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The Coronavirus Is a Public Health Problem, But It is Not a Death Sentence

The Coronavirus Is a Public Health Problem, But It is Not a Death Sentence

By John R Guardiano on February 29, 2020

The coronavirus has dominated the news, but with more heat than light, I’m afraid. That’s because it really is three stories in one—or one story with three interrelated subplots or angles.

There’s the public health angle, the political angle, and the economic angle. All three of these subplots or angles shape and affect media coverage of the virus and thus need to be explained.

Otherwise, we cannot understand the virus’ true significance—and we will be unable to distinguish between fair and legitimate points or arguments on the one hand and political spin and propaganda on the other hand.

In this post, we’ll address the public health angle or subplot to the coronavirus. Subsequent posts will address the political and economic angles to the story.

Public Health. The coronavirus is, most importantly, a public health problem. It is a new respiratory virus that, according to John Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE), has infected nearly 87,000 people worldwide, mostly in mainland China. Nearly 3,000 people have died as a result.

In the United States, 71 people have contracted the virus and one person has died as a result. Public health officials and epidemiologists say these numbers will increase, both domestically and internationally. However, they do not know how widespread and pervasive the virus will become.

We do know that, for most people, the coronavirus is not a death sentence.

Indeed, most who contra c t the virus suffer only mild symptoms and quickly recover. Fatalities typically occur among the frail and the elderly, those with compromised immune systems, and people with other complicating medical conditions and ailments.

Thus the first and only person in the United States so far to die from the coronavirus was a man in his 50s with underlying health conditions.

We also know that the coronavirus is similar to the influenza virus or flu, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates has caused 12,000 to 61,000 deaths annually since 2010. Yet, despite the surprisingly high number of flu-induced deaths or fatalities, there is no widespread fear or panic over the influenza virus.

In part, that is because the flu has been with us for some time and thus is well understood. It also is because we have flu vaccines.

There is not yet a vaccine for the coronavirus. The United States is working to develop such a vaccine, but it won’t be available for an estimated 12-18 moths at the earliest, says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Still, we know that basic commonsense precautionary measures which prevent transmission of the influenza virus are also highly effective in preventing transmission of the coronavirus.

The coronavirus is “a respiratory virus,” explains the CDC’s Principal Deputy Director, Anne Schuchat, M.D.:

It’s spread in a similar way to the common cold or to influenza. It’s spread through coughs and sneezes.

And so, those everyday sensible measures that we tell people to do every year with the flu are important here: covering your cough; staying home when you’re sick; and washing your hands.

[These are] tried and true ([albeit] not very exciting) [preventative] measures, [and] really important ways that you can prevent the spread of respiratory viruses.

The bottom line, according to the CDC: “for the general American public, who are unlikely to be exposed to this virus at this time, the immediate health risk from COVID-19, [aka the coronavirus], is considered low.”

But because the coronavirus is spreading internationally, there will be more cases here in the United States. We cannot, after all, entirely seal ourselves off from the rest of the world.

However, these incidents should be, for the most part, quite manageable and will not result in widespread death, at least when compared to the similar influenza virus.

Politics. Because the coronavirus is a public health problem, it is also necessarily a political story. Governments, after all, have a duty to take reasonable and effective preventative measures to stop a pandemic from occurring and arresting its development should a pandemic occur.

We’ll address that subplot or angle in a subsequent post.

Feature photo credit: John Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE).

What Will Trump Do In Afghanistan?

What Will Trump Do In Afghanistan?

By John R Guardiano on March 11, 2020

Only 11 days have passed since the United States signed a so-called peace deal with the Taliban that laid out a 14-month timetable for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan; but already we know how events there will unfold and what the crucial decision points will be in the months ahead.

We know this because we’ve been in Afghanistan for nearly 19 years and we know the Taliban. We know that they remain committed to overthrowing the legitimately elected government of Afghanistan, conquering the country, and establishing a so-called Islamic Emirate.

What we don’t know for sure is how President Trump will respond when the Taliban renege on the deal, or exploit the deal’s many ambiguities, to realize their longstanding political objective. The early signs, unfortunately, are worrisome.

Last Friday (Mar. 6), for instance, Trump seemed nonplussed when asked whether he is worried that the Taliban might overrun the country after the U.S. leaves. “Well, you know, eventually, countries have to take care of themselves,” he said.

We can’t be there for… another 20 years. We’ve been there for 20 years and we’ve been protecting the country [Afghanistan]. But eventually, they’re going to have to protect themselves…

You can only hold somebody’s hand for so long. We have to get back to running our country, too.

History Lesson. Sigh. Of course, the United States has troops in Afghanistan not to protect Afghanistan, but to protect the United States. The Taliban gave sanctuary to the terrorists who used Afghanistan to plan and execute the bombing of the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers.

As a result, the United States invaded Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban. And we have been working with the legitimately elected government of Afghanistan ever since to ensure that a 9/11 bombing or similar terrorist attack never happens again. This is not charity; it is national security.

It’s frightening and sadly disconcerting that Trump seems not to understand this despite having been president for the past three-plus years.

On the other hand, as we’ve noted here at ResCon1, there are times where Trump does seem to recognize the strategic importance of Afghanistan and the history there. So maybe he’s not as stupid and clueless as he often sounds.

In any case, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday that the Taliban are continuing to carry out military attacks in violation of its agreement with the United States.

McKenzie, reports the Associated Press, told the committee

he has no confidence that the [Taliban] will honor its commitments, but said his optimism or pessimism about the future doesn’t matter because any decision will be based on facts and what happens on the ground.

Decision Point. In other words, in the coming months, and especially next fall, Gen. McKenzie will tell Trump that the Taliban are not negotiating in good faith and have stepped up their attacks on the Afghan government in violation of the agreement.

Gen. McKenzie will tell Trump that the Afghan government needs U.S. support or it will will be overrun by the Taliban. What will Trump do?

Right now, it clearly sounds as if Trump will say: “I understand General, but we’ve been there too long. We must get out regardless [of the consequences].”

That’s obviously what Trump wants to do. But would he really risk allowing Afghanistan to become another terrorist training camp and base of operations? Would he really risk another 9/11-style terrorist attack?

We’ll soon find out.

Feature photo credit: Google Maps.

Hold Trump Accountable for the Crisis Surrounding the Coronavirus

Hold Trump Accountable for the Crisis Surrounding the Coronavirus

By John R Guardiano on March 17, 2020

We’ve noted here at ResCon1 that President Trump’s failure to act early and decisively on the coronavirus has endangered American lives and forced the United States to take even more draconian measures than otherwise would have been necessary.

Trump’s apologists, however, are pushing back and telling us that we shouldn’t “politicize” this crisis.

Instead, they assert, implicitly (and sometimes explicitly), that we should rally around the president, who presumably is now taking the requisite bold and resolute actions necessary to combat the coronavirus.

As Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen put it on Fox News Special Report Monday night, March 16, 2020:

Well, it [politics] shouldn’t creep in. I mean, this is a time when we should come together as a nation [and] put aside partisanship, put aside the backbiting.

Look, after this is all over, I’m sure we’re gonna have a 9/11 commission-style investigation that’s gonna look through [all of this]—not to lay blame, but to figure out, just as we did after 9/11: where were the gaps; what didn’t work; what failed; what succeeded?

So [that] when the next pandemic comes around, we can fix it. But this is not the time for laying blame.

Nice try, but Thiessen has it exactly wrong and backward. In a representative democracy such as ours, and with a presidential election fast approaching now is exactly the time for “laying blame”—or, to be more precise:

Now is exactly the time to hold our elected leaders—especially the top political leader with the most responsibility and authority for protecting and safeguarding the American people—accountable for their what they did and did not do as the gathering storm approached.

Thiessen’s plea to “put aside the backbiting” echoes Trump’s own call to “end the finger-pointing.” But as David Frum points out in The Atlantic:

It’s a strange thing for this president of all presidents to say. No American president, and precious few American politicians, have ever pointed so many fingers or hurled so much abuse as Donald Trump.

What he means, of course, is: Don’t hold me to account for the things I did—[and did not do, but should have done].

But he did do them, and he owns responsibility for those things. He cannot escape it, and he will not escape it.

In short, bemoaning the “politicization” of this crisis is a transparent attempt to try and evade or avert responsibility and accountability for a leader’s actions and failings.

Accountability is important because, as I observed last week when calling on the Senate to censure Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:

The failure and unwillingness of institutions—churches, schools, corporations, professional societies, et al.—to maintain standards of professional conduct, and to police and disciplined their own, is a big reason institutions increasingly have lost the public’s trust and confidence, and, with that, their ability to mold the American character and shape the nation’s destiny.

This is not an insight unique to me, or even one that I can claim credit for.

Instead, as I’ve reported here at ResCon1, Yuval Levin makes this point brilliantly in a new and important book: A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream.

Our political institutions, including the Congress and the Presidency, are like any other institution, but arguably more important than other institutions because of the scope and magnitude of their responsibility.

Thus if we wish to maintain public trust and confidence in our political leaders and institutions, then we must hold these leaders and institutions accountable for their actions—and for when they fail to act.

This is not a partisan point for me. That’s why I called on the Senate to censure Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer; and it is why I insist that we hold Republican President Donald Trump to account as well

If Senator Schumer had acknowledged wronging and offered a sincere, good-faith apology after threatening two Supreme Court justices, then his censure might not be necessary.

If, likewise, President Trump had acknowledged that he wrongly minimized the coronavirus and mishandled the problem, then perhaps we could simply “move on.” But he didn’t and we can’t.

And we shouldn’t. Our political leaders need to know that their misdeeds and failings will not be ignored and whitewashed for reasons of political expediency.

Instead, they will be held to account by we the American people, and by the institutions of American democracy: because here the people rule, and we expect and demand no less.

For this reason, President Trump should be forced to explain why he didn’t push for early and rapid testing of the coronavirus on a mass scale, and why he continually minimized the problem and suggested that it would disappear.

And the American people should consider Trump’s response—or non-response—when, this fall, they decide who will serve as president for the next four years.

Feature photo credit: Red Blue Divide.

Tucker Carlson’s Real Target Is Not Winston Churchill; it’s Ukraine

Tucker Carlson’s Real Target Is Not Winston Churchill; it’s Ukraine

By John R Guardiano on September 15, 2024

Tucker Carlson and Darryl Cooper want to rewrite the history of World War II so that they can justify appeasing Vladimir Putin today.

Tucker Carlson’s plaudits for an obscure crackpot writer, Darryl Cooper, who argues that Winston Churchill, not Adolph Hitler, is the “chief villain” of World War II, have been widely condemned and rightly so. The historical narrative that Cooper presents is riddled with glaring errors, not the least of which is a basic timeline or chronology of events.

Indeed, as historian and Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts points out:

Cooper’s first argument was that Churchill “was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, something other than an invasion of Poland.” Yet in the moment that Adolf Hitler invaded Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg at dawn on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill was not even prime minister.

Unless Mr. Cooper is arguing that from his position as First Lord of the Admiralty—the head of Britain’s navy—Churchill was somehow able to force Hitler to unleash Blitzkrieg in the West, his first argument falls to the ground.

But the bigger question that has not been addressed is: why, at this moment in time, is Carlson elevating and promoting the false and inaccurate notion that Winston Churchill is the “chief villain” of World War II?

Ukraine. The answer is not hard to discern. He is doing so because of Ukraine.

“I’m just highly distressed,” Carlson told Cooper, “by the uses to which the myths [sic] about World War II have been put in the context of modern foreign policy, particularly the war in Ukraine.”

Churchill, remember, was a fierce critic of the British government’s policy of appeasement in the years leading up World War II. He warned repeatedly of the grave and gathering Nazi German threat. Hitler had to be stopped, not appeased, Churchill argued.

Carlson and Cooper, by contrast, are modern-day appeasers. They want to appease Putin. They recognize the obvious parallels between Europe in the 1930s and Europe today.

They understand quite well that if yesterday’s appeasers can be vindicated and Churchill vilified, then it will be easier for today’s appeasers to prevail in Ukraine and in other parts of Eastern Europe (the Baltic States and Poland), which Putin views as rightful parts of a new Russian empire.

As Faulkner famously put it, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Myopic Critics. Yet, inexplicably, even critics who heap opprobrium on Carlson and Cooper feel compelled to downplay or deny this obvious fact.

For example, in an otherwise superb takedown of Cooper’s false and inaccurate history, Mark Antonio Wright writes:

I will go ahead and concede at the outset Carlson and Cooper’s complaint that the “Munich 1938: Churchill vs. Chamberlain and the Appeasers” dynamic has been used and abused in the post-war period, often to our detriment. Not every foreign adversary is Adolf Hitler, and not every international negotiation is Munich 1938.

This is obviously true, but Wright concedes too much. He ignores the obvious parallels between Nazi Germany and modern-day Russia. He ignores the echoes of Adolph Hitler in Vladimir Putin. He ignores Russia’s horrific war crimes and attempted genocide of Ukraine.

1930’s Style Appeasement. In truth, Putin’s Russia is attempting to conquer and subjugate Eastern Europe, just as Hitler’s Germany tried to do in the 1930s and ’40s. Then as now we heard all of manner of excuses for appeasing the fascist aggressors. But the appeasers were wrong then and they are wrong today.

As Yale historian Timothy Snyder has observed, our present-day historical moment is similar to that of 1938:

This is 1938, but Czechoslovakia [read: Ukraine] has chosen to fight… So you have an imperfect democracy… [that], when threatened by a larger neighbor [read: Russia], it chooses to resist. In that world, where Czechoslovakia resists, there’s no Second World War.

Snyder’s argument is that we can avoid a great powers war with Russia in Europe if we learn the lesson of the 1930s and stop Russia in Ukraine. A Russia that has subsumed Ukraine, he explains, will be a far more formidable enemy to combat, just as Nazi Germany was a far more formidable enemy to combat after it had subsumed Czechoslovakia.

Modern-Day Appeasers. Carlson and Cooper see this obvious historical parallel even if Wright and other critics choose to ignore it. But unlike most of us, and unlike most historians, Carlson and Cooper don’t care.

They don’t care about Europe, especially Eastern Europe. They believe, erroneously, in a fortress America that can largely ignore what happens in Europe.

Their erstwhile ally, Trump Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance, agrees with them. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” he said when running for the Senate in 2022.

Indifference and History. But their indifference to the fate of Europe is contrary to the British and American historical experience. It runs counter to our historical understanding. Churchill cared and Franklin Delano Roosevelt cared because they understood that the fate of Britain and the United States is inextricably linked to the fate of Europe.

Carlson and Cooper think differently. That’s why they are attempting, unsuccessfully, to rewrite the history of World War II and to cast Hitler as misunderstood and Churchill as the villain.

The implications of their historical analysis for what is transpiring in Ukraine today are clear and frightening, and we ignore these implications at our peril.

Feature photo credit: Darryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson, courtesy of their online Twitter interview.