COVID-19 and Politics: The Destruction of the American Government
The Pandemic
In the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic, many problems have emerged. Some speculate that virtually no aspect of life in developed nations will remain untouched by the disaster. As the disease sweeps across the nations of the world, economies shudder and fall while people modify their behavior to attempt to mitigate the pandemic.
Common symptoms associated with COVID-19 include a spell of lethargy followed by nausea and vomiting, a dry cough, a severe fever, and perhaps the most famous of them all: bilateral pneumonia.
The disease is famously easy to spread. This is a result of the small size of the virus and its tendency to reproduce in the lungs, which makes it possible to spread simply by sharing air with another person.
The initial damage control efforts from many governments around the world have been suspect — these measures have included the suppression of information the public could have used to make better decisions, efforts to downplay the severity of the disease to prevent damage to the stock markets, and a seemingly endless stream of outright lies in addition to an ever-changing and unpredictable point of view from the President of the United States in particular.
The Failure Seen From ‘Round The World
The heads of the great American institutions such as the Center for Disease Control are essentially hogtied by misinformation, as Trump’s point of view changes so rapidly and so violently that these agencies cannot possibly hope to follow suit. Instead, for the most part, the people running these things are trying to do damage control of their own.
Given the Trump Administration’s choice to politicize the COVID-19 outbreak, experts are in something of a quandary. The choice to do one’s job is adversely impacted by the fact that the powers that be have established a narrative which these experts are expected to be part of, but given that the person leading the creation of this narrative is Donald Trump, who surely holds the world record for most flagrant and obvious lies told in the course of a single administration, this is impossible.
Perhaps the ideal response is out of the question due to the utter failure to organize any sort of nationwide response or even a coherent narrative about what’s happening, but maybe professionals such as Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx can start to help guide Americans in something like a reasonable set of precautions. Even if they do, odds are that for many of us who live in states such as Texas and Florida where conservative governors refuse to recommend that residents take part in church services remotely, it will not be enough to prevent a major calamity which already shows signs of starting.
Instead, the CDC and even Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx are having to hold their tongues about any of the rapidly-developing events that they’re aware of but which the administration is still ignoring. A case in point is face masks. The initial response to the mask shortage was a recommendation against face mask usage, which almost certainly caused millions of people to be exposed to the virus by preventing them from improvising protective coverings.
Another Confusing Policy Reversal: The Rule We Should Have Had Since February
Now, the White House has reversed its position and is recommending face mask usage — which the experts have known would have been effective all along. So instead of protecting people and slowing this disease starting months ago, the President of the United States of America has acted to directly put Americans into harm’s way by second-guessing the experts and silencing anyone who disagreed with him.
Everyone knows the political situation is grim, if they’re paying attention. I’ve personally called for the removal of Donald Trump from the White House, but of course the odds of that are slim to none. Still, House Democrats are trying again, this time with a committee to investigate the administration’s handling of the pandemic. There is absolutely every reason in the world to believe that Trump has committed crimes in his utter failure to respond to the virus in an appropriate way, and yet there he is, calling it another witch hunt. Just like the previous “witch hunts” which, by that logic, actually turned up dozens of witches.
It is impossible to discuss decision making in contemporary America without explaining why it is suddenly so difficult to figure out what rational behavior looks like. Where are the authorities we have spent such time and effort building, funding, and nurturing? Why is the technology of the day so obviously insufficient to stem the tide of the disease?
Frankly, it’s a simple enough causal relationship: Donald Trump cares more about his ego than about the lives of his people, so he continually makes decisions based upon optics which lack any sort of foresight or even intention of doing right by the American people. Instead, he is acting about like one would expect a reality TV star to act; his response to absolutely everything that happens is a more extreme version of the toxic narcissism that put us into this situation in the first place. Troubled times lie ahead.
