Friday, May 22, 2020

I Am Not Going To Church This Sunday

So I hear that Donald Trump has made the following statement:
"The president just demanded places of worship reopen for in-person services and he talked about guidelines being issued for “communities of faith”. 
He wants them open “for this weekend”. Called upon governors to life quarantine restrictions relating to religious gathering places.
“If they do not do it I will override the governors,” he said.
He then turned on his heel and left the White House press briefing room without taking any questions.
Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany then brought up Deborah Birx, response coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, to the podium for an expert briefing."
 - Quotes retrieved from the Guardian, 22 May 2020.

I've got news for him: I'm not going to church this Sunday.  I will not be celebrating Memorial Day in crowded places.  (I will not be celebrating the 4th of July at all.)  I will not be going to indoor, sit-down coffee shops (like the Starbucks near my house which opened its doors today for the first time in several weeks).  I will not go to restaurants.  I will not go to national parks.  I will not attend sporting events.  I will not join in this idiot's pretense that life is normal.  Because it's not.  Due to Donald Trump's malignancy and incompetence, we have the following situation:

  • A pandemic has dealt (and continues to deal) a crippling blow to our economy.
  • The people who to date have borne the brunt of the deaths resulting from that pandemic are people whom Trump and his white Republican murderers have targeted for destruction.
  • There is not yet a viable, proven vaccine available for COVID-19.  (Yes, I know that a certain American biopharma manufacturer is boasting of optimistic results - but their data have not been rigorously peer-reviewed.)
  • There is not yet a viable, proven antiviral drug that is effective against COVID-19.  (Yes, I know that the manufacturers of remdesivir have boasted of minor reductions in disease severity and length of hospitalization - but many doctors and scientists have questioned the methodology of the U.S. remdesivir study. (See this and this.)  And yes, I know that Donald swears by hydroxychloroquine, but I suspect that not a drop of it has passed through his lips.  How might the world look if he did really overdose on some fish tank cleaner!)
  • There is not yet any kind of widespread testing available for coronavirus infection.  A Washington State-based group that had developed a free, accurate test kit that could be used in people's homes was asked this week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to halt the use of their tests.  On the other hand, the FDA has granted authorization to a Texas firm to provide in-home test kits - but those who want a kit must jump through a few hoops first.  Why am I not surprised?  Donald Trump has already made it abundantly clear that he is opposed to widespread testing because of the possibility that the test results will indicate that the United States is experiencing a crisis for which the Republican Party has no answer.
  • Those states and regions which have ended social distancing restrictions are now seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases.  As a result, there will be further spikes in death rates.  Again, not surprising.  Throw lit matches into a dry meadow in the middle of summer, and you will have fire.
In calling therefore for churches and other places of worship to open this Sunday (and in threatening to force them to open whether they want to or not), Trump shows not only his ignorance of the Constitution, not only also his ignorance of the Bible (Matthew 4:7, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test"), but most importantly, his ignorance of the realities of trying to reopen a nation and its economy without dealing with the issues that forced it to close in the first place.  Those realities are excellently explained in an article by Jonathan V. Last titled, "We Cannot 'Reopen' America."

On another note, I've noticed that Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic is not just an isolated case of insanity.  Rather, he is typical of all of the global Far Right leaders who have come to power (many of them with the help of the Russian government) over the last several years.  Thus Boris Johnson's Britain became an outlier among those nations which consider themselves in any way European, in that Britain came to have the largest number of COVID-19 cases of any country in that part of the world.  And Russia, which has long aspired for a return to greatness, now has its wish for greatness fulfilled in a sense, in that it now has the largest number of COVID-19 cases of any nation on earth except for the United States.  (We're still No. 1 - Go, USA!  Or let's not!)  Moreover, both Putin and Trump seem to be reading from the same playbook in that their national health response to the coronavirus has been characterized by scapegoating of foreigners, political posturing, and chaos.  One way in which Putin's government differs from Trump's is that Trump merely bullies and browbeats medical experts who contradict him.  Putin, on the other hand, seems to have lost a few dissenting doctors who mysteriously fell from windows over the last few weeks.  They didn't slip on their tea, did they?

Update: I need to add another country currently being trashed - er, I mean, ruled - by a far-Right leader: Brazil.  Jair Bolsonaro has just earned the dubious distinction of leading his country to overtake Russia in COVID-19 deaths and confirmed cases.  That means that Brazil is the new global No. 2.  This confirms my hypothesis that everything the Far Right touches turns to used toilet paper.

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