that seems an awful lot like ten tons of homework, are for the most doing their part.  Not many “groups” wandering, even the “Huffy bike” gang can’t be found.

But you wonder if the blue and red difference in the emergency might just wedge our national divide wider.  It would be easy for one side or the other to claim “righteousness”.  It might not even be from the campaigns, but maybe worse, just a social media trend.

Let’s hope not.  America is in one-time a lifetime crisis, hopefully the last of this kind.  There will be enough blame to pass around once it’s over, but for now, we should share in the suffering and pain of our fellow citizens.  

It’s the American thing to do.

Back to School

Sometimes I have to be a history teacher.  I remember it was in week two of American Government class that we discussed “Federalism.”  Lets go back to High School and analyze the Constitution and our governmental structure.

 We hear a lot of talk today about “Federalism”.  The President says he isn’t intervening in the various state responses to the corona-virus crisis because of “Federalism”.  He claims that it is the state government’s responsibility to react, not the National government.  The National government is only there for “support”.   You hear Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, and Vice President Pence saying the same things – perhaps to “get along” with the President.

Countries around the world are confused by this American response.  In so many ways we act as “one nation” (under God, indivisible) in the eyes of the world.  We respond as the US Army, not State armies.  We trade as the US government, not California and Rhode Island.  And we control our borders, and much of our national financial life as a nation, not single state units.  From the outside, the United States seems to be responding in a fragmented, disassociated and confused manner. That doesn’t occur with most issues.

One Nation

We have all heard the phrase, “…one sovereign nation of fifty sovereign states.”  It all goes back to the years after the American Revolution, and the nature of  “the deal” made between the former colonies when they organized together.

The original organizing document, the Articles of Confederation, was a “weak central government” document.  The power, most notably the power to raise money through taxation, was granted to the states, not the central government.  So, when the Revolutionary armies were in the field, begging for resources, the Second Continental Congress was in Philadelphia (after the British left) begging the states for money.

And while the armies won the Revolution, as much in spite of the Congress than because of it, the weaknesses of Confederation became even more glaring as they attempted to make a nation.  Thirteen kinds of money, thirteen forms of taxation, thirteen border regulations:  it made it impossible for the nation to function, or ultimately, to survive.

Hot Summer in Philly

The “Founding Fathers” gathered in Philadelphia to fix the problem.  They weren’t necessarily doing it out of the goodness of their hearts; they were planters and traders, ship owners and merchants, and they directly felt the economic impact of the failure to unify.  So, without any mandate to do so, they undertook the writing of a new governing document “out of whole cloth” instead of revising the Articles.

They wrote the Constitution, carefully compromised to create a powerful but carefully limited Federal government.  From the very first words, “We The People” they bypassed the powerful state government structures.  They spoke of making, “…a more perfect union,” one that could govern a nation, not a squabbling bunch of states.

And at the end, in Article VI of the seven-article original, they put the following words:

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

What the Founding Fathers couldn’t do in ink, Abraham Lincoln copied in blood.  The American Civil War was the final arbiter of “state’s rights”.   The “National Supremacy” that was agreed to in Philadelphia, was set in the stone markers in the military cemeteries of Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg and Petersburg.

A Federation

We as a nation have established that every citizen eighteen years or older, man, woman, black, white, has the right to vote.  We have established a national speed limit, from time to time.  Those of us who “can’t drive fifty-five” remember it well (who would think you could quote James Madison and Sammy Hagar in the same piece).  We control opioid drugs, and we set national pollution standards.  In fact, the Federal government is right now suing California for setting more stringent standards than the rest of the nation.

There is nothing about “federalism,” nothing about the Constitution that would prevent the President of the United States and the Congress from acting in the face of this existential crisis.  Could the President quarantine the nation?  With the cooperation of Congress, he could.  Could he order folks to shelter in place, or declare national martial law?  If the corona-virus doesn’t fit the concept of “invasion,” spreading death and destruction throughout the land, what would?  And if there is no other wording that satisfies the need to take a National stand – how about these:

“To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution”. Art 1 – Section 8

Would could be more “necessary and proper” than a NATIONAL response to this existential crisis.  We need not hide behind “Federalism” to put the “blame” or responsibility on the Governors and States.  Our Federal government has the power, authority, and obligation to act.

Our Finest Hour

It’s the spring of the corona-virus.  We will remember this as a checkmark in history.  Where were you on 9-11, and when did you find out about the Challenger disaster?  And now what did you do during the Corona-Virus, and inevitably, who did you lose.  The Queen is speaking to the United Kingdom tonight, probably paraphrasing Winston Churchill:  

“… Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’”.

The United Kingdom, the United States, and much of the rest of the world, are facing the existential crisis that we always feared.  We are challenged by an easily spread disease that will kill a large number of people.  It has shut our economies down, and is overwhelming our healthcare systems.  Some nations are dealing with it better than others, but every nation is faced with fear; fear of a hidden threat that cannot be seen, heard, or cured.

Politics as Usual

But here in the United States, the political agenda continues despite the disease.  It might seem like a time to let other controversies go by, to unite against the common, as the President says, “invisible enemy”.  Here in Ohio, we’ve found a way to do so, uniting around a Governor and a Health Director who are solely focused on “flattening the curve”. Governor DeWine he has largely set his political agenda aside.  He is working to be Governor of all Ohioans, not just Republican Ohioans.  

The same cannot be said about President Trump.  This week, while we have struggled to watch the daily press briefing, wondering whether to wear facemasks like Dr. Fauci said, or ignore the need like the President; the Trump Administration has continued to pursue their unique political agenda.

Revenge Campaign

The next victim of the Impeachment “revenge” campaign fell on Friday.  Michael Atkinson, the Intelligence Inspector General who notified Congress of the “Whistleblower’s Complaint” that triggered the impeachment inquiry was told that his “services” were no longer required.  Atkinson followed the letter of the Whistleblower Law, but was still sacked.  He joins several other members of the Intelligence Community, including the acting Director of National Intelligence, to be removed because the Trump Administration suspects them of “disloyal” actions toward the President.  

It’s not just about the spectacle of “revenge”.  It’s also the loss of the “best and brightest”, the non-partisan government workers who have the “knowledge” to guide our foreign actions.  They’re being weeded out, and not surprisingly, some of them are the foremost experts on Ukraine and Russia.  But the didn’t pass the Presidential “loyalty” test, so they’re gone.

More Pollution

The Administration also pushed ahead with their plans to allow increase, yes you read that correctly, increase polluting emissions for cars.  They claim it will make cars cheaper so more Americans can buy new vehicles, stimulating the economy, but, it is a direct contradiction of past Presidents’ policies. 

“The Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule will increase carbon dioxide emissions standards for the nation’s automakers by 1.5% a year through model year 2026”. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, wife to Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, stated: “By making newer, safer, and cleaner vehicles more accessible for American families, more lives will be saved and more jobs will be created” (NPR).

Closing The Border

Meanwhile the President’s Acting Homeland Security Secretary has stopped processing immigrants at the Southern border.  Illegal immigrants can no longer claim “asylum” and gain their legal rights, they are simply shipped back to wherever they came from.  While this violates a previous Federal Court order, Secretary Wolf claims this is in response to directives from the Centers for Disease Control. 

This is occurring, even though there is no evidence that corona-virus infection is occurring among illegal immigrants.  In fact, Mexico, where the immigrants are coming from to cross the border, has only 1890 confirmed cases of corona-virus, versus the United States with 311637 (as of 4/5/20).

Restricting the Vote

And in our “new world” of corona-virus, the President and many other Republicans continue to demand that elections go on like “normal”.  In fact, the President himself spoke out against voting by mail, stating that people need to “line up” and vote in person, with photo ID’s.

The Democratic Governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, asked the Wisconsin state legislature to allow voters extended time to get and return absentee ballots, but the Republican controlled body refused to do so.  Currently Wisconsin intends to continue to vote on April 7^th, with open polling stations in violation of the Governor’s own current “shelter in place” order.  Many stations have lost their poll workers, unwilling to risk the exposure, so what will actually happen is still unknown.  

But in general, the President and the Republican Party (with some notable exceptions) have firmly stood against expanded mail voting, claiming election security concerns. This is despite the fact that it was the Republican Party in North Carolina who committed the biggest absentee fraud of the past several years.  But since mail voting tends to increase voter turnout, and the Republican Party takes the stand the increased voting is “bad” for their Party, they continue to impede voter rights, even in this corona-virus environment.

The biggest threat to the Trump Presidency is voter turnout in November.  Whatever restricts the ability of people to cast their vote, whether it is the corona-virus restrictions, or onerous voter identification laws, the campaign sees them as helping Mr. Trump win in 2020. 

So while we are all focused on the world pandemic, the Trump agenda is still moving forward.  Don’t miss it.

Track Meets

Got up early this morning – had to get a workout in before “online” school began.  I stepped outside to take the trash to the street.  It was cold, clear, with stars in the sky, and the hint of a much warmer day to come.  It was a “track meet” day in early April.  The kids would have to do more warm-up to get going for the early races in the cool, but it would heat up enough by finals to run fast, throw far and jump high.  I’m an old track coach:  it’s not too often I miss track meets to my core, but this morning it was a “track meet day”.   I went back into my elliptical machine and “Morning Joe”, back to our world of COVID-19 and desperate pleas from New York. 

There’s no track meet today, not here, not anywhere.

Command

Desperate pleas might be the theme today.  The Captain of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt was fired yesterday.  Corona-virus was moving through his crew of 5000 sailors, and he was desperate to find a way to separate the infected from the well.  Obviously, his “chain of command” wasn’t responding to his requests, and he wrote an email to a wider spread of the Naval commanders. 

One of the first rules of military command structure, is don’t go out of your “chain”, and even more, don’t make your superior officers look bad.  But there’s another rule of command.  As Captain of the ship, you are fully and ultimately responsible for what happens.  You can’t push it onto a junior officer and you can’t share the blame.  Captain Crozier knew full well that his career was in jeopardy by pushing for a solution to the problem.  But he also knew full well the burden of command.  His sailors were more important to him than his career.  So he paid the price, and took care of the problem.

They gave him a standing ovation as he left the hanger deck.

Desperation

Mayor Bill DeBlasio of New York is desperate.  He’s looking at the burgeoning crisis:  the hospitals are filling, the medical personnel are worn thin, and he only has enough ventilators to cover through Monday.  That’s this Monday, three days from now.  After that, medical personnel will have to begin choosing who gets to live and who gets to die.

DeBlasio is begging the military:  mobilize the military medical professionals and send them to New York.  The doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists tnere are overwhelmed, and tired.  Many are sick, and some are sick from the corona-virus they are constantly exposed to.  Some have gone from caregivers to care-needers.  And some have died.

They too cannot bear up for much longer without help.  

Oh Captain!!

The Mayor knows that his demands are going out of “the chain of command”.   Even if his oft-political rival the Governor joins him, the President is already on the record as saying New York “has enough”.  Mr. Trump was immediate in responding to New York Senator Schumer’s statement yesterday morning.  It’s like the President wants New York’s leaders to beg, and when they do, he still doesn’t respond.  

Governor Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio don’t often agree, but on this issue they are on the same page.  We need a Federal “strike force”, a militarized medical team that can “fly” into the crisis with personnel, equipment, and experience.  They need them in New York today, and for the next couple weeks.  Then they’ll need them in other places, in Detroit and New Orleans, in Miami and in Texas.  They are needed to supplement the local caregivers, to take up the overload.

It’s not a job anyone would want, but it’s one that needs to be done.  And the need for it will occur over and over as the “waves” sweep over our nation.  It’s a desperate measure, but it’s a desperate time.

Some day it will be track meet weather again.  And some day we’ll get to run.  But right now, we ALL have to be together to fight this fight, not as a city or a state, but as a nation of one.  Send in the strike force.  Make this a national war against pandemic.  Mr. President, take command.

Here’s Don Henley – The Heart of the Matter

Un-Prepared

Right are wrong, the United States wasn’t ready for the corona-virus crisis.  We weren’t prepared to test, or isolate, or trace the contacts back to the source.  In December, January and February, when we could have made a difference in the national impact of the virus, we didn’t.

It’s not a matter of blame, at least not now when we are in the center of the storm.  Someday, probably in the fall, when we can go back and argue and fight each other, there will be plenty of time of establish blame, and more importantly, responsibility.  But now we need to do whatever we have to do to save lives, and prevent corona-virus from taking millions instead of hundreds of thousands.  We have to isolate everyone, and be socially-distant.  We need to stay home.  That is the only choice we have left to make.

But the argument over testing isn’t over.  We will need testing to get through the next crisis, the one we expect to hit after this initial fire has burned through our society.  Come September or October, it is likely that the virus will rise again.  We won’t have a vaccine yet, and while our hospitals will be far too familiar with treating the disease, we still won’t have a cure either.  

Test or Not

With testing, we can do what we couldn’t do in February and March.  We can find out who has it, and isolate them.  We can find out who had it before, and, assuming (only an assumption, not a fact) that they have immunity for some period of time, we can let them go out in society.  And we can protect the most vulnerable from getting this second round of infection.

Testing then, is the heart of the matter.  The ability to test for the virus, and for immunity to the virus, is vital to controlling round two, and maybe rounds three and four.  Absent a vaccine, testing is the only way we can control the virus, and get back to the lives we used to live before, when we thought of Corona as a Mexican beer with lime, not a possible death sentence.

But there are partisan politics still surrounding the resources needed for testing.  Sure we have to test, but so much is aimed at today’s treatment needs, modalities and possible vaccines.  And “testing” seems to equal “failure” in the minds of the Trump Administration.  They may be right, but it so much more important now then whether they did or didn’t do the right thing while they were laser focused on fending off impeachment and running for re-election.  So we, both Democrats and the President, should put blame on the shelf, for now, and test.

Proof

It’s already happening in the world.  South Korea “beat” the virus by intense testing and isolating.  Sweden is gambling that they can do the same, eschewing social distancing and closures, instead testing, tracing, and isolating both the sick and the vulnerable.  So far, so good, though they are a nation of “lab rat” test subjects.

Even here in the United States, isolated areas are trying to test their way out of the disease.  San Miguel County in Colorado, home to the city of Telluride and the extravagant ski resorts in Mountain Village; chased the skiers and the part time residents away.  Then they tested the rest, trying to keep the town safe by isolating the sick.  In their hidden valley surrounded by snow-covered mountains, maybe they can make it work.  But most of the nation doesn’t have the geographical advantages that controls access, and so can’t “hide” from contamination.

Test to Normalcy

Americans are dreaming of going back to normal.  They want to go to a bar, or a ballgame, or bowling.  Parents want their kids back in school (oh boy do they) and kids are thinking (to themselves) they want back in school as well.  We hear schools talk about “next fall” and football, as if everything will be “OK”.  But it won’t be, unless we find a way to test everyone, and control what’s happening.   

And from a purely political sense, we need testing to guarantee an election in November.  We need testing to determine whether we get to choose the next President of the United States, and who should control the House and the Senate and the state governments.  And since that now means who controls our basic survival, it is beyond important.  It is the heart of the matter.  We must test.