Health Care/Joan Retsinas

Trump’s Virus Strategy: Blinders

If we don’t see it, it isn’t there. If we ignore it, it isn’t there. This President’s strategy against COVID: blinders. nnThe scenes from Republican Convention showcased mask-less people sitting close to each other, yelling, clapping. At one point a maskless Rudy Giuliani wiped his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief. The Rose Garden was replete not just with roses, but with virus particles floating through the air, alighting upon the Ever-Trumpers.

Of course, those pesky mortality and morbidity numbers that keep mounting make it hard to ignore the virus. The solution: take away the tests. Limit tests to people who have symptoms, even though the nation’s scientists (outside the White House) have stressed 1) that asymptomatic, or most likely presymptomatic, people can carry and transmit the virus, and 2) that testing is the only way to know whom to isolate, whom to treat. The Governors, fearing an influx of patients to stresed hospitals, have urged tests; but not the blinder-President.

As for social distancing — what a downer! It is a constant reminder that the virus spreads. The solution: stop the distancing. Embrace each other. Party. Sit close to one another. Open up bars, restaurants, beaches. All those limitations designed to tamp down the spread of the virus are glum: get rid of those limitations; and you can forget the virus. Be happy.

Downplay the impact of the virus. Most victims do recover — remind everybody of that. Of course, some don’t recover quickly; the Centers for Disease Control calls them “long haulers,” people whose symptoms dog them long after the virus has left their bodies. Up to one-third of people with the virus who are not hospitalized suffer for weeks, often months.

A return to “normal” means that children return to school. We don’t know how vulnerable children are to the virus, or how easily children transmit the virus. But never say: “we don’t know.” Instead, proclaim the impact as minimal. Send your Secretary of Education out to tell schools to open, without acknowledging the risk to students, teachers, and parents, without acknowledging that some urban schools cannot ventilate their aged structures, cannot reduce class sizes to anything close to 15, cannot bus children safely without doubling the number of buses. Ignore the physical layout of the hallways, cafeterias and auditoriums that architects never designed for “social distancing”.

Brag about some sure-fire cures. Clorox. Hydroxychloroquine. Oleander extract. The latest tout: plasma from victims who have recovered. The head of the FDA proclaimed the wonders - until legions of scientists criticized the decision; and the FDA head pulled back on his enthusiasm. Plasma has not been proven in clinical trials; in fact, making it more available lessens the possibility that it will enter clinical trials. As the country rushes into “cures” with no clinical supporting evidence, we bypass the studies that might lead to genuine cures. But that reality is a downer.

Promise a vaccine. No scientist believes that — poof! — we will have an effective vaccine, with no major side effects, by the end of the year. Vaccines take time not just to develop, but to test. A worst case scenario: a vaccine with grievous side effects. But if you speak to the eternal optimists among your base, those who believed you four years ago when you promised to revitalize the coal industry in this country, they may believe your promise of a rapid vaccine.

Sadly, blinders will not stop the virus. It will simply stop us from overcoming it. Indeed, it thrives even more when people wear blinders, as though stupidity is a fertilizer for the virus’s spread.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2020

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