As I write this post, America seems to be on fire. It has been frayed to a crisp. The frustration of the pandemic, the economic and racial inequality that has been exposed by it was the kindling, and the killing of a black man by a white cop was the spark. The fire is systemic racism.
There have been riots across America for five straight nights. During these times, a president would normally make a public appearance to try to heal the country. But that isn’t going to happen this time. Yesterday, at a press conference announcing that the United States is pulling out of the WHO, Trump refused to take any questions after tweeting the comment below, which was so beyond the pale that even Twitter had to put a warning on it.
This is how the president confronts the situation in which we find ourselves. There will be no healing. There is only extensions of authoritarianism. He claimed he’d bring “law and order” to America. If this goes on much longer, I’m sure he’s going to try.
Trump always seems to trot out these racially-charged comments and then claims to not realize they have any racial meaning at all. The continual dog whistle that has come from this White House has led, at least in part, to we are today. I fully believe his racism is so embedded in his very being that he doesn’t really know the origins of many of the dog whistles he uses. It all just flows from his consciousness, and he’s never done anything to learn, grow, rise above it. He hasn’t even cared. In fact, he seems to just double down. Every. Single. Time.
And then not long after that, we get this one.
Oh, they would have met the most vicious dogs and the most ominous weapons. What the hell is he even going on about? “Oh, you better not try to come inside the White House!”
Tonight, as the country faces yet another night of civil unrest, Trump is in the White House, again, watching TV and tweeting.
It’s May 24th and I thought I’d start keeping a journal of some of my thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic as New York starts to open back up. As I write this, Long Island is still technically “closed,” but many businesses are open, and people are starting to relax the actions that have brought the numbers of hospitalized and dead down to the lowest levels we have seen since two months ago, in late March, when this whole thing started for us.
Back in January I started to hear talk about another respiratory illness that had emerged in China. This wasn’t too different from other stories we had heard over the past two decades. Usually, the media would report on some type of serious flu that had emerged, such as SARS or some other virus that was killing people at an alarming rate. Generally, these things got pretty much under control not long after their initial outbreak.
A doctor named Li Wenliang from Wuhan, China, had informed his colleagues in December 2019 that he was seeing a SARS-like virus in circulation. He was warned to stop making false comments and was put under investigation.
The reports of this new “novel coronavirus” were that people were getting very sick from the illness it brought, and that it might have originated from a wet market in Wuhan province in China, where some intermediary animal that had become infected from a bat might have brought it to the human population there.
We started hearing that children weren’t really affected, but that the elderly and those with health issues were particularly vulnerable.
The hospitals were getting overrun with patients, to the point where China was building a new hospital and planned to have it ready in ten days to cope with the surge of new COVID infections. I remember marveling at the construction taking place. How were they going to build a giant hospital in only ten days? I’m pretty sure the whole world was watching in awe, wondering how it would do something this ambitious, should it be needed.
Hospital Construction in Wuhan on Jan 24th
By January 23rd, two days before the start of the Chinese New Year, the province of Wuhan was locked down. There were pictures of arteries into Wuhan being blocked off, and scenes of soldiers in haz-mat suits dragging people from their homes and off into isolation.
We heard of an outbreak aboard a cruise ship toward the beginning of February – 47 were sick on the Diamond Princess. These represented some of the “first” cases from the United States. Eventually, 700 passengers from this vessel would fall ill.
On January 30th, President Trump came on the television to announce that he was cutting off travel from China to the US. Anyone who was coming to the US from China now needed to quarantine themselves for 14 days upon entering the country. He went golfing two days later, and claimed a few days after that, at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
It was also around this time that we began to hear that someone in Germany had obtained the virus from someone who had no symptoms. That was perhaps one of the scariest things – that there were people walking around, spreading the virus, not knowing they were spreading it.
Around this time, the World Health Organization reported that there were more than 85K cases worldwide in 46 countries. Most of these cases were from China, but it was clear the virus was starting to spread.
There were hopes that each outbreak could be contained, but then the first week of February we heard that a 50-year-old healthcare worker from Washington State had died of coronavirus. Almost immediately after that, a breakout was reported at a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, Of the 108 residents there, at least 27 were showing symptoms of coronavirus, as well as 25 of the 180 staff. Two people there had tested positive.
Panic seemed to settle in to this hotspot in the Pacific Northwest, as no one seemed equipped to handle what was happening. Crying, confused family members couldn’t get answers. The CDC was late to arrive on the scene.
On February 26th, Trump appointed Mike Pence as the pointman for the coronavirus response and noted, “We’re testing everybody that we need to test. And we’re finding very little problem.…It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner,” and then added, the number of cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
It seemed as if most of the cases related to the United States were contained, and that we knew where each person had gotten the virus. Some were on the cruise ship, some had traveled to Italy, which was experiencing its own outbreak at the time, and some had contact with people from China.
But then the first case of “community transmission” happened. Someone had contracted the virus out “in the wild,” without seemingly having had contact with anyone who had the virus.
And that’s when things really started to get scary.
On February 26th, the CDC announced that an infection with the novel coronavirus had been confirmed “in a person who reportedly did not have relevant travel history or exposure to another known patient with COVID-19.”
On February 28th, Trump holds another rally and tells America that the coronavirus is a “new hoax” by the Democrats.
March 4th, Trump tells Hannity, “a lot of people will have this, and it’s very mild. They will get better very rapidly. So, if we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work, but they get better….It’s not that severe.”
March 6th, he meets with the CDC and tells the cameras that he would like to keep the infected people on the Grand Princess on the ship so that the official count of cases in the US doesn’t rise. “I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”
And then it was in New York, my home state.
A lawyer from New Rochelle had been struggling to breathe for days, when his neighbor took him to the hospital. Doctors put him in an ordinary room on the fifth floor.
“Over his four days at NewYork-Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, N.Y., Mr. Garbuz came in contact with dozens of doctors and nurses, the workers who brought his food and cleaned his room, the porters who helped move him around and the respiratory technicians who made sure his ventilator was working. And other patients, too.”
NY Times, 2020/03/10 – Article titled, “For 4 Days, the Hospital Thought He Had Just Pneumonia. It Was Coronavirus.”
My panic level was pretty high by this point. This virus seemed like it wasn’t going to be contained, no matter what government officials were telling us. It was just out there, and the fact that it spread asymptomatically just made it that much scarier. “Community spread” became a phrase thrown around more and more.
The issue was that some were still treating this like the flu, and not taking it seriously. Rush Limbaugh had said on his radio show in late February that it “was the common cold, folks.”
I still remember the chills and anxiety that those tweets gave me. No one was talking about it at first, but it really drove home the wave that was about to hit this country as we watched the Trump administration flounder. By the early part of 2020, Trump had replaced most competent public servants in his administration several times over, and we were left with the “C” team in most departments, if the departments hadn’t been hollowed out entirely.
Not long after this, the cases started hitting closer to home. A school administration official here, a friend of a friend there. I was surprised that the kids were still in school, but I guess everyone was still in denial that this could be contained.
On March 10th, Rudy Gobert, a player for the Utah Jazz, was reported to have come down with the virus, and not long after that, it was revealed that he had touched all the mics the day before at a press conference, joking about the dangers. He apologized shortly thereafter. Detroit Pistons forward, Christian Wood, who had been matched closely with Gobert in a game a few days earlier, got the virus. So did a kid from Rhode Island who got Gobert’s autograph.
Things seemed to be happening more quickly now. Cases were being reported all over the United States, even in places like South Dakota and Vermont. Some states were beginning to declare states of emergency in order to deploy resources to deal with the crisis.
I read another horrifying story in the NY Times titled ‘It’s Just Everywhere Already’: How Delays in Testing Set Back the U.S. Coronavirus Response.
By Feb. 25, Dr. Chu and her colleagues could not bear to wait any longer. They began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval. What came back confirmed their worst fear. They quickly had a positive test from a local teenager with no recent travel history. The coronavirus had already established itself on American soil without anybody realizing it. “It must have been here this entire time,” Dr. Chu recalled thinking with dread. “It’s just everywhere already.”
NY Times, 2020/03/10 Article titled, “‘It’s Just Everywhere Already’: How Delays in Testing Set Back the U.S. Coronavirus Response”
On Wednesday, March 11th, I was at work when my co-worker told us his daughter was coming home from college for the semester. All SUNY and CUNY schools were sending everyone home.
That evening, the NBA suspended its season. I remember seeing Mark Cuban’s reaction when he found out via text on his cellphone. It was becoming clear that sports were going to be done for a while. Soon, every major sports league would cancel its season.
March 11, 2020 – Mark Cuban reacts to NBA suspending season due to Coronavirus
That night, we received a call that there had been a positive case in our school district (ten elementary schools, three middle schools, and two high schools, 13500 students), and that field trips and after-school activities would be canceled through Friday, March 13th.
On Thursday, March 12th, cases in the United States passed 1500. Public schools around the country started announcing they were closing. I still remember picking my son up from school that afternoon and wondering how much longer he’d be attending before they’d have to close ours down. I didn’t have to wait long. Around 9pm that night, we got a phone call that schools would be closed in our district on Friday the 13th but they expected to be open Monday. All activities and field trips for the weekend were canceled.
Everyone was wondering what was going to happen after the weekend. I knew there was no way they’d be opening up the school again for a while. Sure enough, on Saturday evening, the Superintendent of Schools announced that school would be closed the following week. By Monday, they were closing for two weeks.
My Friends Were Upset I Wanted to “Give Trump A Chance.”
They shouldn’t have worried. I wasn’t on board for long.
I was listening to Morning Joy on Sirius XM as I was running errands this morning and some panelists were discussing that one of the reasons we seem to be so deeply divided as a country is because some of us are outraged that people claim discrimination based on Starbucks coffee cups, whether or not they believe minorities are given free access to shopping bags at Michaels, and whether or not they believe that people are accepting that they won the election. They feel discriminated against because people say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Xmas.” They don’t realize that the real discrimination is having a much greater chance of being shot at by police because of the color of your skin, or being watched extra closely by store security because of the color of your skin, or being physically attacked in the subway by three drunk white men because you’re a young woman who is wearing clothing adhering to your religious beliefs.
These Trumpkins actually feel discriminated against because we won’t get on board with whatever policies and positions the White House and Republicans will take in this new administration – as if America voted for dismantling Medicare, jail time and possible loss of citizenship for expressing 1st Amendment rights, or the implementation of a Muslim registry.
They believe they won, so we should get all on board.
This, despite the fact that our currently sitting POTUS, Barack Obama, faced unprecedented resistance, obstruction, and racism his entire eight years – by the very same people who are now complaining.
Well, I’ll tell you what. I was more than willing to give this President-Elect a chance for the first few days after the election. I understand he is not even the President yet. However, although we can’t know what Trump’s guiding philosophy is on just about anything (he only seems to take the position of the last person that held his ear – which is bad enough, considering a white supremacist will be his closest adviser), we know he is appointing people who, themselves, have a long ideological history in the fields from which he is appointing them.
DeVos, Sessions, Bannon, Ross, Mnuchin – they all have records. These bad seeds are not likely to produce good fruit.
Paul Ryan has signified that House Republicans are going to basically bleed Obamacare to death if they can’t repeal it altogether. The GOP has already signified they are going to begin attacking Medicare in favor of a voucher system.
In a fact-challenged environment such as a Trump administration, any promises he made (“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid”) are null and void. According to Corey Lewandowski, we need to not take Trump literally. Indeed, Trump doesn’t even remember what he promises. He didn’t remember he promised on the campaign trail to keep the Carrier jobs in Indiana.
“I never thought I made that promise. Not with Carrier. I made it for everybody else. I didn’t make it really for Carrier,” he said this week. However, in April, he said, “we’re not going to let Carrier leave – because say what you want, Indiana. I’ve been talking about Carrier now for four months, right?”
This is a man who doesn’t remember what he has promised, which is troublesome enough, but beyond that, he’s filling his cabinet with billionaires and millionaires who have ideological positions that are dangerous to the poor and middle class in this country.
This is a man whose Vice Presidential pick has made it a point to strip certain humans of their basic rights under the Constitution – an ideology shared by many who will be in charge of the levers of government.
This is why I am part of the resistance, and this is why I will never accept Donald Trump as my President.
You don’t get to obstruct and scream and yell at one President and at the Democrats for eight years and then suddenly when you get in charge expect everyone to fall in line, ESPECIALLY when some of your very first actions reveal to everyone how hostile you are going to continue to be to those who don’t agree with you.
Donald Trump is a minority President. His supporters will continue to be “outraged” that a majority of Americans are not going to be on board with his agenda. The fact that THREE MILLION more voters checked the box for Hillary Clinton will continue to dig at them, and any time they try to implement their anti-American policies, or dismantle Medicare, or implement vouchers systems for education, we will remind them that their candidate “won” on a gerrymandering technicality known as the Electoral College. He won, make no doubt about it – but he did not get a mandate, and the majority is not with him.
And if the Trumpkins are feeling discriminated against because those who supported Hillary aren’t all OK with these FACTS? I say: Buckle up, snowflakes. If you don’t like that people aren’t accepting your candidate after he ran the most hostile, divisive, racist, misogynistic, bigoted, and xenophobic presidential campaign the United States has ever seen, and ESPECIALLY after he continues to reveal that THIS is how he is going to govern, it’s going to be a real long four years for you. Get your safe spaces ready.
The word “terrorists” has been used more and more lately to describe the small group of GOP congressional representatives who are now holding this country hostage. Now, I have always tried to shy away from hyperbole on these pages, mostly because I think it doesn’t help any argument to get hysterical. I never thought Bush’s crimes rose to Hitler’s — that sort of thing. However, I have to agree with the terrorism comparison when it comes to these GOP reps. They are shutting down government and putting 800,000 families out of work solely because they don’t like that we had several national referendums on the Affordable Care Act and that they were on the losing end of ALL of them.
In 2009-10 there was the initial discussion and a bill was eventually passed by the House over the objections of every Republican House member and a few Democratic ones as well
The Affordable Care Act has survived numerous challenges to de-fund it, repeal it in part, or totally kill it.
It is law.
Strange then, that a small minority who claim to live and die by the Constitution would threaten to harm this country by taking it hostage because they didn’t get their way when it comes to the ACA.
Make no mistake about it, this is terrorism. If you don’t believe the government shutdown falls under high crimes, check out this article from Allen Clifton over at Forward Progressives.
Not all terrorism involves the killing of innocent people. Terrorism can be seen as any calculated, and planned, attack on the United States meant to purposefully inflict harm.
Tell me, how is willingly crashing our economy not a “purposeful” act which would harm millions of Americans? How is shutting down our government not a “purposeful” act to harm our nation?
Because President Obama has made it clear that the law of the land as per our Constitution “Obamacare” will not be defunded. So if the Republican responses to that are proposals which include it being defunded, they are then willingly threatening to crash our economy or shutdown our government unless “their demands are met.”
Not cooperate, not get things done… Remove the president.
This congress is going to have a lot of trouble governing.
Now that they control the purse strings in the House, we’ll see what real decisions they make about cutting the deficit and reducing the debt. They will soon have to vote to expand the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. What will they do?
They want to cut taxes for everyone, which will cost between $3-4 trillion. How will they pay for it? All they say is “we will cut discretionary spending.”
Since they won’t cut defense spending (which is HALF of discretionary spending), that leaves $553 billion a year, based on 2010 numbers. So what will they cut? The options are Health and Human Services ($84 billion), Transportation ($76 billion), Education ($46.8 billion), Housing and Urban Development ($43.6 billion) and Agriculture ($25 billion).
What programs will they cut? I mean, when they’re not trying to just get the President out of office.
It’s easy to talk about cutting spending. Let’s see how they actually implement this.
