Weekend Update: Chaotic Disaster

There is terror near panic between the lines of this past week's lead stories in the New York Times and Washington Post, and these are the more austere and objective voices still around.

The combination of the Trump administration's growing willful blindness to the covid crisis and a dangerously vulnerable economy place the United States on the precipice of self-created catastrophe with apocalyptic consequences.  That is what is feared.

While the official US death total from covid nears 80,000--with some 30,000 deaths recorded in the past two weeks, and infections continuing to climb--much of the country is abandoning sequestration measures in wildly different ways.

While polls show a strong majority object to being endangered by too hasty a return,  Republican officeholders and other right wing extremists agitate against restrictions in states that are attempting a more careful transition.  The governors of these states--Michigan and PA for instance--face law suits and rebellious legislatures.  While most of this is transparently political (aimed especially at November), there is enough pent-up anger and cabin fever and economic fear to show a definite trend towards a weakening of the social compact that has held steadfast for the past month, if not yet a total breakdown.

It may well be that the way restrictions are being ended will contribute very little to economic revival, but will contribute mightily to rampant new infections.  At simply the current rate, the US--already with the most acknowledged deaths and most recorded infections in the world--will careen past the 100,000 mark in a week or two.  Some models project upwards of 300,000 deaths by the first of July.

At the same time, the economy is in tatters with growing numbers of people in financial distress, including families falling into poverty and experiencing hunger.  The steps that the federal government could take to relieve much of this pressure are pretty well known, but Republicans signal that they will not allow them to be taken.  So we get the NY Times lead story on Saturday warning that decisions made or not made in Washington could mean a wrecked economy for many years.

Meanwhile, there have also been several stories this past week with the same theme: the rest of the world is aghast at what the US has come to, and even pity us.  A story that broke Saturday quoting President Obama as calling Trump's covid response a "chaotic disaster" was the #1 story on the BBC News website.

And if the mention of Obama isn't enough to bring a tear to your eye, try Nicholas Kristoff's column on Denmark, a case study of how to do this right (access requires a NYT subscription or registration.)   Denmark went into lockdown early but used the time well. A few highlights:

"It has had almost twice as much testing per capita as the United States and fewer than half as many deaths per capita. Put it this way: More than 35,000 Americans have already died in part because the United States could not manage the pandemic as deftly as Denmark.

Denmark lowered new infections so successfully that last month it reopened elementary schools and day care centers as well as barber shops and physical therapy centers. Malls and shops will be allowed toreopen on Monday, and restaurants and cafes a week later.

Moreover, Danes kept their jobs. The trauma of massive numbers of people losing jobs and health insurance, of long lines at food banks — that is the American experience, but it’s not what’s happening in Denmark. America’s unemployment rate last month was 14.7 percent, but Denmark’s is hovering in therange of 4 percent to 5 percent."

“Our aim was that businesses wouldn’t fire workers,” Labor Minister Peter Hummelgaard told me. Denmark’s approach is simple: Along with some other European countries, it paid companies to keep employees on the payroll, reimbursing up to 90 percent of wages of workers who otherwise would have been laid off.

Denmark also helped hard-hit companies pay fixed costs like rent — on the condition that they suspend dividends, don’t buy back stock and don’t use foreign havens to evade taxes.

Some of the $3 trillion that the United States has poured into unemployment benefits, stimulus payments, business rescues and industry bailouts has gone to worker retention, but the attention to avoiding layoffs is far less serious.

As a share of G.D.P., Denmark’s coronavirus relief spending is a bit less than America’s, but it seems more effective at protecting the population.
The upshot is that Denmark staggered through the pandemic with employees still on the payroll and still paying rent. As the economy sputters back to life, Danish companies are in a position to bounce back quickly without the cost of having to rehire workers."

But then workers are better off in Denmark in normal times.  A McDonald's worker gets better pay and more benefits.  They do so on the oddball socialistic principle that "If you work full time you should be able to support your family.”

All of my life I've heard the same rhetoric from Republicans that never matched reality, and in this crucial situation, Denmark provides an answer to it all. Denmark is productive, efficient, and employs a higher proportion of its population than does the US.

That Republican rhetoric defending policies that, not coincidentally, benefit their wealthy supporters, has been wearily damaging forever, but especially since 1980 when the postwar consensus broke down and the far right took over the party.  Now it is poised to be more than damaging.  It could be apocalyptic--the relative quick beginning to a true Dark Age, of death, poverty and anarchy.

The question that naturally arises is: can we survive until February?  That's the earliest that new policies could begin to reverse the damage, pending the election outcome.

Right now my answer is that we're likely to have two strikes against us.  First, the damage that is likely to occur with bewildering speed between now and then.  And second, the Republican determination to let that damage happen.

Eric Levitz has a piece on the New York Magazine site entitled:The GOP Isn’t Cynical Enough to Save Us From a Depression.  But I suspect the exact opposite is true, for no more politically cynical human being ever lived than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  He may well have calculated the 2020 presidential election is lost, and is determined that the country be in the worst possible shape for a Democratic President.  Which is yet another reason why removing him from the Senate is as important as removing the Republicans from the White House.

Hail Italia!

Italians celebrated Liberation Day national holiday last week Click for full photo

Italy, the first country in Europe to conspicuously suffer from the global covid crisis, is slowly starting to emerge from lockdown. At least for today, the virus numbers are down, and another nation--Great Britain--has surpassed Italy for the most deaths in Europe officially from the virus.

  In the latest in his series of observations for the New York Times, Italian writer Beppe Severgnini (no relation on my Severini side, as far as I know) reports:

"Now that we are beginning to relax the lockdown — cautiously, anxiously — perhaps we can say it: Italy coped. The national health system sustained the impact, although 153 doctors and over 50 nurses lost their lives, and thousands were infected. Sixty million people stayed at home and, by and large, followed the rules. That was a surprise, given our reputation for being undisciplined."

Italians are subject to so much regulation, he suggests, that they scrutinize each one to see if it makes sense for them.  If it does, they follow it.  This one did.  They followed it, more or less completely.

And they did it for longer than anyone, by reaching into their shared character:
"We coped because we found other resources that were always there: realism, inventiveness, extended families, solidarity, memories."

While Italians obeyed the rules of physical distancing, they didn't for a moment engage in social distancing. "We are a social bunch, and the web just provided us with extra tools. Family and personal relationships — whose importance in Italian life cannot be underestimated — helped a lot in this crisis. Men cooked for their families with the help of their children, while mothers became part-time teachers. Friends sought out friends; if they were unwell, even more so. Aperitivo on the balcony — toasting with your neighbors — was no one-off Instagram occasion; for many, especially people living alone, it became a regular, soothing way to end a nerve-racking day."

Severgnini concludes:

"A pandemic, like any major crisis, is revealing. It’s a lie detector for individuals and for nations. People can bluff for a day, a week, maybe a month, but not throughout a time like this."

And in contrast to some other nations:

"In Italy, so far, no arson, no rioting, no rallies, let alone armed protest. Just the odd fool who’d drive around to see whether he would get caught by the police. We decided that the lockdown made sense, and for two months we locked ourselves down. The rulers should congratulate the ruled, for once. The Italians deserve praise and gratitude."

To which I can only add, Salute!

Poetry Monday: Ohio

Ohio

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

--Neil Young

There are many poems written about, in response to, and inspired by the slaughter of unarmed students by National Guard troops at Kent State University, fifty years ago today, on May 4, 1970.  In fact Kent State now maintains an archive of such poems, and held a contest to generate more of them for this anniversary.  But this lyric, wed to angry guitars in the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song "Ohio" is both pure and defining.  Written, recorded and released immediately after media coverage of the killings, it became a generation's cry and now a generation's memory.