Seeking Certainty

Seeking Certainty

The word from the White House today, in the face of the dramatic increase in infections in 30+ states (to over 50,000 on both Thursday and Friday), is that we will simply need to learn to live with the virus and carry on. This is the latest in Trump’s deadly blunders on behalf of the American people. The worst part of that is that it is not for want of good scientific and medical advice, but rather it is driven quite clearly by political calculus, specifically with an all-out ambition to attempt to salvage Trump’s prospects for reelection in November. The messaging from the administration today was that they have been forced to admit that since the virus did not go away as Trump originally predicted, and that it hasn’t improved and faded as the summer has come as Trump then projected, and it did not disappear as Trump encouraged and threatened to force an early reopening, and it spread viciously as Trump refused to cover his face with a mask, even while touring a mask factory, so now there is no path left to Trump to say the virus which has gotten the better of him at each turn is not going away.

I am reminded of the Emir of Sharjah in the UAE, who, having failed over many years to defeat native rebels, just declared victory one day with no basis in fact. It proved to be a brilliant strategy because it so dispirited the rebels that they dejectedly quit and went back to their villages on the collective view that they could not fight crazy. Were the stakes not one of life and death, I might be inclined to suggest the same strategy for the next four months and just put all the chips on the election, but at the current rate, that would be conceding almost 300,000 American lives at the current rate of infection and death (both likely to be even higher under the administration’s concessionary approach) and that is far too high a price for America to pay to pander to a crazy man.

I only know one who has died from COVID-19 (the hilltop neighbor who I didn’t know, but did see once). If the do-nothing strategy Trump seems to be theorizing is his best shot at cauterizing electoral damage is followed, there will be a 230% increase in deaths from current levels and statistically, that suggests I will know 2-3 more people who die before the election. If we add the 75 days of post-electoral transition, that 300,000 could easily grow under the do-nothing model to giving me a statistical 4-person loss before we get this idiot out of office.

I’m betting Trump figures he has a force field around him and his family and friends, but I wonder how he would feel if he knew that his strategy could lead to 3-5 people he knows being likely to die because of his approach to the virus? Obviously, that thought would never go beyond his boudoir since it would hurt his reelection efforts and we all know that Job One is never to be forsaken. I don’t believe for one moment that he really feels that therapeutics and/or vaccines will prevent any of this, he just doesn’t care because he feels it is most likely to attack people who don’t matter….which would be the have-nots.

We are faced now, especially with the apparent disaster of the non-strategy being suggested by the administration, with not less, but more uncertainty. Rather than doing everything we can as a nation to force us to fight this pandemic with everything we’ve got, we are being told to just lay down and assume collateral damage is inevitable and that none of it is worth more damage to the economy (code by Trump for damage to his reelection prospects). But here is the fly in that ointment for Donny Boy. Studies have shown that there is only a marginal difference between adjacent states (like Illinois and Wisconsin or Denmark and Sweden) which had drastically different lockdown strategies. The initial Trumpian view of that was that it said lockdown wasn’t worth the price, but now that thinking has been universally revised. Now, as more an more data reveals itself, it is determined that the relatively small advantage to hard lockdown states over loose ones has been that the populace of the loose states has taken matters into their own rational hands and decided to lock themselves down despite Republican and Trumpian-led state governments trying to show support for the boss of all bosses. Comparable economic stats for both types of states further reinforces this view.

We humans all want certainty wherever we can find it in our lives. In fact all beings want certainty and worry when uncertainty is injected into their lives. Health is perhaps the most important aspect of our lives where we inherently need certainty. The truth is that there is never certainty in life and least of all in the arena of good health. Many essays have been written about the certainty of uncertainty and the need to embrace that fact of life. Who among us knows our future, especially as to health? But that isn’t actually the point. The point is to always be seeking certainty to make sure we do everything in our power to preserve life, even though we know certainty is only approachable and never achievable. By that standard, Donald Trump, with his most recently suggested administrative policy for handling the Coronavirus crisis, is betraying all that is holy about the human condition. I believe that doing anything that undervalues ANY human life is simply wrong. No arguments, least of all economic arguments or political arguments substitute for the unconditional obligation we all have as responsible humans to be always about seeking certainty of life. By that standard, if Trump advocates this new policy (and we all know he will have others go ahead of him to suggest it to see who salutes it or shoots at it) or allows it to be the modus operandi of the government machinery, he will be joining the ranks of the great evil forces of mankind. He will have presided over more deaths than any other President in American history and secure his place in the rogues gallery of history. He will likely be defeated by the populace that naturally engages in seeking the certainty of good health for all.