Post 170 - August 28, 2020

Day 170…

Hurricane Laura has been downgraded to a tropical storm and the Republican National Convention is over.

Damage has been done by both, and more damage is yet to come, but now we have time to repair, regroup, and prepare for what comes next.

Last night the President painted a bleak picture of what America will look like under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The economy will collapse, there will be violence in the streets and racial enmity will only grow.

What in the litany of things that he says we have to look forward to, is not happening right now all around us? Why should we worry about what might happen when we are all already experiencing it?

Last week 1.2 million Americans filed for unemployment for the first time. This is the 17th straight week of new claims coming in from over a million people. There are about 31 million people currently claiming benefits. In February, 158 million Americans were employed. Since the pandemic began, one in six of those people have lost their jobs.

The extra assistance that we were all receiving stopped four weeks ago. Any discussion about it being extended is on hold, while the GOP-led Senate takes a break. Some states are discussing implementing their own stop-gap payment measures, but those appear to be some weeks away and will not likely be at the level that the original payments were.

Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times by a Police officer in front of his three children lies in his hospital bed. He is paralyzed from the waist down but, nonetheless, shackled to the bed by the ankle. Why? Nobody has given an answer.

Sports teams are walking out in protest.

On the 57th anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a large protest march is planned for today in Washington D.C. on the very same steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Armed militias have been showing up at demonstrations and inciting violence and are being praised for those actions by those on the right. Rather than engaging in any sort of discussion about why people might be protesting, the President instead just condemned the NBA as being just another “political organization” for their protest moves.

In his acceptance speech last night, the President made no mention whatsoever of either Mr. Blake, or the very real racial issues we are facing as a country. Instead, he derided the citizens of this country who are merely exercising their basic right to speak up.

Both Party’s conventions happened while the world reels from the coronavirus pandemic.

Last night the President spoke to an audience of over 1,000 people all sitting closely together on the White House lawn without wearing masks. Over the course of his speech, he listed his largely imaginary triumphs in the fight to contain COVID-19 to cheers from his audience. The Republicans seem united in their attempt to send the message that they have already prevailed in the fight against the virus.

As of today, there are 24,495,232 reported cases of COVID-19 world-wide. 832,484 people have lost their lives to it.

The United States, with 4% of the world’s population accounts for approximately 25% of the total cases and total deaths. As of this morning, we have had 5,870,185 cases reported with 180,862 people dead.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suddenly modified their guidelines for who should be tested. People who are asymptomatic, even if they have recently been exposed to the virus, should not be tested.

This goes against all current thinking about the virus and how it spreads. Over half of all infections are thought to have occurred from contact with asymptomatic carriers. The CDC appears to have bowed to pressure from the Administration to slow down testing.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said, “The only plausible rationale is that they want fewer people taking tests, because as the president has said, if we don’t take tests, you won’t know the number of people who are Covid-positive.”

There is also a very serious backlog in being able to get results from our tests in a reasonable amount of time. This move may have been a way to lighten that load. What it isn’t, is a responsible fact and science-based response to the pandemic.

This past weekend, the President pushed the FDA to give emergency approval for the use of blood plasma from people who have recovered to help patients suffering from the virus. This, while health experts around the country are warning us that there is no real evidence, yet, that it actually works.

The President wants a cure, whether it works or not, to validate his claims that the war is over. It isn’t.

To inject a bit of reality, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation have just projected that the death rate in the US from the virus could hit 317,000 people by December 1. That’s about 136,000 more people who may lose their lives over the next three months.

So, that is what life is actually like here in this country under the Administration of our current President.

Our economy is severely compromised.

There is violence in our streets.

The protests against racial inequality are being ignored.

The lack of leadership surrounding the virus is merely fanning its flames and allowing it to spread with ever more deadly results.

The four days of the Republican National Convention paint a vivid picture of how the GOP are trying to reframe the narrative. That completely false rosy picture may last for a few more hours, but reality is soon going to overcome it.

Michael and I really wanted to go to the march in Washington D.C. today, but given my recent cross-country road-trip, in an abundance of caution, we decided to stay home. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to listen.

Adam Silver, the National Basketball Association Commissioner sent a letter to the NBA employees that said, in part:

“I wholeheartedly support NBA and WNBA players and their commitment to shining a light on important issues of social justice. While I don’t walk in the same shoes as Black men and women, I can see the trauma and fear that racialized violence causes and how it continues the painful legacy of racial inequality that persists in our country.”

How hard was that?

Why is it remarkable that somebody in a leadership position says, simply, that he hears what is being said?

There are no easy answers to anything that we are all experiencing in these highly charged days. The first step towards solving many of these horrifically complex issues, is that our leaders have to just simply shut up and listen. We haven’t seen a lot of that coming from this Administration.

That we can’t even take that first step is, in and of itself, reason enough for a change.

We all deserve better than what we are getting.

Don’t we?