Stop Trump's Genocide Against America

As Trump, state governors, and other world leaders callously and selfishly send us back to school and work, experts are predicting that the Covid-19 pandemic will last another 18 months to 2 years, until 60-70% of the population has been infected and developed some degree of immunity. This prediction is similar to what we saw with the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.

In the United States, where there are 328.2 million people, that would translate into at least 197 million infections (at the 60% rate). At the currently accepted mortality rate of 3.2%, that would translate into 6.3 million deaths in the U.S., alone. But even if the mortality rate were an order of magnitude lower, let's say 0.3%, it could still result in 600,000 deaths.

Trump's argument that we've survived the worst of the pandemic and that it's safe to return to work and school are clearly not true. But is he simply ignorant or naive, as some have argued?

No!

The butcher knew full well that reopening the economy would result in a massive death toll. He ordered 100,000 body bags on April 21, in anticipation of the mass casualties that he knew would occur from "opening" the economy. Additionally, FEMA has order 200 refrigerated trailers to store the corpses because the morgues will be so backlogged. So, maybe he is a little naive, or simply can't do math, since this won't come close to covering 600,000 dead Americans, let alone 6.3 million.

At least the Veterans Administration, that bastion of corruption and incompetence, has done their math.  They've bought $12 million worth of body bags. If they paid a similar price to FEMA, that would get them around 250,000 body bags, plenty to cover their 9 million patients.

So, are we left with only these two miserable choices: (A) go back to work and school, get sick, and watch millions of our friends, relatives and neighbors die from Covid-19; or (B) continue sheltering in place and struggle not to starve to death?

Of Course Not! 

We could do what health experts, including Anthony Fauci, keep telling us to do, and what South Korea has effectively done: 

1. Universal repeated testing of Everyone
2. Contact tracing of all infected individuals
3. Mandatory quarantines of all infected individuals and their contacts

These 3 measures, according to Fauci, and anyone with an ounce of common sense, will help make the next wave LESS deadly and make it less dangerous to return to work and school. They will not prevent a 2nd wave. They will not eliminate the risk of infection and death. And they should be accompanied by the following:

1. Continued social distancing whenever and where ever possible (ie, no concerts and live sporting events; no tattoos and massages; continued restrictions on the number of people entering stores and classrooms)
2. Rebuild the medical infrastructure, purchase PPE for everyone who needs it, increase hospital capacity, continue developing and testing vaccines and anti-viral drugs, 
3. Give everyone what they need to survive, including sufficient cash and food

Workers Resist the Drive Back to Work

San Francisco-based One Medical is now offering coronavirus tests to anyone without symptoms. While this is step in the direction of universal testing, a prerequisite for relaxing the shelter-in-place, the test results could be meaningless without (1) repeated testing; (2) contact tracing; and (3) mandatory quarantines for those infected and their contacts. Also, One Medical is not offering the test for free, which should be a prerequisite before the shelter-in-place restrictions is relaxed. They claim they will bill your insurance company, assuming you have one.

One reason why a single test is meaningless is that a person's viral load varies over time. During the first few days after exposure, the viral load could be undetectable, even with a test. Hence, a person who runs off for a test immediately after coming into contact with an infected individual might get a negative result, but a few days later start showing symptoms. In those days when they thought they were corona-free, they could have gone out and exposed vulnerable people, family members, colleagues.

2nd, when they do open the economy back up, every time we go into public, whether it's work or school or shopping or religious or social events, we will risk coming into contact with infected individuals. So, until the pandemic has truly died out or we have developed an effective vaccine or treatment, universal testing, contact tracing and quarantines will need to continue and be repeated regularly. Indeed, perhaps the least risky approach is to develop a 5-10 minute test that is administered at the entrance of every facility that is open and operating and require a negative result before anyone is let in.

Should you go and get a test? I don't see the benefit, unless you think you might have been infected recently, or you are a front line worker where the risk of exposure was high, or you are worried about infecting your clients. The rest of us in the Bay Area have supposedly been staying home, staying at least six feet away from others on our walks, and wearing masks in grocery stores. So, our risk of infection should be extremely low.

Are You Willing to Die for the Economy?

With the Covid-19 pandemic still raging across the country, President Trump and state governors, (including Gavin Newsom, of California, and Andrew Cuomo, of New York), are already talking about getting people back to work. Yet, as of now, there is no plan in place for doing this in a way that won't lead to hundreds of thousands of more deaths. Most of the health experts are saying that it is way too soon to relax social distancing policies.

Like with traffic fatalities, excess deaths from air pollution, and workplace mortality, our lives are expendable in the pursuit of corporate profits. Our injuries, sickness and deaths are merely costs of doing business.

Trump and others have argued that the cure is worse than the disease. No question about it, people are suffering, including healthy people who no longer have an income or enough food to eat. People are waiting in lines that are miles long, just get food from food banks. They're going stir crazy from being cooped up in their houses, deprived of social and physical contact with their friends, family and neighbors. But if people are forced back to work prematurely, while the pandemic is still raging, without adequate social distancing measures and personal protective equipment, AND most importantly, universal testing, contact tracing and mandatory quarantining of all infected individuals and their contacts, we will not only see a dramatic increase in new infections and deaths, but we could see far greater disruptions in the production and distribution of basic necessities, like food, water and utilities, because so many workers in these essential services have become sickened. 

Famine is already a very real possibility in many of the poorer nations of the global south, but with the proposed economic cure of sending us back to work prematurely, we could easily see famine here, in the United States, as well. While the wealthiest Americans will survive in their fortified bunkers and offshore retreats, with their stockpiles of toilet paper and prime rib, they will see their corporate profits plummet even more than they currently are, when so many Americans become sick that their businesses will no longer be able to operate, and their consumers are dropping like flies.

If that happens, the economic cure will prove to be far worse (both economically and in terms of human life) than the current social distancing program.