As [an anonymous] member of Kushner’s team made clear, Trump didn’t just decide that turning up cases of COVID-19 by testing for them would lead to bad publicity—he decided that, because it was hitting blue states the hardest, he should just let it burn. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states,” said the source, “that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”
Just to repeat that: Trump deliberately decided to let Americans die, in huge numbers, not because there was nothing that could be done, but because it was decided that it would “politically advantageous” to have people dying in states with Democratic governors.
There are acts that go beyond the need for impeachment. There are acts that are so inhumane that they go beyond comprehension. There are actions for which even imprisonment seems inadequate.
But let’s start with impeachment. The imprisonment can come later.
In another post Sumner reviewed the way hospitals were told to report deaths due to COVID-19, switching from the CDC to a system controlled by TeleTracking, a private company whose CEO did billions of dollars of projects with the nasty guy’s organization. The details of the contract awarded with TeleTracking are mighty suspicious. The CDC data was public data. This new reporting system is not. The public sees only what TeleTracking wants us to see.
And that, of course, makes a lot of people concerned about the accuracy of the data. There has been news over the last two months of virus hotspots, or more accurately, hot states. The severity of the virus in those states seems to have leveled off.
That leveling off coincided with the switch from the CDC to TeleTracking. So does the data indicate that GOP governors wised up, demanded face masks, and that is slowing the virus? Or is TeleTracking lying to us? How big is the lie?
In a third post Sumner tied it together. The nasty guy committed a crime – this time genocide. And his new reporting system is the cover-up. Wrote Sumner:
First Trump did the crime. Then he arranged the cover-up. It wasn’t the first time he practiced that two-step, but it’s certainly the most devastating.
If the reports of Trump deciding to abandon American states for a political advantage are true, the question isn’t how Trump compares to George W. Bush or James Buchanon. It’s how he compares to Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.
I agree with Sumner’s conclusion. I’ve written that others have concluded that the nasty guy’s handling of the virus was calculated to maximize the number of deaths. This was based on his actions, though without proof. Now someone has stepped forward to give that proof.
However, I have a minor quibble with Sumner’s use of the phrase “politically advantageous.” I don’t think any “political” calculation was made. This wasn’t done to improve his chances in November. He made sure people died because he’s an authoritarian. Authoritarians kill off their enemies. Allowing a virus do it so his fingers aren’t directly on the weapon is just a bonus.
Dartagnan of Kos discusses an article by Paul Krugman from the New York Times. The core idea is that America is living the Republican dream. We’re seeing the endgame of the conservative philosophy of the last few decades. I can summarize Krugman’s idea this way: Conservatives have long called for freedom. What they’re actually calling for is freedom from responsibility. It is selfishness, and with a pandemic out there this selfishness is deadly.
Remember when “liberal” was a dirty word? A common phrase has been “own the libs,” meaning showing some sort of superiority over liberals. This has been going on for so long that I’ve tended to use the word “progressive” instead.
Kerry Eleveld of Kos reports that since January it’s the designation “conservative” that’s taking a beating. The slide started when the GOP acquitted the nasty guy and the trend strengthened when the virus struck and the economy shut down. From then until June the number of people who self-identified as conservative dropped 6 points and the number who identified as liberal grew 4 points. Eleveld concluded:
So Democrats have made inroads among young voters, college graduates, people of color, whites, and upper-income brackets. That's a good place to be as we head into the most important election in a generation or more.
Jennifer Brea is a disability rights activist. She tweeted a thread about long COVID. Some people continue to show symptoms six months after an infection of some viruses. For the West Nile Virus long term symptoms happens to 31% of the people who get it. For COVID, that percentage is we don’t know. Brea is seeing doctors do what doctors have done before and what they had done with her disability – when they don’t know about or don’t understand something they let it fall through the cracks, also known as dismissing the concerns of the patient. She wrote:
This is the medical system working exactly as it was designed.
This is the culture speaking loudly and clearly about what it stands for. Medicine is OK rejecting responsibility for the patients it cannot help. Medicine is OK to do it in a way that particularly screws over women.
Medicine is OK with failing to observe, with distorting reality, with obscuring whole categories of patients (i.e., new natural phenomena) in order to do this. Medicine is OK obstructing science in the process.
That’s the only conclusion I can draw from watching the same outcome happen over again and over again without any objection, any sign that doctors are cognizant of the harm they routinely cause. @AmerMedicalAssn the burden of leadership on this should not fall to sick patients.
It’s not a “few bad apples.” This is the modal experience of patients like us. If you don’t fit into some ridiculous ddx algorithm doctors cannot observe what is happening right in front of them.
I’m tired of watching people die and lives be ruined by this.
Enough.
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