He fudged the truth

Between a touch of cabin fever and getting tired of the same food every day I decided I needed to do a grocery run today. Yeah, I have always made lots of whatever I’m cooking and eat the same thing several days in a row, but that’s usually interrupted by 2-3 meals at restaurants with friends. But not this week.

I usually shop at three places and stopped at two of them today. At one store the prepared foods, deli, and produce looked well stocked, while the mayonnaise shelf and the meat counter were in low supply. I talked briefly with the meat person who waited on me. She said yesterday, especially in the evening, was extremely busy. They sold out of practically everything, even when restricting how much could be sold to each person.

I did find the mayo at the other store, chicken too, though couldn’t get as much peanut butter as I would have liked.

The other thing I’m doing today is my taxes. I know the deadline has been delayed. But they still need to be done.



Some brief mentions before getting to the major story. And I’m going to mention a lot less than I might because I skimmed a lot more articles than I usually do.

Back when the US had only 15 cases of COVID-19 and the nasty guy was telling us the whole problem was going to disappear, Sen. Richard Burr addressed a group of top donors that the virus was going to be pretty bad. One of the things he told the group was to cancel travel to Europe. Strange that Burr’s other constituents and the public at large got no warnings. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wonders how many other GOP lawmakers also warned donors while being too fearful to contradict the nasty guy in public?



Mark Sumner of Kos reminds us the daily briefings of the coronavirus task force are not about the virus, but about stroking the nasty guy’s ego. Which means every time Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health is called on to speak he has to tread a very fine line between telling the public actual useful information and not pissing off his boss. Be too helpful and Fauci could be fired.



Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has worked out a deal with a Safeway to give out $5 million in grocery vouchers, or about $800 to each of over 6,000 families who are hard hit by the virus. Seattle is one of the worst hit areas.



While the country and legislators at state and federal levels are focused on the coronavirus, how to slow it down, and how to lessen the economic impacts, GOP legislators in Idaho think this is a fine time to slip through a couple anti-transgender bills while nobody is looking. Both are likely unconstitutional, so they’re using up time and money to just be mean.



Leah McElrath tweeted:

A physician with a hospital in NYC tells me they feel “gaslit” every day by the White House briefings because the resources on the ground are not what the White House is claiming.

This is a problem of a lack of government response.



Twitter user Benjamin Franklin suggests that all those concert venues that are now dark should be rented by the state as field hospitals. A reply suggested using abandoned malls as well.



A couple things from Mark Sumner’s daily status of the virus. Washington state is stepping up testing, now up to 5,000 a day, a big improvement but still low. The US added 4,000 cases today (again, because of better testing) and now has more than 13,500 cases.

And Italy. Normally, a country going through this would prompt the rest of the world to send help. Except all that help is needed at home. Italy marked another 427 deaths today, surpassing China. Its medical system is much more stressed than China’s ever was. There is a video of a line of military trucks transporting coffins from the overloaded cemeteries in the city of Bergamo, one of the hard hit areas.



Follow the link just for a laugh. You’ll need one about now.



Somewhere in my online reading I came across and followed a link to an article about the 1918 flu pandemic that was written by John Barry for the November 2017 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. The article lays out the history of the disease. It started in Haskell County, Kansas early that year. It spread to a couple military bases in the state and from there around the world. About 670,000 Americans died. Between 50 and 100 million died around the world. The virus came in three waves, the second one in the fall was the deadliest.

Several times in the story Barry explains how various government officials played down the severity of the pandemic or even lied about it. Part of it was because WWI was still going on and detailed news of the sick citizens or troops would be nice information for the enemy to have. But each time the government or newspapers did this the situation became significantly worse.

Citizens could see the lies. The could see it in the sick and dead around them. They could see death happen within hours. They could see that towns and cities ran out of coffins.

People could believe nothing they were being told, so they feared everything, particularly the unknown. How long would it last? How many would it kill? Who would it kill? With the truth buried, morale collapsed. Society itself began to disintegrate.

After other disasters, such as hurricanes people helped each other out. But during the flu people looked after only themselves. When someone got sick people refused to help.

The third wave in early 1919 was pretty bad, though not as bad as the second. After that it became less lethal and a part of seasonal flu. Though it appears to have contributed to the start of WWII.

On April 3, 1919, during the Versailles Peace Conference, Woodrow Wilson collapsed. His sudden weakness and severe confusion halfway through that conference—widely commented upon—very possibly contributed to his abandoning his principles. The result was the disastrous peace treaty, which would later contribute to the start of World War II. Some historians have attributed Wilson’s confusion to a minor stroke. In fact, he had a 103 degree temperature, intense coughing fits, diarrhea and other serious symptoms. A stroke explains none of the symptoms. Influenza, which was then widespread in Paris and killed a young aide to Wilson, explains all of them—including his confusion. Experts would later agree that many patients afflicted by the pandemic influenza had cognitive or psychological symptoms. As an authoritative 1927 medical review concluded, “There is no doubt that the neuropsychiatric effects of influenza are profound...hardly second to its effect on the respiratory system.”

This flu was unusual in that it killed mostly young people. Their strong immune systems attacked the virus with everything, including chemicals called cytokines. So much cytokines in the lungs had the same effect as breathing poison gas.

Barry gets into lessons for the next pandemic. There are many ways to slow down a virus – hand washing, staying home, and all the rest we’ve been hearing about over the last couple weeks.

But the effectiveness of such interventions will depend on public compliance, and the public will have to trust what it is being told.

That is why, in my view, the most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth.

Barry participated in a pandemic “war game” in Los Angeles with public health officials. He talked about the 1918 epidemic and urged “You don’t manage the truth. You tell the truth.”

So then they ran the simulation. A top health official was called on to explain the situation to the public.

And he didn’t tell the truth. He fudged it.

I was stunned. This official had not actually told a lie, but he had deliberately minimized the danger; whether or not this particular patient had the disease, a pandemic was coming. The official’s unwillingness to answer questions from the press or even acknowledge the pandemic’s inevitability meant that citizens would look elsewhere for answers, and probably find a lot of bad ones. Instead of taking the lead in providing credible information he instantly fell behind the pace of events. He would find it almost impossible to get ahead of them again. He had, in short, shirked his duty to the public, risking countless lives.

And that was only a game.

So what is the nasty guy doing?