The Resumption Conundrum

            It’s true, I am not a fan of our President, but that doesn’t mean that the man is wholly lacking in admirable qualities. Yes, he’s a bully and a braggart; he lies incessantly; he is an accomplished con man and is a compulsive cheater in his business dealings; he flouts both our laws and Constitution; he is obsessively vindictive; he has a very short attention span and has no faith in science or “facts” (which explains why he tends to make up his own); he regularly resorts to threats and bribes to extricate himself from problems of his own making; he is totally devoid of compassion; and he demands loyalty, but is unwilling to reciprocate it. I could go on, but maybe I should stop here. On the positive side, he has very acute political instincts; he never misses an opportunity to promote himself; he loves to perform and he is masterful in manipulating the media. 

            There is little doubt that the President is anxious to restart the nation’s economy.  He was reluctant to even recognize that the coronavirus was a threat for fear that it would spook the stock market and the economy which he was counting on to help him win re-election; and he did not impose social separation restraints or even encourage the States to do so, most likely for the same reason. On Monday he asserted that he, and he alone, is empowered to decide when the nation’s economy is to be turned back on. When this claim was challenged at his press conference, he became very testy and made some disparaging remarks to the reporter who questioned the source of his authority for wielding this power. 

            I did mention at the outset of this article that our President has little regard for the law or the Constitution. He does, however, understand power and he loves to wield it.  In fact, he is fascinated by power and stands in awe of those who wield, particularly those who wield it ruthlessly. He knows that at least for the near future the States desperately require the assistance of the federal government to protect their citizens from the virus and to simply carry out their governing functions.  He also knows that as long as this is the case, the governors will do what he requests and will say nice things about him while doing so.  This would explain the conflicting reports I read on Tuesday about Governor Cuomo who first threatened to sue the President to establish that removing social distancing regulations was a decision to be made by the individual states and who subsequently reaffirmed that he would be working with the federal government in making that determination. We saw this same principle in action a few days ago when the Republican governor who heads the National Governors Association at first disagreed with the President’s statement that the federal government had provided the states with all of the medical supplies they needed and later walked back his statement. 

            Then, at his press conference late Tuesday afternoon, the President seemingly reversed course and said that the decisions to restart the economy should be made by the nation’s governors. Actually he said that he was authorizing the governors to make those decisions even though the governors did not need his authorization to take that action. This reminded me of Le Petit Prince, a book about a prince who was the sole inhabitant on a distant planet which I read as a child.  In the book, the prince asserts that he has the power to make the sun rise and set at his command. When asked to demonstrate that power, he declined saying that a wise prince knows that such awesome powers should not be exercised frivolously.  While this change in the President’s position probably explains why Governor Cuomo unexpectedly changed his position, it doesn’t explain the President’s own change of heart.  It seems unlikely that he was cowered by Governor Cuomo’s threat of legal action. That’s like Br’er Fox threatening to throw Br’er Rabbit into the briar patch. It’s conceivable that one of the President’s trusted advisers counseled him that this isn’t a fight worth fighting. That’s probably not it either because the President doesn’t really trust any of his advisors.  I suggest that the President simply woke up to the realization that the decisions as to when and how to restart the economy (which he himself characterized as the most difficult decisions he has ever had to face) are fraught with political danger and that it was perhaps best to let them be made by others whom he would be quick to blame if their decisions proved improvident.  In the meantime, he would go through the charade of consulting with the nation’s business leaders. 

            It should also be understood that the President was under pressure from a number of business leaders to restart the economy sooner rather than later; and sooner was certainly more perilous than later, especially since the President’s own medical advisers were unanimous that the nation’s healthcare system would not be ready for this step at the end of April and probably not even at the end of May.  Thus, by nobly bestowing the decisions as to when and how to restart the economy on the nation’s governors, he could avoid having to take the blame for an improvident decision.   He could also appease his business friend by contending that the governors were in a better position to make those decisions (an uncharacteristically valid argument for the President).  In this way, he could deny the wishes of his donor base and still remain in their good graces.

            This course of action also gives the President the opportunity to demonstrate that his first priority is saving lives, a claim he made repeatedly at one of his press conferences. This was following his epiphany that continuing to contend that the coronavirus was a “hoax” was not going to be a winning strategy. When he repeated that phrase for the fourth time in the span of a couple of minutes I was pretty sure that he didn’t really believe it, even though he usually prefaces his more blatant lies by “trust me.” In fact, the only life I’m sure he cares about is his “political life.” In this connection, you should take note of the fact that, while commending healthcare workers for serving as the nation’s soldiers in this war against an invisible enemy, the President has been unwilling to endorse the Democrats’ insistence that the next piece of economic rescue legislation provide funds to support the nation’s hospitals and healthcare workers.  The Democrats’ legislative proposal also includes aid to state and local governments hard-pressed by the virus that don’t have the luxury of running $2.5 trillion deficits.  For the President, that is a non-starter, because by placing state governments in a stronger economic position they would be in less need to curry the President’s favor; and we have all grown accustomed to how the President likes people to fawn over him.  His latest stunt is to require that his name be inscribed on the checks being sent to low income individuals as provided for in the CARES Act, a change which is likely to delay the distribution of those desperately needed funds by at least a few days.

             Enough about the President’s mental machinations; when and how is the nation’s economy going to be restarted? In his press conference on Tuesday, the President expressed confidence that as many as 20 states would likely be in a position to restart their economies by the end of this month. To many Republican governors, such statements by the President cannot be lightly disregarded. He has a tight hold on the hearts and minds of their constituents who are quick to believe even his most outrageous claims. (Think: “I inherited a broken healthcare system;” “If you want to be tested, you can be tested.”). In addition, by refusing to go along with the President’s obvious impatience to restart their state’s economy, they run the risk that they will not have the administration’s backing should the death tolls rise and the economy falters in their state.  This, in large measure explains why so many Republican governors deferred issuing social separation mandates until after the administration conceded that such actions might be warranted.

            The healthcare professionals on the President’s Coronavirus Task Force have made it very clear that there is a very serious danger in reopening schools and no-essential businesses and relaxing social distancing mandates prematurely. It will only give the virus an opportunity to renew its onslaught. Unfortunately, neither Dr. Fauci nor Dr. Birx has had the courage to actually say what conditions should be met in order to begin the process of reopening our economy. The most they have said is that those conditions are not currently present.  It’s not that they don’t know; it’s just that they have made something of a devil’s bargain.  The have decided that, rather than incur the President’s wrath by informing the public of the conditions they believe will be necessary for a successful reopening of the economy, they will only provide highly guarded public comments so as to remain in position to continue to be able to dissuade the President from following his worse instincts. I’m sure I mentioned that one of the President’s qualities is that he is obsessively vindictive?

            In fact, the World Health Organization and other groups have issued guidelines for reopening a nation’s economy.  The first condition is that transmission of the virus be under control.  Until a vaccine is developed and made widely available, this is simply not possible without severely limiting inter-personal contact. We know precious little about this virus and how it can be transmitted.  Will the simple act of exhaling by an infected person be sufficient to transmit the virus? How far can it be transmitted through the air? Does the direction and the velocity of the wind make a difference.? How long will the virus survive on a metal handle or door knob? How long will it survive on a piece of mail or package you receive? Will simply washing your hands with soap and water eradicate the virus?  In short, can this condition realistically be met without knowing the answers to these questions? Perhaps the best that can be done in the absence of definitive answers is to adopt protocols reasonably designed to interdict the most likely means of transmitting the virus.  This will likely mean wearing face masks and gloves at all times while outside the sanctity of your home, making a conscious effort to wash or sanitize your hands after every potential encounter with the virus, and changing and washing your clothes each time you return home. For a nation that currently lacks protective masks, disposable gloves and easily available hand sanitizers, we are still several weeks’ away from satisfying this criterion.

            The second criterion on every healthcare professional’s list is that the healthcare system be able care for those who become infected.  That has been a critical problem in New York and is currently a problem in the State of New Jersey where hospitals and healthcare workers have been pushed to their limits to treat the waves of patients seeking their services.  It’s not just a problem in large metropolitan areas with high population densities; it could also be a problem in many rural areas where hospitals have become few and far between. Any cluster of virus cases emerging from a factory or nursing home could easily overcome the capacity of the local healthcare facilities.

            A third criterion is the ability to identify persons who have been infected by the virus and to trace and test those who have come in contact with the infected person and to isolate them as necessary.  This requires the ability conduct testing for the virus on a massive scale.  While the President likes to say that we have no problem with testing for the virus, the simple fact is that it has been over a month since the President had his epiphany and we are yet to test even 1% of the nation’s population.  Even though the total number of test already conducted is now almost three million, those tests were started late in the game after the virus had been given a very large head start. Thus, the effectiveness of our testing is not so much a matter of the number of tests conducted, nor the number of tests conducted on a per capita basis (which remains small), but rather when such tests were conducted.  In our case, it has been too little, too late.  We are still a long way from having anything like enough testing equipment or the capacity to process the number of tests it will take to be in a position to keep the virus in check once social distancing is relaxed.

             Realizing this, the President has simply taken the position that testing is the responsibility of the states. In short, he is trying to distance himself from the fact that his administration rejected an offer of proven test equipment by the W.H.O. in early January of this year, choosing instead to create and manufacture our own.  This decision, along with the initial failure of the tests devised by the CDC, resulted in a costly delay in the beginning of testing.  It should also be appreciated that COVID-19 is a unique disease and there are no tests for detecting it waiting on the shelves at Walmart for the states to buy.  Those tests have to be designed and produced and testing laboratories (of which there are only two principal ones in the U.S.) have to be set up to handle these tests. Thus, it is wholly impractical for each state to develop and produce its own testing apparatus.  This has to be done by a central organization such as the federal government, which despite the fanfare described at its early press conferences, the President’s Coronavirus Taskforce has done a very haphazard job, leaving all states with inadequate testing capabilities. It could be another month or two before testing can be conducted on a scale sufficient to safely relax restrictions on economic activity.

            There is a business maxim that “things that get counted get improved.”  Thus, in order to improve a product or process you have to be able to measure its results. In the context of the current pandemic, you have to be able to see where the virus is attacking and whom it is attacking in order to be able to mount an effective defense against it.  As Dr. Birx put it, “without wide-scale testing, we are simply flying blind.”  Strangely enough, not only has the Trump administration washed its hands of responsibility for conducting tests for the virus, it has made no effort to ascertain the number of cases of the virus and where those cases are occurring.  Instead, it has relied entirely on private institutions to carry out this important function and the resulting data are woefully inadequate.  In fact, there is good reason to believe that the number of individuals infected with the virus may be as many as twice those that have been reported (largely because the virus has spread faster than we have been able to test for it). In addition, deaths resulting from the virus are also being understated because many individuals have died without having been tested for the virus as revealed this week when New York City revised upward its number of deaths owing to the virus by roughly 35%.

            The federal government’s lack of interest in even wanting to see that we are operating on the basis of actual data was also evidenced this week when the President advised businesses that they need not worry about recording whether their employees had contracted the virus, even though the virus is a “reportable illness” under OSHA’s regulations. This is simply unconscionable, but then again not any more so than the President’s unwillingness to provide Congress with timely reports as to how the $2.2 trillion it has appropriated are being put to use.

            It is easy to understand that the nation’s governors, like the President, are eager to restart their state’s economy; however, we have to hope that, unlike the President, they will be guided by what is safe and feasible and not on the basis of how it will affect the Fall elections.