The Soul of the Republican Party
On April 25th, the State of Georgia and three other states began to relax their social distancing orders. These actions had been prompted by a concerted pressure campaign orchestrated by the President, involving ranking Republicans including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Attorney General William Barr, and promoted by Fox News. That same day, Timothy Egan wrote an Op-Ed article in the New York Times in which he called Republicans “the Party of Death” because their actions were risking the unnecessary deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans. A week has now passed since the State of Georgia began to re-awaken its economy from its medically induced coma and there are already signs that Georgia may have acted prematurely. Whereas new cases of the virus in Georgia had declined steadily from their daily peak of 1,118 on April 17th to a low of 608 on April 25th, they have now steadily grown back to 1,806. If this trend continues, and there is no reason to believe that it won’t, the Republican Party, which proclaims to be “pro-life”, will be faced with the soul-revealing decision as to whether to continue or jettison its efforts to restart the nation’s economy.
I previously observed that it appeared that the President had decided that his chances of being re-elected were much better if he eschewed the advice of his medical experts and sacrificed additional lives in order to restore the nation’s economy. This past Thursday, David Frum voiced this same thought in a television interview, saying that Republicans (his party) were pursuing a “shoot the moon” strategy in the hope that they could cause the economy to recover in the third quarter in time to achieve a favorable result in the November elections. He also expressed doubt that their strategy would work.
Those who advocate an immediate cessation of social distancing requirements point to Sweden which has adopted a “herd immunity” strategy of freely allowing the virus to spread on the theory that only a few will die and the remainder will become immune. According to the latest statistics, Sweden has a population of 10.1 million, of which a little over 21,000 have contracted the virus which has been responsible for 2,586 deaths. These numbers generally correspond to the percentage of Americans who have been infected and killed by the virus to date (which is reasonable because, for the first 60 days, this nation essentially did nothing to slow the disease). They are, however, considerably higher than the numbers experienced by Sweden’s neighbors (Denmark, Norway and Finland), each of which has roughly one half the population of Sweden and have had one fifth the number of fatalities from the virus. While there is reason to believe the actual number of Swedes infected by COVID-19 is probably more like 100,000, assuming the virus is allowed to continue to spread throughout its entire population, Sweden would suffer approximately 250, 000 fatalities. Using the same strategy in the U.S. would result in roughly 8.5 million deaths. Even if the virus has already infected 10% (and not 1%) of Sweden’s population (or 1 million individuals), Sweden’s death toll would rise to 25,000 which would correspond to roughly 850,000 deaths in the United States. Correspondingly, even if 20% of Sweden’s population has already been infected, by following its strategy, the U.S. could expect to suffer more deaths than its death toll in World War II.
While I remain fearful of COVID-19’s propensity to spread rapidly and its lethal capabilities, I recognize that, in addition to the percentage of our population already infected, there is much that we don’t know about the disease and that there is a possibility that my fears could be exaggerated. For example, it is entirely possible that Gilead Sciences’ drug, Remdesivir, will prove successful in reducing the number of lives that will be taken by the virus and that the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford will prove to be a reliable preventative of future infections. While Remdesiver only showed modest improvement in a small clinical test among the patients to whom it was given (most of whom were already seriously ill), there is a real possibility that it might be quite effective if administered at an early stage of the disease. Taking these possibilities into consideration, the actions of Republicans in moving to reopen the nation’s economy may not only be bold, but could also prove to be wise.
The problem is that there is a timing mismatch. While the FDA has now approved Remdesivir for use on COVID-19 patients outside of controlled clinical tests, it is likely to take a few, if not several, months for the medical profession to determine whether Remdesivir will be effective in curbing the number of deaths attributable to the virus and much longer before any other drug can be developed and tested. On the other hand, Georgia and the handful of other states that have relaxed their social distancing orders will begin to experience a rapid increase in deaths (corresponding to the current increase in confirmed cases) beginning in the middle of this month. This will be when the decision to move forward or pull back will have to be made. Sadly, there is mounting evidence that the Grand Old Party has absolutely no intention of turning back in the face of evidence that its chosen path is going to greatly increase the number of the nation’s deaths.
The first clue is that the administration has shown little interest in actually trying to obtain an accurate count of how many Americans have been infected by COVID-19 and how many have actually died as a result of it. It is very hard to believe that Republicans will abandon their efforts to restart the nation’s economy in the face of rising COVID-19 deaths if they are unconcerned with the existing numbers of those deaths. The administration has not published any figures on these two important statistics and, instead, has placed the burden of tracking the disease’s progress on private research groups and the news media. Also, the administration has turned its back on the job of testing for the disease which is the best way to obtain accurate information. It is indeed one thing to assert that testing is the primary responsibility of the states, it is quite another thing to actually impede the efforts of the states to do so by totally disrupting the supply chain for testing supplies.
It’s not simply a matter of the administration’s being disinterested in the progress of the virus. There is clear evidence that affirmative steps are being taken to make sure that accurate data is not being collected. This can be seen in the President’s statement to business owners that they “need not worry” about whether their employees have been stricken by the virus (which is a reportable illness under the OSHA rules). Thus, the President is actually interfering with the efforts of the federal government to actually collect meaningful data about the virus.
The results of the administration’s efforts to undermine the collection of data regarding the impact of COVId-19 are already readily apparent. This can be seen in the number of infections and deaths reported in the federal prison system. The nightly news is filled with stories about how nursing homes, meat processors and prisons have become hot beds of the virus, each with literally hundreds of infected persons. Yet, the statistics published by the Federal Bureau of Prisons reveal an infection rate of roughly one-third the rate of confirmed cases in the entire country. Another indicator that the statistics being published by the Federal Bureau of Prisons are understated is that the number of federal prisoners who have been killed by the virus represents over 15% of the number of reported infections which is well out of proportion to the ratio of deaths to infections reported by state prisons and by the nation’s hospitals. While it is easy to overlook the number of infected persons (simply by not testing them), it’s a little more difficult to overlook a rising number of dead bodies. Similarly, the Veterans Administration has reported few confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 even though there are widespread stories of veterans’ hospitals complaining of shortages of personal protective equipment to fight the pandemic. While you can claim that it is a state responsibility to test for the virus, it is certainly not the state’s responsibility to conduct tests on persons in federal facilities.
A second clue as to how Republicans may respond to a new wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths can be found in the ways in which the federal government goes about protecting the lives of citizens whose jobs are placed in danger. We got an early glimpse of this when Captain Brett Crozier, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, sought permission to offload those members of his crew who had tested positive for the virus so that the remaining 4,000 crew members would not be placed in danger. As his ship’s commanding officer, his priorities are to maintain the fighting capability of his vessel and to protect the lives of his crew members. His request was not only consistent with these responsibilities, but the best way to fulfill them. His request, however, was summarily rejected by the Secretary of the Navy and Captain Crozier was removed from his command for having made his request. When his case was reviewed, he was found to have acted appropriately. Nevertheless, that finding has not been accepted by the Secretary of Defense. It is indeed difficult to find a more blatant example of a disregard for the safety of others.
But wait, this is not an isolated incident. Throughout the Midwest there are scores of meat processing plants. These are vital cogs in the nation’s agricultural capabilities because the vast majority of the livestock raised in this country is processed by these facilities. If they were to close, cattle, pig and chicken farmers throughout the Midwest would have no way to sell their livestock; and the economies of most of the Midwestern states would be severely damaged, not to mention the fact that the nation would be deprived of a vital form of nutrition. Thus, there is little question about the importance of keeping these facilities in operation. In the past few weeks, however, dozens of these facilities have become incubators for COVID-19, with hundreds of their employees having become infected. In turn, the infected employees have infected hundreds of additional individuals in their own communities. As a result, their unions, as well as some local government officials, have been demanding that measures be taken to make these facilities safe for their employees.
Although OSHA and the DOL have formulated guidelines to protect plant employees, those guidelines have not been deemed mandatory which effectively means that they are being disregarded since compliance will necessarily reduce processing efficiency. Just to make sure that frightened worker show up at work, at least two Republican governors have issued statements warning that workers who stay away from their jobs will not be entitled to unemployment benefits. Moreover, to assure no state or local officials try to compel compliance with the federal guidelines, the President has issued an Executive Order precluding such action and immunizing non-complying meat processors from liability claims by infected workers or their families. Operating these facilities and protecting their workers are not mutually exclusive goals. Both are achievable, but at the expense of making meat processing operations more costly and less profitable. Thus, this represents a clear choice of having a healthy economy over a healthy public.
A third clue as to how the Republicans will respond in the event that COVID-19 infections and deaths rise sharply in the wake of Georgia’s relaxation of its social distancing orders can be seen in the history of the fourth phase of the economic rescue legislation recently enacted into law. That legislation started out as a simple bill in the Senate providing for a $250 billion increase in the appropriation for the Paycheck Protection Program which had exhausted its funding in its first week of operations. Democrats, while generally in favor of making additional funding available for this program, demanded that the legislation should also include funding for hospitals which were experiencing extraordinary expenditures while caring for COVID-19 patients and state and local governments that were also having to absorb extraordinary costs associated with the pandemic. Rather than incorporate these proposals into the legislation, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sought to have his bill clandestinely passed while the Senate was effectively in recess. When that ploy failed, he castigated his Democratic colleagues for unnecessarily delaying the appropriation of the additional needed funds. Two weeks later, McConnell reluctantly agreed to provide the funding for hospitals (but not the state and local governments) which have been the principal factors in saving lives threatened by the virus. He did this, not because he wanted to, but because this was the maximum price he was willing to pay to obtain funds the administration wanted to further fuel the nation’s economy.
Clearly the most important clue as to how Republicans will respond in the face of rising number of deaths from the COVID-19 virus is the very motivation that prompted Republicans to embark on their campaign to reopen the nation’s economy. According to David Frum, they are motivated by what they believe will most help them in the fall elections, a thought always uppermost in the mind of the President whose daily emotions rise and fall in sync with his poll numbers. This is consistent with what I previously wrote; namely, the President’s overwhelming motivation is to get himself re-elected. In fact, it’s pretty clear that little else matters to him. While he has proclaimed that his highest priority is to “save lives”, we know that is not the case because he has been unwilling to do anything (including to simply expand background checks) to stop the 30,000 annual deaths from gun violence.
More importantly, as a strictly political calculation, the numbers lean heavily toward saving the nation’s economy. Even if the virus takes 150,000 American lives by the time of the November elections, that will only touch the lives of 2-3 million individuals who had a friend or relative claimed by the virus. Even considering the 5-10 million additional Americans who may have suffered from the effects of the virus, we are still talking about a minute portion of the American public. On the other hand, virtually every American stands to be adversely affected by an economy in free fall; and well over 100 million will be seriously affected to the point that they may lose their homes or be forced into bankruptcy. Thus, pushing for a stronger economy simply makes better political sense than trying to save an additional 50,000 lives. Besides, there is a good chance that the electorate may be convinced that those deaths should be attributed to China or the W.H.O. or even the nation’s governors.
Getting re-elected, however, is essentially a concern limited to career politicians. How will sacrificing those additional lives affect the great majority of the Party’s base who profess to be “pro-life?” Will they care more about their homes and life-savings than the people cut down by the virus, most of whom are likely to be people of color who had no choice but to continue to expose themselves to the virus just to survive. Knowing how they feel about their guns, I’m sure that some of them will find that the loss of another 50,000 of “those people” is a sacrifice that had to be made to protect the nation.
Thus, the next thirty days will test the soul of the Republican Party and the next six months will test the soul of our nation.