CORONAVIRUS"

“CORONAVIRUS”

            It is pretty amazing at the speed at which public and private institutions have

closed down in response to the spread of coronavirus or COVID 19 – fear will do that to us, especially in the age of social media. The most similar time that I recall was the polio anxiety of the 1950’s of my childhood.  The source of polio was not known, and because of that we were all scared.  I never knew anyone personally in an iron lung, but Caroline did in Chattanooga.  It was as if there were an Evil One lurking out there, waiting to get us.  I can remember the great relief when Drs. Jonas Salk and others developed the vaccine that has virtually eliminated polio from life in the US.  I also remember lining up in the 5^th or 6^th grade to get the polio shot.  I did not want to get the shot, but my mother insisted: “If you don’t get the shot, you won’t have to worry about polio killing you – I will do it instead.”

            The other part of the coronavirus pandemic is that it brought to mind John Barry’s fine 2005 book “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,” about the pandemic in 1917-18 that killed over 600,000 people in the U.S., more than 10 times American soldiers killed in World War I.   In this powerful study, he concluded that this epidemic likely began in an army camp in Kansas.  And, here the political collided with the medical. Though he had been advised against it by doctors, President Woodrow Wilson decided to send the infected troops to Europe to fight in the war that the USA had just entered – they spread the plague from there.  Here is a chilling sentence that Barry uses to describe Wilson, in words that sound eerily familiar today: "He was one of those rare men who believed almost to the point of mental illness in his own righteousness." 

Barry concludes his book with these words about the modern relevance of his study: 

“So, the final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet the one most difficult to execute, is that those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate members of society.  A society that takes as its motto ‘every {man} for himself’ is no longer a civilized society.  Those in authority must retain the public’s trust.  The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one.”

And that brings us to our time and our dilemma.  As we have all noticed, President Trump has provided the same kind of leadership of political denial that President Wilson used.  Though I do not know the inner workings of the Trump administration on this, if their history is to be used as a guide, there is a battle there between the medical/scientific and the political.  From Trump’s expressed desire to keep the numbers of reported cases down, to his sense that this virus would pass quickly, to the appalling lack of test kits – there seems to be a belief that the primary issue with coronavirus is its political implications, not its health implications. 

I don’t really know how deeply this virus will affect us all, but I do know that there are models out there predicting dire consequences.  I am glad that we learned many lessons from the pandemic of 1917-18.  I’m hoping that the dire models are wrong, and in a weird way, I hope that Trump is right, that this viral pandemic will pass quickly and easily.   I don’t believe that, and the stock market does not seem to believe it either, and that is sobering and scary.  As noted by Matt Phillips in Saturday’s NYT, when Trump started speaking on Friday, the stock market started falling.  When the doctors and business people started speaking, it surged.  Either way, it marks a turning point towards November.  If things are as grim as they seem today, we may still be in a national emergency when the elections come around.  Though it is only Congress who can postpone national elections, I am guessing that some of Trump’s team is looking now at the options.  I don’t see how the economy can recover quickly as the recession looms, and that further weakens Trump’s position. 

So, here I am, torn between a sense that Trump’s position is eroding, and the only reason is that there is great disaster hitting us.  As he has demonstrated so often, he is simply not up to the job, but it is taking a national disaster to reveal that for all to see.  I don’t wish that on any of us, but like President Wilson, he put politics over national health, and in this case, we all will pay the price.  Most pandemics in human history have also produced a diminishing of compassion – may we break that cycle in this one.