We Alone Can Fix It
In their riveting, best-seller on the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency (Only I Can Fix It) crack Washington Post writers Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker have thrown open the doors and windows of an Oval Office and an administration which perpetually put personal gain and political triumph well above the needs, interests and future of the people of the United States, and thus the world. Far from being a partisan political screed, Leonnig’s and Rucker’s book is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment account of what history will likely remember as being the most misguided presidency in this nation’s history - ever since the day George Washington took the oath of office in New York. Speaking of our country’s first President, Trump actually had the delusional chutzpah to claim “I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead, and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me.”
In their painstakingly-documented work, Leonnig and Rucker dispassionately show Trump’s growing inability to respond to the Covid pandemic, thus separating the nation’s health from his own political needs - most specifically, of wiping up the electoral floor with former Vice President Joseph Biden in the November election 2020. Most of us well remember reading about Trump’s personal encounter with Covid-19; of his brief hospitalization at Walter Reed, and his sudden return to the White House. Upon reading that he had been treated with a pharmaceutical cocktail of Dexamethasone (a steroid commonly used to treat asthma and rheumatoid arthritis), the experimental drug Remdesivir, (a monoclonal antibody cocktail, also called REGN-COV2), Zinc, Vitamin D, famotidine (Pepsid, to treat ulcers), Melatonin (commonly used to treat insomnia) and aspirin, I thought it to be a rather bizarre medical package with many potential side effects. Particularly the first, Dexamethasone, whose known side effects include paranoia, delirium and hallucinations. From this point on (October 2020) Trump seemed to get weirder and weirder . . .
Trump’s political modus operandi was all about down-playing the seriousness of the Covid-19 virus, and proclaiming - against all available medical evidence - that warm weather (or hydroxychloroquine or internally administered bleach) were just what the doctor ordered — precisely which docs he never got around to telling us. Those who remember his presidential press gatherings will no doubt recall the severely pained, looking down at their shoes responses of such MDs as Deborah Birx (the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator) and Anthony Fauci (the then long, longtime Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and today, President Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor).
Then there was the issue of wearing masks, maintaining social distance and keeping public crowds to an absolute minimum. With all these issues, Trump and his closest advisors came out on the wrong - the strictly political - side of the challenge. As early as October 2020, Trump told his team that he would not wear a mask in public because he thought it would “make me look weak” in the eyes of his supporters. In one rambling comment, Trump told a reporter: I just don’t want to be doing — I don’t know, somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute Desk, the great Resolute Desk. I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens — I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself. I just, I just don’t.” Truth to tell, there were any number of high-ranking members of the administration who paid close attention to what the medical folks were advising. But for many, their tight-lipped approval wound up being a one-way ticket back to the private sector.
As time went on, the Trump version of Covid-19, masking and what its true dangers might be, seeped into the very marrow of his political base . . . including those who were and are most comfortable with conspiracy theories. They decided that if their leader wouldn’t wear a mask, neither would they; if their local leaders told them that vaccines were more dangerous than the virus itself, they surely would never submit to a vaccination which included electronic tracking devices . . . and on and on.
Eventually, Trump and his team came up with their version of FDR’s Manhattan Project: they called it Operation Warp Speed; the name was derived from Star Trek’s imaginary USS Enterprise’s ability to travel at a speed faster than light. Trump’s greatest priority was creating a vaccine (a “cure”) by early November 2020 - just before America went to the polls. Turns out that the British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca came through with a vaccine that was highly effective in blocking transmission of the virus first. Jared Kusher, the president’s son-in-law quickly brokered a $1.2 billion deal to purchase 300 million of the first one billion doses the company planned to produce. When told this, his father-in-law “sounded deflated” in Leonnig and Rucker’s words. “I’m going to get killed,” the president said. “Oh, this is terrible news. (British P.M.) Boris Johnson is going to have a field day with this. . . . I don’t want any press on this” Trump told Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar (the former CEO of Eli Lilly & Co. “Don’t do any press on this. Let’s wait.”
And so they had to wait until January 21, 2021 - the first day of the Biden administration - to make “Operation Warp Speed” completely functional.
As we head into August, 2021, America and the world are entering a new phase in the COVID19 pandemic. In the past month alone, cases of COVID-19 have tripled, and hospitalizations and deaths are rising among unvaccinated people. While the rates are still sharply down from their January highs, officials are concerned by the reversing trendlines and what they consider needless illness and death. Where at the beginning of June the CDC advised that those who were vaccinated were pretty much out of the woods and that schools, businesses and sporting venues could pretty much resume as before, by the end of July President Biden, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Wilensky and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical advisor, are urging that due to the Delta mutation and the fact that so many, many Americans are refusing to be vaccinated, we are likely going to see the return of masks, social distancing and a massive campaign to get people immunized. “Look,” the POTUS said just the other day, “the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.”
Indeed, there are now approximately 90 million Americans who have yet to get shots. Just four states with low vaccination rates made up 40% of new cases last week, and nearly half of them came from Florida alone. Those of us living here in Florida are well aware of how Governor Ron DeSantis (a.k.a. “Donald Trump’s ‘Mini Me’”) has placed economy over health and actually threatened to fine any business, school or cruise line for mandating people to show proof of having been vaccinated against COVID-19. And, it is strictly against the law here in the “Sunshine State” to mandate the wearing of masks. According to statistics provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation, states, and individual Congressional Districts that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 had a significantly lower percentage of adults receiving COVID19 vaccinations than states and districts that gave their votes to Joe Biden. Not only does the rate of the vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated show a partisan political divide, so too does educational level (the lower the amount of schooling, the smaller the percentage of those receiving vaccines) and then there’s urban-versus rural.
According to Dr. Fauci, the U.S. is in an “unnecessary predicament . . . . We’re going in the wrong direction.” And just as the number of those entering hospitals is on the rise, so too are conspiracy theories which keep people from seeking prophylactic measures. Case in point: when the president suggested that healthcare volunteers go “door'-to-door” talking to people about the importance of getting themselves vaccinated, Representative Madison Cawthorn (R.-NC) warned “Now they’re talking about going door-to-door to take vaccines to the people . . . . Then think about what those mechanisms could be used for,” Cawthorn darkly warned. “They could then go door-to-door to take your guns. They could then go door-to-door to take your Bibles.”
Although I am a firm supporter of the Constitution’s 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech, this is going too far; it is akin to violating Justice Holmes’ dictum from the 1919 Schenck v. United States case about "falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." Those who spread these kinds of vile lies via the internet, blogs or the so-called “dark net/dark web” should be fined and be held accountable. Period. This is playing with people’s lives, and from what I can see or tell, for purely political reasons.
So obviously, Donald Trump’s claim about “Only I Can Fix It” contained a massive dose of what Grandma used to refer to as “canal water.” I would like to amend this and state that when it comes to the current grave challenge, “Only we can fix it.” And despite the rapid rise in new cases of COVID-19 and the Delta variant; despite the even greater levels of anger, fear and brainlessness which adhere to imbecilic anti-vaxxers, there are some challenges which we may well be able to fix. Increasingly over the past few weeks, there are a greater number of people both great and small, beginning to emerge from the anti-vaxxer’s closet. Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Louisianan Steve Scalise, number two in House Republican leadership and Alabama Governor Kay Ivey are admitting to having been vaccinated and urging their constituents to do likewise. Conservative radio and television celebs like talker Phil Valentine and Fox News’ Sean Hannity are talking up the necessity of being vaccinated. (Egad . . . for the first time in my life Sean Hannity and I actually agree on something!)
Locally, teachers, preachers, sports icons and just plain folks are standing up, helping people change their minds . . . coming to the understand that getting a shot and wearing a mask is not the end of personal freedom . . . but can actually save lives. I’ve come to believe that where once these Republicans used the weapon of fear in order to score points and win votes, it’s now come too close to home; the time to act like responsible, empathic leaders is now.
I wish I could tell you that having a heart-to-heart conversation with a staunchly anti-vaxx neighbor, friend or family member just might help them change their tune - but I cannot. Debating people who choose not to think for themselves is akin to banging one’s head against a brick wall; all you gain is a concussion or a migraine. And so, unless you are in love with cerebral pain, leave the convincing to those occupying the same original space as the naysayers.
These are difficult times. However, I do believe that a healthier future is within our grasp - if only we recognize that together, we can fix it.
Masks on!
Copyright2021 Kurt F. Stone