Symptoms of Infection: and I Don't Just Mean Coronavirus

"Symptoms of Infection--and I Don't Just Mean Coronavirus"
Rant # 10 (Opinion)


Originally March 12, 2020

The coronavirus (COVID-19) dominates the news cycle this week, though not only viruses infect the people of earth: we as a species succumb to many different kinds of infectious and fatal waves.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has just classified the coronavirus as a global pandemic. Several thousand people have died all across the world, with that number rising in the United States. Colleges have instructed students not to return from spring break--many will facilitate classes online instead. New York City has cancelled events with over 500 people. And it will only get worse before it gets better. Major indices point to this outbreak causing a recession. On Monday, oil prices fell dramatically. That sounds good as a consumer: paying less at the pump, what's not to love? However, a drop in oil prices is a bad omen for the markets. Stock prices dropped dramatically as well, in response to that and a whole host of other things. With its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis, today alone the DOW Jones fell by a whopping 10% (9.99%, to be technical). Bitcoin holders faced an even worse drop: the digital current lost about 40% of its value over the last 24 hours, falling to $4,027.67 at the time of this typing. A week ago, one Bitcoin went for over $9,000. 

This could get bad fast, and trigger a recession if not handled properly. If it isn't nipped in the bud, the coronavirus could pass in a month yet leave a dent in economic activity for a year or more. Recessions self-perpetuate: if one commodity loses its value, then others do too; if a lot of people in one industry lose work, then they have less money to spend, meaning that other industries lose business. Psychology contributes to recessions as well. Something like an automatic trigger would abate these fears. The US has no such measure. An automatic trigger works like this: when certain economic indicators point to a recession, the government immediately and unquestionably begins disbursing a set amount of money to every American every week until it ends. When everyone knows that no matter what, they will have a guaranteed income each week, it eliminates some of the anxieties that come with an economic downturn. When everyone knows that even if they lose their jobs, they will receive a paycheck, then people don't hesitate as much to spend. And when consumers spend, the economy remains in motion and absorbs the potential disaster, if not mitigating it altogether. Numerous variations exist--that one in particular I have heard most about.

Without sounding callous about this whole situation, the only silver lining is if it continues to go and then stays south, Trump will lose reelection. In a scenario where the pandemic has to happen at some point, it benefits the country for it to happen now as opposed to next year or the one after that. Arguably, a Democratic administration would set up better measures to combat both a contagious disease and economic problems. Next year at this time, a new president would have only held office for roughly two months; at that point, he may not have even appointed all the positions that need filling yet. The transition could cause a gap in preparedness to some extent, although the CDC and other bureaucratic organizations aren't run by elected officials or appointments, and very often the vast majority of its employees will stay there even if the administration changes parties and/or presidents. Surely, a President Biden or Sanders would at the very least, bring back the pandemic disease experts in the National Security Council whose job involved preparing the country for exactly this type of event.

My savings will take a hit--it already has taken a hit. Others will lose even more due to the virus: their savings, their jobs, even their lives. Regarding the stock prices and all of that, it doesn't really bother me to see it go down dramatically for a year or two if that means getting Trump out of office. Don't say that this is a disgraceful attempt to capitalize on a disaster--it's just the way the world works. Maybe those who die this season will have done so as martyrs of sorts--their deaths will expose the utter inadequacy of this administration, and force our leaders to take serious action with regard to our healthcare system. Public option, Medicare For All, anything for anyone. Allowing Americans to slip through the cracks hurts not just them, but the entire collective. In the 1830s, a couple of individuals contracting some contagious disease might not matter much: they live on their farms, their family gets it, some of them die, it goes away. Nowadays, too many people interact with too many people to just neglect huge swathes of the population. Those who lose loved ones from covid-19 might take solace in knowing that these lives could truly help catalyze a change to our healthcare system which ultimately prevents the premature deaths of Americans for generations going forward. 

After all, Donald Trump represents an existential threat on multiple fronts. Obviously, right wing fun house mirror media will distort the story to accuse the "fake news media," "radical leftists," and the Democrats of using the outbreak in order to attack Trump. In reality, he deserves attacking--for many things, including his way of handling the prospect of a dangerous disease. In order to save some money, he cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and slashed the pandemic team on the National Security Council. This sequence represents a window into the administration's cheapness and readiness to get rid of virtually any program they could, and stuff the ones they did preserve with industry people who oppose the very organization they work for. Staffing the Environmental Protection Agency with oil executives and climate change deniers, or Betsy Devos, the Secretary of Education who works to dismantle public education and push religion into the classrooms.  In virtually every facet of the executive branch, Trump has chosen some shady and counterproductive characters to run important parts of the government. 

And so the story behind scrapping the pandemic team and whittling away our response capabilities is just a part of this trend. Additionally, anything that has to do with or relates to or is reminiscent of Obama has to go under Trump's presidency. Ebola ended, and Obama handled that; why would he keep that around? He'd figure out a better way to handle insanely contagious diseases. Trump knows 'more than the generals' when it comes to military matters, has a better grasp on the climate issue than climate scientists, and as a 'stable genius' has intellectual abilities beyond that of anybody else, so clearly Trump's improvised way to handle a crisis like coronavirus would work much better than whatever Obama or any remotely qualified president would've done.   

What will happen in the coming weeks and months might get ugly. Perhaps it will pass with minimal damage: already, China is reporting fewer new daily cases than they had been just a few weeks ago. Hopefully, the harm to human life from this particular problem will be minimal. Trump might get lucky on this one, like he has with virtually every other major incident that has sprung up during his presidency, whether he caused it or not. Visible blood may not stain the billionaire Commander-in-Chief. However, the kind of blood which one must squint to see has already begun to drench the president's exterior. But because it accumulates so gradually, he manages to write it off as an expensive color-changing suit, which he sells and then 42% of Americans buy it. 

The radio show and podcast Reveal from PRX does an excellent job prying into the inner workings of the current administration to expose egregious flaws in the mechanics of a government that Trump himself tinkered with to build. Anybody who has the time should check out some of its episodes; host Al Letson deserves an award for some of this reporting. For example, scientists have identified trychlorethylene (TCE) as a chemical which can damage fetuses and hurt or even kill babies born to mothers who consumed the compound unwittingly. Unbeknownst to many, the chemical's use in military bases ran off into the water, causing problems for the pregnancies and babies of those who drank water which TCE had seeped into. Despite clear warnings about this, Trump and his EPA has downplayed the damage that this chemical can do, like editing the reports of legitimate scientists. The "safe" level of TCE, according to the administration, is 2,500 times the amount which can cause fetal heart defects and other problems. Rather than dismantle an industry barely worth half a billion dollars a year, or simply regulate it more strictly, forces within the government (carrying out the wishes of the president) have worked to muffle the voice of scientists and instead accept the safety information presented by people who work in related industries. Putting a former oil executive in charge of the EPA shows this ridiculous effort to tout his disregard for climate science to the American public and the world. An air pollution denier runs an air pollution committee within the agency; somebody who has publicly stated that he doesn't think air pollution can effect human health. Yes. There are actually, somehow, air pollution deniers now, too. I'm really just waiting to hear people rejecting science entirely. It's only a matter of time.

Continuing on a tangent related to issues raised in episodes of Reveal: interviews at national parks and monuments of Confederate graveyards or houses of its leaders expose the slavery apologist narrative that continues to this day in the South. Curators of these places actually say ridiculous things along the lines of "well, the Blacks didn't really know how to live so he gave them homes and some food and they were happy, he was nice to them." Many of these places receive federal funding. This goes to show that Trump didn't create some of the problems which we see today, but rather he appeared as a symptom of it. After all, nearly 63 million American adults went out and selected him to run the country. Just like a recession self-perpetuates, so does hate like the kind that Trump peddles. And this issue isn't even uniquely American--how it manifests here may differ in many respects, but left unchecked, humans just do this kind of thing. Targeting 'others' both exercises and consolidates the power of a group or faction. 

The US has fought a war against terrorism for two decades now, particularly combating Islamic extremism. This has led to two full-scale invasions of Muslim-majority countries and a demonization of Islamic individuals altogether. Another excellent, excellent podcast is The Ezra Klein Show, hosted by the co-founder and editor-at-large for Vox. It features an has an episode from around a month ago called  "The War on Muslims." Sounds like some liberal, terrorist-appeasing, pc run amok crap right? Many Americans won't even acknowledge the possibility that Muslims may actually suffer from rather than perpetrate discriminatory violence. Even I approached it quite skeptically. Those 90 minutes illuminated a reality which I had largely ignored. All the pieces existed, yet I had never put together the puzzle and seen the big, ugly picture. 

Countries all around the world are demonizing and scapegoating Muslims, and for some reason it works...the US has had its battle with Islamic terrorists, almost entirely abroad since 9/11. A real 'War on Terror' would also target White nationalists, who have killed more Americans on our own soil in politically-motivated mass shootings this past decade than Muslims. Trump has doubled down on the focus on this particular set of foes. His proposed Muslim ban blatantly reveals something which has little to do with security. Across the ocean, China literally interns millions of Uighurs in concentration camps, and subdues the other ten or so million to mass surveillance and coercion. These Turkic peoples living in the country's remote northwestern region have faced a demand for assimilation by the Chinese Communist Party, which loathes religion altogether. Parents cannot name their children Mohammad anymore there. In another nation with over a billion people, India's new law forbids "illegal immigrants" from eventual citizenship if they are Muslims. The Hindu nationalist BJP party under Narendra Modi has sparked waves of violence against Muslim communities in the country. While only about 14% of Indians are Muslims, that translates to over 170 million people. In Myanmar and Sri Lanka, primarily Buddhist forces have perpetrated violence against Muslims. Commenting on the situation in Israel is laden with nuance, but under its nationalist Prime Minister Netanyahu, conditions for Palestinians has deteriorated.

Northward, Putin used a false flag event as a pathway to his own power. By framing Muslim Chechen separatists for a series of apartment bombings, Putin effectively scared Russians into electing him for security purposes, and has essentially ruled Russia ever since. Islamophobia has essentially replaced antisemitism in Europe; in France, Germany, etc, to be antisemitic is bad taste because of the Holocaust but to dislike Muslims...well, one can justify that, on account of the 'fact' that they go there to rape White women and impose Sharia law in the heart of Christendom . Of course, extreme Islamic terrorists have deployed devastating attacks that have shook the West. Nobody can justify these acts of reckless violence. What Americans often fail to realize is that many young men initially join radical groups because of the incursion of hostile foreign forces into their homeland, or persecution from governments in majority non-Muslim countries. Without formal militaries or means of diplomatically solving problems which effect their day to day lives and the ones they love, some people turn to alternative measures in order to put pressure on the aggressors to cease. Obviously, blowing yourself up almost never has a good outcome for the cause; it typically only further vilifies all Muslims. Yet one could say that most of the violence in the world involving Muslims today occurs with the Muslims on the receiving end of the attacks.

Russia's position has fascinated me for some time because historically they've utilized the same playbook of a few tactics for two centuries, and still manage to fool the West. Throughout the bulk of the 20th century, Russia had positioned itself as the leftist paradise and protector, center of egalitarianism, and it expended immense resources into infiltrating virtually any left-leaning organization, civil rights groups, etc in the US and the broader West. They did so with little to no success--American groups took the checks from Moscow, but never did yield to its influence. At least not to the extent of what goes on today.

 Now, in 2020, Russia has pivoted 180 to try and position itself as the right's ally by painting itself as defender of Christianity, Whiteness, traditionalism through their suppression of minorities, new draconian anti-gay laws, and other measures. Their intelligence has also infiltrated a lot of right-wing organizations like the NRA and certain political parties *cough*cough*the  GOP *cough* a few Congressmen have been groomed/tricked by Russia. Then you have Trump, an unprecedented asset for Vladimir Putin. The GRU (Russia's intelligence agency) also did manage to interfere in an American election, and intend to do the same once more...back in the Cold War, the Soviets called Westerners who picked up on their propaganda and parroted it "useful idiots." Trump, then, has ascended to the office of Idiot-in-Chief. 

In Europe also, far right groups look to Russia as the masculine place that's doing it right. In an increasingly diverse and tolerant world, a conservative backlash has emerged, exacerbated by the wave of Syrian migrants fleeing the civil war there. Brexit kicked off a renewed sense of nationalism and euroskepticism...Britain leaving the EU may unfortunately mark only the beginning of this fragmentation of the union. Tricking citizens of individual nations that they'd have a better fate independently plays into exactly what Russia wants. Weakening NATO and the EU strengthens Russian ambitions. Brexit and Trump's isolationism-both good for Russia. Of all the remaining European Union states, Germany is the big prize for Putin. Germany's AFD (Alternative For Deutschland) Party has loudly advocated for Germany to leave the rest of Europe. Syrian migrants and other European states only drag down the Germans. This philosophy has gained some traction, earning the fringe right party actual seats in the Bundestag.. 'Make Germany Great Again' just benefits Russia and Russia only, at the expense of any European nations that stand in its way. 

As always, Russia is like the tides: they recede, give up territory and pretend to change, gain the trust of the international community which buys them time to expand back to absorb a buffer area in Eastern Europe...in World War 1, Russia signed a peace deal which surrendered the land from the Baltic to Crimea. The new Soviets ultimately annexed it back after the Germans ultimately lost the war. Then they briefly lost this stretch of territory to the Nazis, retook it and expanded deeper into the heart of the continent after Hitler's defeat. Because of its participation in making that happen, Britain and the United States let their guard down as Soviet troops never really left the eastern half of the continent, establishing satellite states in Poland, Hungary, etc. Interestingly enough, some of the EU member states seeing the most successful far right movements are Poland, Hungary, and also the AFD has its largest popularity in what was once East Germany. Countries that had communist governments 30 years ago seem most susceptible to these types of movements. 

The Cold War ends, the USSR breaks up and Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus--they all become independent from Moscow. Essentially all of the states inhabited by non-ethnic Russians now have small sovereign territories, while the vast majority of the 'union' continues to exist as Russia. It would be naive to think places like Kazakhstan or Moldova ever truly belonged to an equal union of Soviet republics: the USSR code-named another generation of Russian empire. Since the 1990s, when communist puppet states in Eastern Europe fell and Moscow released some peripheral states, the Russians have re-invaded some of those places: South Ossetia, a part of Georgia, dealt with a Russian invasion over a decade ago; in 2014, Russia conquered Crimea under the pretense of democratically liberating its population. The Baltic countries have joined NATO, otherwise Russia probably would've taken them back as well, given that they control Kaliningrad, a territory that Lithuania blocks from physically connecting to the rest of Russia. Belarus may soon rejoin Russia.

They pull this dirty trick every time and the West falls for it. The Soviets had more global ambitions, it would seem, with attempts to incite a worldwide communist revolution initially followed by a more imperial approach to creating communist states around the world. It has become clear that they want to be insulated and they like the idea of being the "defenders" of somewhere--or using that narrative as an excuse for foreign influence. Right before World War 1, the Russians were the "Defenders of the Slavs." Russia's alliance with Serbia is what turned an Austrian invasion of an obscure and tiny, relatively recently formed country into a global conflict. Then, the Soviets served as the guarantors of communism.

When Europe/the West and Russia/the East clash, Poland always ends up absorbing the brunt of their brutality. Historically, going back to Genghis Khan's invasions, Poland ends up as the last line of defense for Europe from 'the east.' Massive casualties are consistently inflicted upon the Polish people. After World War 2, the US blocked Russian expansion into all of Europe, even France and Italy. It took great political will by the Americans, Brits, and others to set up these safeguards to prevent the spawning of communist revolutions that the Soviets would end up using to create proxy states and spheres of influence. Now, with the sponsoring of right wing movements across the West, plus Moscow's positioning as the defender of this ideology, Russia once again prepares itself for a similar role. Yet unlike after World War 2, somehow, that basic premise of solidarity to stop Russian aggression and expansion has evaporated. Much of it may have to do with the election of Donald Trump and revival of paleoconservatism and Boris Johnson's Brexit...one might say that the communist takeovers which the Soviets tried and failed at implementing have already occurred in their contemporary form with these two political figures. 

In general, as time goes on and passes since a horrible event, people forget about how bad it really gets. Nobody today really understands the threat of expansion by an undemocratic state or a world order without America playing an active role in the driver's seat. One hundred years ago, the Spanish flu killed tens of millions of people. Now, up until the last few weeks, "it's just the flu" has been the prevailing mentality with regards to COVID-19. That, or "the media always hypes this stuff up." In reality, a team of competent doctors and internationally coordinated officials have contained could-be pandemics, like ebola with great success. Yet they've forecasted that an unstoppable pandemic was inevitable. Decades ago, things like measles or polio showed their ugly faces in children, leading to paralysis, mental impairment, or even death. Nowadays, since no American parents have actually seen anybody with the measles, some people think vaccines don't work or even do damage. See the alternative, and that mentality flips around real quick. 

It is one thing for the general public to quickly forget the lessons of history. It is another when governments fail to heed these warnings, or at least to the extent that they should or in time for it to matter. Nationalism has led to wars; scapegoating has ignited atrocities, such as loading human beings into massive ovens and charring them en masse, or burying women alive after raping them, and so on. Language like the kind Trump uses has an extremely detrimental effect. Say what you will, like "he never tells anyone to go punch a Muslim". And yet, thousands of hate crimes or even just idiots yelling offensive obscenities  at strangers from minority groups has sharply spiked since 2016. Even murders have occurred because of his rhetoric. Other industrialized nations like Germany have far right movements that look to Trump as an example, though they want to go further--a chilling flashback to how the Nazis adopted American eugenics practices, and then kicked it up a notch or seven. Whenever anybody critiques their argument that Muslims have come to ruin Western civilization and that the EU makes Berlin a cuck, the AFD calls it 'Lügenpresse'--literally, fake news. 

Of course, Hitler originally used the tactic of discrediting any opposing ideas with a label like this, but its usage by any serious political movement in the West let alone a major world leader had stayed dormant for decades. The US leads by example, whether we like it or not, want to or not, and whether we do good or do bad. The United States--the nation which pioneered modern democracy, that established a United Nations to insure world peace, the place where the internet and iPhones and Hollywood and common people owning cars and all that good stuff came from--now, we've sent the signal that rampant nationalism is acceptable. The future will play out regardless of what we do. Yet as individuals, countrymen, and the most powerful nation on earth, we cannot allow this ship to cast itself as a fleet of one, and turn its cannons on the rest of the fleet. It'll be all but impossible tackling climate change when Spain cares about Spain (and only certain Spaniards), and China only cares about China (and only certain Chinese), etc. 

Not to mention wars wreck havoc on the environment--and human life as well. Wars rarely occur, or at least stay contained under our current world order. Deregulate the way states interact, and you could have Syrias happening allover the world, with violence spilling over into neighboring nations leading to even larger conflicts. Ruptures in the supply chains, mass migrations that lead to refugee crises and persecution, various factions fighting proxy wars, increasing the savagery of their tactics just to gain a slight edge over their opponents, rape, PTSD, chemical weapons, reactionary aggression for generations to follow...those things happen when the planet operates under a decentralized order. 

The UN gets crazy criticism from the right and globalism has found itself under siege in recent years. However, at this exact moment, humanity has never had a healthier, wealthier and safer population. On almost any metric, we today exceed anything previous generations could've ever imagined: starvation kills very few, as does war. Almost all babies live past the age of 5, and then go on to live past the age of 50. Diseases have cures. Squalid poverty has fallen rapidly with each passing year. The common man has more power in most parts of the world than at any time before this. Cultures blend--and not because one conquered the other, killed its men, raped its women and raised the kids with mixed customs. All these gains needn't be sacrificed for false promises of becoming great again. That already is great! Still needs improvement, but incrementally growing beats trying to radically shift gears and have the stability of every continent fall with that movement. People pay attention to the headlines in the news and see the wars, turmoil and unsolved problems; the news doesn't show the millions of people who didn't die from a preventable disease last year, the millions that didn't die in pointless wars. 

As the DOW Jones today alone demonstrates, we live in a fragile construct. Nowadays, a sick person in China can ultimately shut down economic activity on every corner of the earth. Sure, the bubonic plague and other diseases came from China, but the 14th century plague took 3 years to reach Italy. The coronavirus took 3 months. We have a choice in 2020: us and them, or everyone? Hate, or love? Lies and magical thinking, or rationality and truth? Backwards, or forward?



Works Cited


Snopes, Trump fires pandemic team.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

Newsweek, Russian influence in the GOP.
https://www.newsweek.com/former-gop-congressman-says-republicans-being-used-russia-1474125

Reveal News, info on TCE.
https://revealnews.org/article/epa-scientists-found-a-toxic-chemical-damages-fetal-hearts-the-trump-white-house-rewrote-their-assessment/