The teachings of a virus
“In war, truth is the first casualty.” ― Aeschylus
In 1976, Ronald Reagan popularized a noxious meme when he said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” He was not the first to say something similar, but he was the one who made it a rallying cry for the Republican party to advance its corporatist agenda and war against the poor and the middle class. The extent to which this notion is now rooted in the collective subconscious of the nation has been put to the test with the coronavirus crisis, and we are seeing its disastrous results. The government is here, but it’s not helping much.
Now, the American people need the government more than ever to overcome this pandemic and mitigate its devastating effects on the economy. Because of the distrust of government promoted by the Republicans since the Reagan era and perfected by Trump during the past three years, however, it has been difficult to even convince the public that we are facing a severe crisis. Trump and his minions have lied about it repeatedly, sowing doubt among the president’s followers. The country is now infected with another dangerous virus: medical misinformation.
This new virus strain also originated in China and spread to other authoritarian states such as Iran and Russia, but it soon infected Trump himself, who gave it to others in his administration. China and Iran muzzled doctors who tried to warn about the coronavirus, downplayed the number of cases and deaths as the epidemic progressed, and inflated the success of their containment efforts. Consequently, the virus spread faster and more widely than if these governments had told the truth. Russia’s agents, who have weaponized disinformation at home and abroad, are also spreading a conspiracy theory that the virus was bioengineered by the CIA. China added the farfetched claim that U.S. military personnel introduced the virus in Wuhan.
With his coronavirus statements, Trump may have already exceeded the 16,000-lie mark in his first three years in office. He originally alleged that the coronavirus was a “new hoax” perpetrated by the Democrats, then refused to be tested and publicly broke every rule of prevention recommended by the Centers for Disease Control, until eventually he got tested – never mind the hoax. Like the Chinese and Iranians, he downplayed the number of cases as the epidemic progressed, and claimed it was contained or no worse than the regular flu. At one point, his then acting chief of staff, Dick Mulvaney, claimed the media was reporting on the virus only to attack Trump. “The reason you’re seeing so much attention to [the coronavirus] today is that they think this is going to be the thing that brings down the president,” he told a group of conservatives. Last week, Sean Hannity parroted on his syndicated talk show a crazy theory he found on Twitter about what is truly happening. The coronavirus is a “fraud” by the deep state to spread panic in the populace, manipulate the economy and suppress dissent, he said. The Fox Business anchor Trish Regan went further, telling viewers that the worry over coronavirus “is yet another attempt to impeach the president.”
Continuing the administration’s attempts to gaslight the American public, on February 25th Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow said that the containment was “close to airtight.” The next day, Trump claimed that “in a couple of days, [the contagion] is going to be down close to zero.” On March 1st he assured us that “everything is really under control.” On March 6th, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway stated categorically that “it’s contained.” And on March 10th, Trump affirmed that “everything is going to be OK.” All irresponsible and deadly lies.
A March 9th Quinnipiac poll results should not be surprising. It found that Democrats are the most concerned about the virus, saying 68 – 31 percent they are very or somewhat concerned, followed by independents who say 57 – 43 percent they are very or somewhat concerned. Republicans are the least concerned, saying 63 – 35 percent they are not so concerned or not concerned at all. A recent Reuters poll also found that roughly four in 10 Democrats believed the coronavirus was an imminent threat, but only two in 10 Republicans felt the same way. It is ironic that Trump supporters tend to be older and therefore more vulnerable to the virus.
In the past, LGBT people have been the scapegoats du jour during some widespread pandemics. Ronald Reagan, who was president when the AIDS epidemic was detected, did not seriously raise the issue until seven years after it started spreading in the United States. At the time, many conservatives discounted AIDS as a disease of gay and bisexual men, and Pat Buchanan, Reagan’s Chief of Communications, argued that AIDS was nature’s “awful retribution” and did not deserve a thorough and compassionate response. Later, the right-wing extremist “Reverend” Jerry Falwell took it to another level: “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals. It is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals,” he said. Another religious figure, the conservative and authoritarian Pope Benedict XVI, issued a dire warning in 2012 that allowing marriage for same-sex couples would “undermine the family, threaten human dignity, and the future of humanity itself.” He called non-heterosexual behavior “a destruction of God’s work.” Eight years later, gay marriage is legal in the United States and dozens of other countries, and the family, human dignity, and humanity itself are none the worse for it.
This virus is teaching us is that truth definitely matters and is particularly important when it in matters of life and death. No one knows how many more deaths and how much more suffering resulted from Reagan’s, Pat Buchanan’s, Jerry Falwell’s, and Benedict XVI’s take on the AIDS epidemic and gay life. And no one knows how many more deaths and how much more suffering will result from Trump’s misinformation, delayed response to the crisis, and general ineptitude. Of course, his main concern has been, as always, what is best for him. For weeks, he has kept looking at the oscillations of the stock market and how the crisis might affect his reelection. In a recent press conference, he even expressed concern about allowing the passengers of the cruise ship Grand Princess to disembark in San Francisco because some were infected. “I like the numbers being where they are,” he said, shamelessly acknowledging his political concerns about the outbreak: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”
Another teaching is that it’s impossible to isolate a country such as the United States. We have seen that neither Trump’s “beautiful” wall in the southern border, nor travel restrictions, can prevent the spread of a virus that respects no national boundaries. The whole world is too interconnected and our economies in particular depend on transnational supply chains and the movement of goods and people.
We also face a double whammy: our health care system is woefully inadequate to deal with emergencies of this nature, and our immigration laws are irrational. Limited access to employer-sponsored insurance and eligibility restrictions prevent immigrants from participating in Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Affordable Care Act marketplaces (Obamacare). If you are feeling ill and you are uninsured or underinsured, where do you get tested and how do you pay for it? If you are an undocumented immigrant living in the shadows, do you risk going to a clinic or hospital and getting picked up by ICE to be deported? Isn’t in everybody’s interest to make sure everyone is healthy or can obtain medical attention, so they don’t infect other people and remain productive members of society?
Even if you don’t get ill, what are you going to do if you lose your job or small business? A proposal is moving through Congress as I write this, but the administration is pushing the idea of still more tax cuts and industry bailouts that will do little to help ordinary people. Democrats claim their proposals are focused more on helping workers, health care providers, schools, and senior citizens. Senators Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton have called for the federal government to just send checks directly to Americans across the country, and former Obama administration economist Jason Furman is lobbying congressional Democrats to adopt similar proposals. The people’s bailout, however, would have to be massive and long-lasting. The proposals under consideration for income replacement are grossly insufficient. Besides, even if direct payments were approved, it would take months to deliver them to those who need them.
The House already passed a package with paid sick leave, unemployment insurance, money for food stamps, free coronavirus testing and more. That legislation must still pass the Senate after the House approved “technical corrections” that actually scaled back the sick leave provisions. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sent senators home for recess and reportedly returned to Kentucky himself before the House passed the bill, which delayed the process by four days and highlighted the dysfunction infecting this legislative body.
As to Reagan’s warning, it should be apparent to everyone that a capable government has a critical role to play in the lives of all citizens. For decades, however, the extreme right has been trying to cripple it. As political kingmaker Grover Norquist said in 2004, the goal is to “cut government in half in twenty-five years, to [then] get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” This achievement may leave the billionaire ruling class free to better exploit workers and get away with polluting the planet, but it doesn’t work well for the welfare of the people. We need a government of the right size, as well as a president who doesn’t lie whenever he opens his mouth, a Congress to pass progressive laws that protect the health and welfare of all people, and competent institutions guided by science instead of extreme right wing conspiracy theories.
The administration’s response to the pandemic has some parallels to that of the autocratic regimes in Russia, China and Iran. But Trump has demonstrated that he doesn’t need to explicitly muzzle the experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or falsely accuse the press of disseminating “fake news,” as he does constantly. To undermine politically damaging information about a public health crisis, he has deployed what has been called “censorship through noise.” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former Chief Strategist, described this tactic in more colorful terms: “Flood the zone with shit.” This sort of propaganda blizzard consists in overwhelming people with so many lies, contradictory claims, conspiracy theories, what-abouts, and distortions that they simply throw up their hands in confusion and exhaustion. This is the technique Trump uses in all aspects of political life and perhaps the worst disease of all. As in war, truth has been the first casualty of the coronavirus crisis.
The American people are sick of this fog of mendacity, and the only cure on the horizon is to quarantine Patient Zero permanently back in Mar-a-Lago on November 6th – if there is actually an election, which remains to be seen.
