Who's Screwing Up Our Reopening?

It’s like sailing.

Reopening during the pandemic involves understanding water, wind, and sails, then tacking as accurately as we can toward port (protection) and starboard (profit) in turn.

Staying closed has had huge economic and social costs. Learning more about this virus helps governments chart reasonable courses – and citizens analyze risks and act prudently.

Closing was essential to “flatten the curve,” minimizing deaths and preserving health resources. Now we should be reopening. Sensibly.

We know how. We know this virus spreads mostly through the air, although surfaces also can infect us. We know that infected people are most dangerous in the 2-3 days right before symptoms start. If an infected person sneezes, coughs, shouts, or sings at you, s/he could infect you quickly. Even talking quietly across a restaurant table, we’re vulnerable to infected droplets reaching our lungs. 

 

We know masks, physical distance, and limiting exposure to others are critical. Studies show that where most people wear masks, COVID-19 cases drop sharply. The less we go out, the less we’re face-to-face with people or in crowds, the more we wear masks and wash hands, and the fewer surfaces we touch, the better our odds to avoid getting or spreading the virus. 

 

I wear a mask because I could endanger not just myself but my wife, my high-risk, diabetic friend, and my radio producer’s 95-year-old father. Even my dog. Protecting others ain’t unmanly! Nor is this pandemic a plot concocted by George Soros or Bill Gates. 

 

Other countries are reopening. But in states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona, reopening has meant spikes in cases and deaths. 

 

What stands in the way of safely re-opening theaters is that this got politicized. Donald Trump wanted nothing to do with a pandemic, so he dismissed it as a plot by the Democrats or the Chinese. None of us wanted to close down, but Trump made a political cause out of staying open – while denying the facts. That works in politics, but you can’t con a virus. 

 

Imagine a U.S. President stating in February, “This new virus from China is highly unfortunate, but dangerous. It will spread. If we all listen to health experts, act prudently, and think as ‘We’ not ‘I,’ we’ll get through it, as Americans pulled together to get through wars and disasters.” Had that happened, tens of thousands of dead U.S. citizens would be alive today. Most of my generation would be paralyzed (or limping badly) had Trump, not Eisenhower, been president in 1955, and said polio was a Communist hoax and we could cure it by drinking Listerine. Ike said, “I’m not a scientist, but . . .”

This is not political. As Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said this week, “Unfortunately this simple lifesaving practice has become part of a political debate that says if you're for Trump, you don't wear a mask. . . . The president should occasionally wear a mask. . . [Trump has] “millions of admirers. They would follow his lead.” 

Tragically, current record levels of infection and death are plaguing mostly states with Republican governors. (This week Texas imposed mandatory mask-wearing.)

I’ve been saying that Trump, not our Governor, is endangering our economic reopening. This week Goldman Sachs reported on a study showing that people not wearing masks are hurting our economy to the tune of 5% of our GNP.

City, county, and state should force businesses to require safe practices – for everyone’s good.

                                                  – 30 -- 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 5 July 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website KRWG's website.  A radio version will air during the week, both on KRWG and on KTAL, 101.5 FM (www.lccommunityradio.org ) and will be available shortly on demand at KWEG's site.  (Tough as our times are, I urge everyone to contribute to both radio stations, which both do a great deal for our community.]


[As if to illustrate Trump's disconnectedness from any kind of Presidential response to this crisis: in a week when the nation and many states and cities were setting scary new records of new COVID-19 cases, and even his vice-president and his allies such as the governors of Florida and Texas are beginning to face some facts and urge or mandate mask-wearing and other protective steps, Trump had an unnecessary gathering at Mt. Rushmore, in the reflected glory of men who acted like leaders in national crises, where people ignored masks and physical distancing while they shouted with Mr. Trump.  Telling folks at home by his conduct as well as his misleading words (that 99% of the infections are "Totally harmless") not to worry.   
He is so out to lunch that by the time he gets back his building will have been demolished and replaced by a parking lot.  But one-liners won't mitigate the actual damage he is doing by telling people it's just fine to gather close to each other maskless -- or go to restaurants or the farmers' market maskless.
Meanwhile the Republican Mayor of Miami, the Republican Governors of Texas and Florida, are belatedly struggling desperately to put out serious fires.  Trump, who also said Friday, "We have learned how to put out fires," ought to share that knowledge.] 

 
[Fact is, Trump has no clue, his fiddling during the fire has cost lives, and yet he continues to fiddle away instead of taking appropriate action.  Per a "TheHill" story this morning:

Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease specialist, is attributing the spike to two underlying factors. First, he noted that many states opted to reopen while new cases were at a plateau, whereas other countries remained locked down until they demonstrated sharp reductions in new infections. Second, the U.S. was much more lenient than other countries in allowing social activities during the virus’s early spread, he said, even in the states that adopted the most stringent measures
"That allowed the perpetuation of the outbreak that we never did get under very good control,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the BBC recently. 

[The blame is not wholly Donald Trump's, by any means; and this was a tough enemy to fight; but others, including his allies, have learned a little from experience.  Others also lacked his position: no one else could have set and sold a sensible national policy; no one else could have so effectively encouraged masses of people to ignore, like lemmings, his own atministration's warnings -- or encouraged them to follow those.]
[And don't miss the fact that New Mexico's cases are very much on the rise -- as our Doña Ana County's, specifically.  The past two daily reports counted 257 and 291 new cases in New Mexico, both records, and 40 and 56 in Doña Ana County.  Not long ago when I was reading such information daily on  the radio, state numbers were usually 100-150 and county numbers often in single digits.  Please be attentive to your surroundings!]