JUST IN CASE
YOU WEREN’T NERVOUS ENOUGH YET
COMPILATION AND
COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
MARCH 21, 2020
NEW YORK BATTLES
THE CORONAVIRUS, AS PROBABLY OTHER CITIES ARE ALSO DOING OR WILL BE SOON. DO WATCH
THE EMBEDDED VIDEO “EVERYTHING IS UNCHARTED.”
Coronavirus in
N.Y.: ‘Deluge’ of Cases Begins Hitting Hospitals
There are
already critical shortages: A Bronx hospital is running out of ventilators. In
Brooklyn, doctors are reusing masks.
By Brian M.
Rosenthal, Joseph Goldstein and Michael Rothfeld
Published March
20, 2020
Updated March
21, 2020, 7:52 a.m. ET
PHOTOGRAPH -- People
waited outside Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens on Friday to be tested for
the coronavirus. Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
New York
State’s long-feared surge of coronavirus cases has begun, thrusting the medical
system toward a crisis point.
In a
startlingly quick ascent, officials reported on Friday that the state was
closing in on 8,000 positive tests, about half the cases in the country. The
number was 10 times higher than what was reported earlier in the week.
In the Bronx,
doctors at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center say they have only a few
remaining ventilators for patients who need them to breathe. In Brooklyn,
doctors at Kings County Hospital Center say they are so low on supplies that
they are reusing masks for up to a week, slathering them with hand sanitizer
between shifts.
Some of the
jump in New York’s cases can be traced to significantly increased testing,
which the state began this week. But the escalation, and the response, could
offer other states a glimpse of what might be in store if the virus
continues to spread. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday urged residents to stay
indoors and ordered nonessential businesses to keep workers home.
Video – ‘Everything
Is Uncharted’: New Yorkers Confront Life Amid a Coronavirus Shutdown 0:00/7:29
With
restrictions tightened on businesses and daily activity, residents are
grappling with uncertainty about resources, health care and their
paychecks.CreditCredit...Yousur Al-Hlou/The New York Times
TRANSCRIPT:
“With
restrictions tightened on businesses and daily activity, residents are
grappling with uncertainty about resources, health care and their paychecks.
“We’re going to
put out an executive order today. New York State on pause — only essential
businesses will be functioning. 100% of the workforce must stay home. This is
the most drastic action we can take.” “Everything is uncharted
territory. Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the news any minute.” “I
think I’ve been asking a lot of how we could have prevented this.” “Am I
going to see another depression like my grandfather saw in the 1920s?” “Over
the past few days, New York City has taken a lot of important measures. I’m just
worried it came a little bit too late.” [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE] “I think
I’m scared of having to see more death and from reading stories from abroad,
having to make decisions about resources. And I’m worried people in my
life are going to die from it. A few days ago, I had to watch a patient
basically slowly die. I just felt helpless. This is the first time I’ve
really seen people that I truly don’t know how to help. And they are coming in
so sick that everything I’m used to doing to be able to treat them, I can’t
really do.” “How was your day off, Mich?” “It was emotional, to say the least.”
“Why?” “It’s just, like, the hospital has been insane. And every hour, like,
things are changing. So it’s just, like, trying to keep up with that while
trying to read about what I should be treating these people with, while people
are rolling in the worst — I don’t know. They say in 18 days it’s supposed
to get really bad. I guarantee you tomorrow we’re going to have like 1,000
more. Those numbers are going to go up.”
[MUSIC PLAYING]
“That’s no problem at all. Thank you very much. That’s very nice. Thank you.
Sounds good. See you then. Bye. Well, I have been working. A lot of people are
not, which is hard. This place used to have 30 employees, and on Sunday we let
go of 90% of the staff. We want to reopen so we can rehire people, you know? It
was really hard to let everyone go. These are people that are at the level,
they’re not wealthy, you know? This is a very harsh reality. And actually what
the job is, is smiling through stress. And this is hard to smile through.”
[RAIN FALLING]
[QUIET PIANO] “It’s go time here at the community kitchen. This is the
time where we have to ramp up our services to be very sensitive to how people
are feeling. People are coming to us feeling vulnerable. They maybe work in the
restaurant industry. People who work in Broadway and in a lot of the behind-
the-scenes, they’re coming here saying, well, I don’t have work. So those
industries are the folks that are the first ones that we’re seeing come
through. But we’re preparing to see more people come through in need.” “All
programming at the senior center is suspended for the next two weeks. Stay safe
and have a good day.” “So this is not business as usual. We don’t know what’s
coming up if people have to stay in their homes for a longer period of time.
And we want to make sure people are getting food, especially since a lot of
industries are out of work. We are expecting a lot of new people, and we are
going to be ready to receive them. This is all very new for them, and some
of them are feeling guilt or shame coming to an emergency food program. So we
have to remember that we do this all the time, but for them, it’s something new
and something that they feel anxious about doing. We’re just getting them
registered. They’re getting food. That’s our main priority is people are
getting food.” [SIGHING WITH EXASPERATION] “I’m not supposed to touch my face.
Hold on a second.”
[MUSIC PLAYING]
“I have prepared myself already, mentally, multiple times, to go back to Oregon
and leave this entire beautiful dream behind me. So many people, including
many of my friends, are working at bars, at restaurants, which are now closed.
And now we’re all at home, wondering, Can we make it another month? Can our families
afford to pay their mortgages at home? Do we just need to go back and start
working, just so we can help our own families, the people that we love the
most, stay in the homes that we grew up in? It’s hard to think that my mom or
my dad are never going to see retirement. The best things that we can do
right now as a community is just to give ourselves over to something that
brings us true happiness. Because right now, it feels like it’s about to get
very desperate.”
[MUSIC PLAYING]
“This is only something that we can get through if we’re working together. There
will be so much suffering, unnecessary suffering, if we’re not really looking
out for each other and if we only think about ourselves and our well-being. We
have to be thinking about each other.” [MUSIC PLAYING] [BIRDS CHIRPING]”
State officials
have projected that the number of coronavirus cases in New York will peak in
early May. Both the governor and Mayor Bill de Blasio have used wartime
metaphors and analogies to paint a grim picture of what to expect. Officials
have said the state would need to double its available hospital beds to 100,000
and could be short as many as 25,000 ventilators.
As it prepares
for the worst-case projections, the state is asking retired health care
workers to volunteer to help. The city is considering trying to turn the
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a makeshift hospital.
“The most striking
part is the speed with which it has ramped up,” said Ben McVane, an emergency
room doctor at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. “It went from a small
trickle of patients to a deluge of patients in our departments.”
LIVE COVERAGE: THE
LATEST Read our live coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in the New York area.
At Elmhurst, a
545-bed public hospital that serves a large population of undocumented
immigrants and low-income residents, coronavirus patients have begun to
crowd out others. Protective gear is running low. Doctors are worried there
will be a shortage of ventilators.
Outside the
facility, at a tent housing a new mobile-testing site, a line snaked
around the building on Friday, a sign of the demand on testing and how much
worse the influx could become.
Image -- New
York could be short as many as 25,000 ventilators at the peak of the crisis,
according to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, second from left. Credit...Cindy Schultz for
The New York Times
Demetre
Daskalakis, deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Health, estimated
that hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of city residents would be
infected in the outbreak. Officials, however, have said that most people
will have mild to moderate symptoms, or none at all.
Generally, about
20 percent of coronavirus patients require hospitalization, with about a
quarter of those needing to be put on a mechanical ventilator machine to
help them breathe. Statewide, more than 1,200 people have been hospitalized
with the virus, according to Mr. Cuomo’s office. About 170 patients were in
intensive care units in city hospitals, according to the city.
But even
those initial cases were straining the health care system, a worrying sign.
“There’s no
reference for this,” said Daniel Singer, who has been an emergency room doctor
for 14 years and now works at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center. “It’s
totally unprecedented.”
Lincoln
administrators met on Friday to discuss its dwindling supply of ventilators,
according to another employee.
LATEST UPDATES
-- Read our live global coverage of the coronavirus outbreak.
Dr. Mitchell
Katz, the head of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs New York
City’s public hospitals, said there were 230 patients in the Elmhurst emergency
room on Thursday, about 50 more than any recent peak. Most were patients with
the symptoms of Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus, he said.
The system has
received 100 more ventilators from its supplier and is expecting hundreds more,
Dr. Katz said. At the same time, Mr. de Blasio has cast the equipment
shortage in stark terms and has asked the federal government for help.
“I don’t mean
to be too dramatic here, it’s just a fact,” he said on Friday in an interview
with the WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer. “It is a fact that a lot of people
are going to die who don’t need to die if this doesn’t happen quickly.”
As of Friday, 35
people with coronavirus had died in New York State — the second highest number
in the nation behind Washington State, where the virus appeared to hit first.
In addition to
converting the Javits Center, officials have considered turning a variety of
other places into temporary medical facilities, including Madison Square
Garden and the student dorms at New York University. A military hospital ship
with 1,000 beds is coming, but it will not arrive until April. The state is
planning to waive regulations in order to urge hospitals to increase capacity.
Image -- NewYork
Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center has set up a “surge tent” for patients
with mild respiratory illnesses. Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
In the short
term, hospital workers say their biggest worry is a severe shortage of the
medical gear that protects them from sick patients.
The state has
three stockpiles of medical supplies, including millions of masks and
gloves, as well as more sophisticated equipment like ventilators. On Friday,
the state health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, said those supplies had been
tapped to help backfill shortages at some hospitals.
Hospitals have
been trying to find more of the N95 masks that are most effective at
preventing virus spread, as well as lighter surgical masks, goggles and
gowns. But with suppliers running out across the world, hospital workers have
improvised.
At Kings County
Hospital Center and the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, administrators
have given doctors one N95 mask to last all week, according to employees at
the facilities. At Kings County, emergency room doctors wipe down the masks
with hand sanitizer between shifts and put the masks in brown paper bags
labeled with their names, a doctor there said.
The Health
and Hospitals Corporation, which runs Kings County, denied that workers
were being told to reuse masks. A representative of Northwell Health,
which includes Long Island Jewish, acknowledged that administrators were
trying to preserve masks because the supply was limited.
The federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that N95 masks should be
discarded after each interaction with an infected patient and should not be
used for more than eight hours.
At other
hospitals across the city and beyond, workers have turned to social media to
plead for masks.
In a hospital
affiliated with Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, administrators stowed
their masks in a locked room after a fistfight broke out among workers and
visitors over access to the dwindling stockpile. Several hospitals have
sent emails warning workers that they can be fired for the “unauthorized use”
of masks.
Medical workers
exposed to the coronavirus had been self-quarantining, but this week state and
city health officials issued new guidance recommending that hospital workers
stay on the job until they show symptoms of the virus. People with
symptoms of the virus spread it most easily, but research has also indicated
that asymptomatic transmission is possible.
“I’m worried
because if we get it, everybody is going to get it,” said Aretha Morgan, a
pediatric emergency room nurse at Columbia University Medical Center in
Manhattan. “I might actually be exposing children in the E.R.”
Dr. Katz, the
head of New York City’s public hospitals, said he understood fears about having
to keep working after being exposed. He defended the policy by saying the
virus was already widespread, so workers exposed in a hospital setting were not
any more exposed than anybody on the subway.
He also said
that while more supplies were needed, workers at public hospitals had enough
protective gear to last through the end of the month.
The city’s
other efforts included reserving 1,500 hotel rooms to potentially
use for people with mild coronavirus symptoms or other illnesses, said Deanne
Criswell, the city’s commissioner of emergency management.
Some medical
students have also volunteered to help respond to the crisis. For now,
students are working in support roles, such as taking notes and managing
materials, said David Muller, dean for medical education at the Icahn
School of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Health System.
But if the
number of cases continues to rise, it is possible that graduating students
could start seeing patients — though not necessarily ones with the virus — even
before their residencies are scheduled to begin in July.
“It could be
not even a week or two before we have to sweep away some of those
restrictions,” Dr. Muller said.
Luis
Ferré-SadurnÃ, Jesse McKinley and Andrea Salcedo contributed reporting.
Brian M.
Rosenthal is an investigative reporter on the Metro Desk. Previously, he
covered state government for The Houston Chronicle and for The Seattle Times.
@brianmrosenthal
Joseph
Goldstein covers health care in New York. He has been a reporter at The Times
since 2011. @JoeKGoldstein
Michael
Rothfeld is an investigative reporter on the Metro desk and co-author of a
book, "The Fixers." He was part of a team at The Wall Street Journal
that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for stories about hush
money deals made on behalf of Donald Trump and a federal investigation of the
president's personal lawyer. @mrothfeld
A version of
this article appears in print on March 21, 2020, Section A, Page 1 of the New
York edition with the headline: Short on Beds and Ventilators, New York
Hospitals Face Surge . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
I THINK DR.
FAUCI IS DOING JUST FINE. HE CAN’T WAVE A MAGIC WAND (THOSE HAVE BEEN IN VERY
SHORT SUPPLY SINCE THE MIDDLE AGES) AND STOP ITS’ PROGRESS. HE IS DOING LOTS OF
MEDICALLY RELATED THINGS IN THE BACKGROUND, AND IN THE DAILY NEWS CONFERENCES
HE IS CALMLY AND CLEARLY SAYING THINGS THAT ARE MAKING ME FEEL BETTER, AT LEAST
FOR THE MOST PART. IT’S A TERRIBLE SITUATION, BUT MORE INFORMATION HAS ALWAYS
CALMED ME DOWN, WHILE TOO LITTLE JUST MAKES ME START TO WONDER AND ASK MORE
QUESTIONS. WHAT REALLY DOES MAKE ME NERVOUS IS THINGS LIKE THIS STATEMENT FROM THE
PRESIDENT – WHICH IS PRESUMABLY TRUE – “THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS “NOT A
SHIPPING CLERK” FOR THE STATES.” THAT MAKES ME FEEL THAT SINKING FEELING IN THE
PIT OF MY STOMACH AGAIN.
ABOUT DR. FAUCI
AS A “NATIONAL TREASURE,” GO TO THE FOLLOWING URL. IN THAT CASE THE “BUG” INVOLVED
WAS ANOTHER HORROR STORY VIRUS IN THE COUNTRY, EBOLA. https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2015/10/national-treasure
.
Opinion
Thank God the
Doctor Is In
Peeking out our
windows, we see America shriveling.
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion
Columnist
March 21, 2020,
2:30 p.m. ET
PHOTOGRAPH -- Dr.
Anthony Fauci isn’t comfortable with everything President Trump spouts at
coronavirus briefings.Credit...Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
WASHINGTON — It’s
not easy being a national treasure.
“I’m
exhausted,” confessed Tony Fauci when I reached him Thursday evening in the
middle of another 18-hour workday.
“I have changed
my tune a bit, probably thanks to my wife,” said the 79-year-old director of
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “About a week ago, I
was going about four or five days in a row on about three hours of sleep, which
is completely crazy, ’cause then I’ll be going on fumes. The last couple of
nights, I’ve gotten five hours’ sleep, so I feel much better.”
He said he
misses the endorphins of power walking, and he is wracked when he gets home at
midnight and it’s too late to answer calls and emails.
“I gotta get
rid of this guilt feeling,” he murmured about that moment’s 727 emails.
He said he has
not been tested for the coronavirus but takes his temperature every day and
usually has it taken another couple times before White House press conferences
and meetings in the Oval.
When I spoke
with him, he had been missing from the White House briefing for two days and
Twitter blew a gasket, with everyone from Susan Rice to Laurence Tribe seeking
an answer to the urgent query, “Where is Dr. Fauci?”
Donald Trump,
the ultimate “me” guy, is in a “we” crisis and it isn’t pretty. The president
is so consumed by his desire to get back his binky, a soaring stock market,
that he continues to taffy-twist the facts, leaving us to look elsewhere —
to Dr. Fauci and governors like Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom — for leadership
during this grim odyssey.
Dr. Fauci
chuckled at speculation that he was banished due to his habit of pushing back
on Trump’s hyperbolic and self-serving ad-libbing.
“That’s kind of
funny but understandable that people said, ‘What the hell’s the matter with
Fauci?’ because I had been walking a fine line; I’ve been telling the president
things he doesn’t want to hear,” he said. “I have publicly had to say something
different with what he states.
“It’s a risky
business. But that’s my style, Maureen. You know me for many years. I say it
the way it is, and if he’s gonna get pissed off, he’s gonna get pissed off.
Thankfully, he is not. Interestingly.”
The first time
I talked to Dr. Fauci was during a panic in the mid-80s about stopping another
virus, the cause of the heartbreaking AIDs crisis. Then, as now, he was
honest, brave and innovative. He told me that he tries to be diplomatic
when he has to contradict the president about what “game-changer” cures might
be on the horizon and whether everyone who wants to be tested can get tested.
“I don’t want
to embarrass him,” the immunologist says, in his gravelly Brooklyn accent. “I
don’t want to act like a tough guy, like I stood up to the president. I just
want to get the facts out. And instead of saying, ‘You’re wrong,’ all you need
to do is continually talk about what the data are and what the evidence is.
“And he gets
that. He’s a smart guy. He’s not a dummy. So he doesn’t take it — certainly up
to now — he doesn’t take it in a way that I’m confronting him in any way. He
takes it in a good way.”
On Friday, a
trigger-happy Trump was so quick to talk up the fabulous possibilities of an
antimalarial drug in combating the virus that Dr. Fauci had to pump the brakes,
taking the microphone to explain that we do not know yet because controlled
testing is needed.
The president
returned to the lectern to press his unscientific case and compliment himself:
“I’m a smart guy,” he said. “I feel good about it. And we’re going to see.
You’re going to see soon enough.”
Probably
thinking about all his government staffers working round-the-clock, Dr. Fauci
could not help rubbing his forehead and cheek — going against his own advice to
the public — when Trump cracked a joke about the “Deep State Department.”
Though the
scientist listens respectfully when the president and the vice president are
talking, he somehow manages to emit an “Oh my God, please don’t say that” vibe
when the two men scamper over the line. When Mike Pence went into false-hope
overdrive, saying, “I just can’t emphasize enough about the incredible progress
that we have made on testing,” Dr. Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, the
administration’s virus response coordinator, exchanged a whispered aside that
sent the internet into a frenzy.
Dr. Fauci
assured me that, despite their crosscurrents and an early overconfidence
about how easy it would be to control the path of the virus, the president
“absolutely” now gets the threat of “the invisible enemy,” as Trump calls
the virus.
Still, Trump
managed to have an hourlong press conference about public health guidance in
which he relentlessly ran afoul of public health guidance.
He wants to
think of himself as a wartime president, but he can’t rise above his pettiness
and defensiveness long enough to stop trashing White House reporters who are
simply trying to do their job under perilous circumstances. He also can’t move
away from his old standby, xenophobia.
Trump has never
understood anything about government, so he doesn’t know what the C.D.C. versus
the F.D.A. versus FEMA should do. His improvisational leadership style was
vividly — and disturbingly — on display Friday during a call with Chuck
Schumer, who urged him to invoke the Defense Production Act to get ventilators
and masks to desperate states — despite the president’s cavalier remark a day
earlier that the federal government is “not a shipping clerk” for the states.
“Then POTUS yelled to someone in his office to do it now,” a Schumer spokesman
reported.
Trump is just a
petrified salesman who believes in perception over reality. He thinks if
he can create the perception that this is going to be a quick fix and
there’s a little pill coming, then the stock market will roar back, along
with his 2020 momentum.
With F.D.R. and
the Great Depression, the only thing to fear was fear itself. With Trump and
our new abyss, we have to fear not only fear but also the ignorance and
misdirection of the White House and the profiteering of senators. Not to
mention the virus.
The Times is
committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear
what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And
here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New
York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Maureen Dowd,
winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary and author of
three New York Times best sellers, became an Op-Ed columnist in 1995.
@MaureenDowd • Facebook
A version of
this article appears in print on March 22, 2020, Section SR, Page 9 of the New
York edition with the headline: Thank God the Doctor Is In. Order Reprints |
Today’s Paper | Subscribe
READ 264
COMMENTS
JWL
Vail, co.just
now
The
extraordinary difference between Donald Trump, and Andrew Cuomo, is stunning. Having
disbanded the Pandemic Preparation Team, ignoring warnings since early January
from the public health community, Trump is selling snake oil to a terrified
public. Governor Cuomo, on the other hand, offered honesty, exhaustion, good
information regarding hospital beds, testing, psychiatric help, and just plain
good advice to New Yorkers. He leads, he listens, he learns. He should be
the coved-19 Czar, we need a better leader than Donald Trump.
John
arytvbew52m ago
Thank God its
not Hillary, yes?
And Fauci? Another in the Mueller/Comey troop of
excellent men and Real Patriots who somehow, through reticence, fear, over-abundance
of Old School Good Form manage to lend their remarkable histories in service
to the Trump machine. A perfect storm
of men who refuse to insist things be done timely and well.
Trump still has
not placed his order for ventilators. All
indications are that's going to cost us a lot of grandpas.
You don't have
to beat somebody up, but you can't stand passively by and watch opportunities
for effective intervention fade in the rear-view.
Lord C.Baker
New York3m ago
This press
briefings just show how America lost its way. In no time in modern history
has the President of the United States and the republic looked smaller. No
global thought leadership, no global coordination just me pity me me stuff. It
is clear that the America first mantra has put America last. Everyday we
hope that we don’t become China, Italy or Spain and every day we wake up
with worst numbers because we were smug about their issues and didnt help them
in the first place. Not only didn’t we help but we made the diplomatic
channels so poisoned because of trade wars, America first, travel bans that
no one shared information with us and the President undermined the domestic
intelligence agencies.
Now we are
paying a steep price for it. Too steep as we learn every day.
4merNYer
4merNYer
Venice FL7m ago
My biggest fear
is that Trump and his minions are dragging their feet on this so that if this
situation becomes dangerously unmanageable they can declare Marshall Law and
cancel the November election. That
sounds like an apocalypse screenplay, but with Trump and McConnell in charge it
could be all too real.
2 REPLIES
Emily commented
5 minutes ago
E
Emily
Fresno5m ago
@4merNYer The
president cannot cancel the election, nor can the Senate Majority Leader, nor
the governors of states.
Reply2
RecommendShareFlag
M.E.Rogan
commented null
M
M.E.Rogan
torontojust now
@Emily I
want to be reassured by your comment but I can't. Given how many things Trump
has done that we never could have thought possible, there's no reason to think
this is his intent now. And, if it benefits the Republican party, he will
have the craven windmakers working to make it possible. Is it really so hard to imagine???
Maggie
Maggie
U.S.A.14m ago
American is not
shrinking.
It's bucking
up, paying attention -finally - and growing up - somewhat.
Susan
Paris26m ago
Tonight on the
French television news, an emminent [sic] French physician and scientist was
asked by the news anchor to talk about the potential of the drug hydroxychloroquinein
treating the coronavirus. He explained that testing for its effectiveness in
reducing the time a person remains contagious with Covid-19, and the
possibility that it could make the symptoms less severe were being studied but
that the trials were still underway with many uncertainties. When asked by
the journalist his reaction to Trump’s “good feeling” about the drug as a
miracle cure for the virus, he chuckled gently, shook his head and said that
medical researchers here were more interested in clinical evidence.
As this grave
global health crisis deepens, our president is a dangerous embarrassment on
display for all the world to see.
Reply88
RecommendShareFlag
Richard
commented 49 minutes ago
R
Richard
Fullerton,
CA26m ago
Yes, any
thoughtful person knows the current situation is a disaster. Let's hope (the only silver lining I can see
in this mess) that the crash of 2020 is like the crash of 1929 in one
respect: It leads not only to the defeat of Trump, but also to a tectonic shift
in politics that leaves the GOP in the wilderness for a very long time.
KC
Washington
State26m ago
America is
shriveling? At least here in Seattle, I'm mostly seeing an explosion of
courage, kindness, creativity, hustle, and rational, science-based state
leadership. This crisis is bringing out the best in the kind of people the
president hates most, and that can't be all bad. I'm scared, yes, but in some
ways I haven't felt this hopeful about America in years.
Michele
Sequim, WA3m
ago
@KC Here in
Sequim, WA I've seen nothing but kindness and respect. Sure there
are outbursts on social media but in real terms the community is responding
well.
birddog
oregon34m ago
Great look,
Maureen, at what may make Dr Fauci tick. I however am wondering if Fauci has
ever read Nevil Schute's great 1957 Cold War novel 'On the Beach'? Schute
tell us about a post apocalyptic world following a nuclear war where the only
remaining outpost of civilization is in the south most tip of Australia, in
Melbourn. And that there, the survivors themselves are awaiting a strange
looking cloud of radiation that is creeping ever southward, and is expected to
arrive in the next few weeks or months to finish the job.
As head of the
CDC, what I think Dr Fauci may find most interesting about Schutes yarn is the
reactions of the various individuals in the story to the prospect of their own
demise. And how for many of them (even the well educated and otherwise
responsible individuals) it involved flat denial, and an irrational
unwillingness to accept the inevitable- Even at the cost of maybe prolonging their own lives,
and the lives of their loved ones.
Dr Fauci, if he
wasn't aware of it when he first accepted the job in this Administration, is
now I think aware that perhaps his greatest challenge would not be in coming up
with a rational response to the physical challenges presented by the march of
this virus into our midst, but the social and psychological ramifications it
presents to us as individuals and as a
society. Self awareness, it seems maybe as much a burden in a situation
like this one, then ignorance can be.
KMB
Boston26m ago
@birddog Dr. Fauci
doesn't work for this administration and is not a Trump appointee. He
has been the director of NIAID since 1984.
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Anita commented
58 minutes ago
A
Anita
Mississippi25m
ago
@birddog You
might want to check Dr. Fauci's background.
He's not the head of CDC, he works for its sister organization
NIH. He has been working as a Federal
employee for several decades, he didn't just accept a job in this
adminstration.
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