Health Care/Joan Retsinas

COVID Oxymorons from the President

Oxymorons. You remember the classics: cruel kindness, deafening silence, clearly confused. nnThis president has given us a new one: Presidential Wisdom. The words don’t jibe, even though he pontificates on the White House Lawn. We expect presidents to spout facts, give honest appraisals of crises, offer well-reasoned advice. Instead, we get gibberish tweets.

Here are a few examples.

Clorox Medicine. Clorox, Lysol, et al., disinfect countertops. Why not disinfect your innards? People close to the president discounted the wisdom. Physicians and scientists admonished against it. Poison control centers initially got queries: Should we? What should we do if we did? The folks at all the disinfecting cleaners now urge up front, on their web-sites: Do not Ingest. Clorox Medicine: it sounds almost plausible, but isn’t.

Unnecessary Testing. The president has asserted: We have more than enough tests; and not everybody needs to be tested anyway. Experts disagree. Some people without symptoms will carry the virus: we won’t know until we test a lot more people, including people who are asymptomatic. It is hubris to assume that if I feel fine, I have escaped the virus, or that I will not transmit it. The recent report of false negatives in some COVID tests has revealed the flaws in the private sector’s Presidentially-touted aray of products. We need more tests, more reliable tests, not fewer. Another oxymoron: unnecessary testing.

A Rapid-Development Vaccine. We can develop lots of stuff rapidly, but medicines? Presidential bluster, much less promises, will not make it happen. Development of a drug proceeds through stages. Scientists must demonstrate that a vaccine works, at what dose, with what contraindications, and with what risks. Once they develop the optimal vaccine, they must figure out a way to manufacture it quickly enough, and distribute it. “Rapid-development vaccines” reflect a naive, politically-motivated optimism. Another oxymoron.

Disgruntled Whistle-Blowers. Whistle-blowers are supposed to alert the public to excesses, as well as malfeasance, in government operations. An honest whistle-blower will speak truth to power. Consider the politically-motivated rush to praise hydroxychloroquine as a treatment. When the whistleblower from the CDC told Congress of the dangers of the drug, as well as the dangers of diverting money for continued tests, the president mocked him, questioned his competence, his loyalty. To date, the president has shelved other whistle-blowers. Whistle blowers who do their jobs are not disgruntled, but conscientious. The notion of a “loyal whistle-blower” is an oxymoron.

A Presidential Hunch. Scientists have hunches, borne from years of research, that lead to a hypothesis, testing, data-gathering, and reformulation of the hypothesis. We respect those hunches. With no inkling of science, this president has a “hunch” that the virus will disappear; we should give it no credence.

A Political Virus. A paranoid president considers this virus political, buoyed by his opponents. But Democrats did not cause the morbidity or mortality spikes. The press coverage of the virus is not a political ploy by his enemies. The governors shutting down their states are not acting against him personally, but against a biological entity that has wreaked havoc over most ot the globe, with no political agenda. “Political virus” — one more oxymoron.

False Data. The president may not like the health numbers: number of hospitalizations, number of deaths, number tested. He fears the economics-numbers: the number filing for unemployment, the rise of debt, the threat of defaults. But labelling them “false,” or broadcast by his enemies, will not deny the data.

Studies as political hit jobs, enemy statements. The president has mastered ad hominem attacks, lashing out at reporters for asking the questions they are paid to ask, lashing out at veterans, Democrats, women … now university studies. When Columbia University reported that, with earlier social distancing, we might have saved 63,000 lives, he lambasted the “liberal” university. When the National Institute of Health reported that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, he called the study an enemy statement.

Victory over the Virus. We are living in semi-isolation, gingerly venturing out as summer approaches, yet warily fearful that a data-setback will send us back into semi-isolation. The president can declare victory, but the current modus operandi marks not victory, but accommodation to a virus that we haven’t yet tamped down. Our leaders should be humble: the virus remains more robust than our rhetoric. One more oxymoron.

“Incredibly” inane wisdom: the ultimate oxymoron.

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

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2020

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