Day 48 Sure, The Feds Will Help; or, A Gesture is Not Enough

“In the seven weeks since the president promised that anyone who needed a test could get one, the United States has conducted about 5.4 million [coronavirus] tests, far more than any other country, but still the equivalent of only about 1.6 percent of the total population.”

The percentage of the population hasn’t changed since the last time I did the math a couple weeks ago.

“Rather than one coordinated federal response, the Trump administration has been engaging on an ad hoc basis as states take the lead.”

Since then, Mr. Trump has promised ventilators would go to Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, El Salvador, Ecuador.

I applaud the gesture, don’t you? Of course, you do. This is what has made America great—not OWGs or democracy—but the natural generosity that comes effortlessly from a sense of abundance. It’s a feeling we used to have buckets of, a federal stockpile if you will, and it’s a feeling that now feels singularly lacking.

There’s a reason that generosity is lacking in the U.S.

“In fact, governors have been complaining that they do not have nearly enough tests to give them the kind of information they need to make difficult decisions about reopening. They say they are competing with one another—and with other countries—for the components that make up the testing kits, including nasal swabs and needed chemicals.”

There are also horrifying rumors that FEMA is stepping in at the state level to suspend and, no other word for it, steal supplies that states have both procured and paid for without so much as a by your leave.

States are cautiously reopening their economies. Well, cautiously in most states, but in some, capriciously. Who cares who dies? The economy is what’s important.

“An administration official said the federal government aimed to give states the ability to test at least 2 percent of their populations per month, though the president did not use that figure and it was not in his written plan. Instead, Mr. Trump and other officials with him in the Rose Garden said the United States would ‘double’ the number of tests it had been conducting.”

How we say what we say matters, Beloved. And never moreso than with that most precious commodity, our health. It quite literally amazes me that there is even discussion about which is more important, our health or our economy. What exact economy could there be if most of its components died for lack of care?

So here is The Narcissist-in-Chief “doubling” the testing capacity which still doesn’t raise it to the rate that “[a] group of experts convened by Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics has called for five million tests a day by early June, ramping up to 20 million per day by late July.”

It’s a gesture, not a solution.

Gestures are good, or, gestures can be good. Done the right way, gesture can inspire and inspire hugely.

When the hurricanes hit beautiful Puerto Rico, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Hamilton, and one of their native sons, said, “I believe I owe a great deal of who I am to this island.” He, and Hamilton, raised $15 million in 17 days for Puerto Rico’s arts organizations.

That’s a gesture.

It drew attention, and then placed the attention where it belonged—on the local need.

Then, there’s the wimpy Trump gesture. “Mr. Trump’s announcement came after weeks of his insisting, inaccurately, that the nation’s testing capability was “fully sufficient to begin opening up the country,” as he put it on April 18. Numerous public health experts say that is untrue, and Mr. Trump’s plan may do little to fix it.”

In fact, it’s a hollow gesture. It draws attention, sure, but it keeps the attention right where it’s been drawn.

Opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote some deliciously venomous, and accurate, prose about it in “Coronavirus and the Price of Trump’s Delusions.”

“Over the last three and a half years, Americans have had to accustom themselves to a relentless, numbing barrage of lies from the federal government. In one sector after another, we’ve seen experts systemically purged and replaced with toadying apparatchiks. The few professionals who’ve kept their jobs have often had to engage in degrading acts of public obeisance more common to autocracies. Public policy has zigzagged according to presidential whim. Empirical reality has been subsumed to Trump’s cult of personality.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in this morning’s Times, “Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Health Committee, said on Monday that Mr. Trump’s plan was meaningless.

‘This document does nothing new and will accomplish nothing new[.] It doesn’t set specific, numeric goals, offer a time frame, identify ways to fix our broken supply chain, or offer any details whatsoever on expanding lab capacity or activating needed manufacturing capacity. Perhaps most pathetically, it attempts to shirk obvious federal responsibilities by assigning them solely to states instead.’”

Don’t get me wrong. We love gestures. Witness Alicia Keyes at the top of The Grammy Awards this year speaking extempore about Kobe Bryant. But gestures have rules of their own, and one of the first rules is appropriateness, followed immediately by size and timing.

We need public health plans now that build on three basic elements of controlling the spread of infection: test, trace and separate, and not gestures.

“Rather than the more comprehensive surveillance testing sought by many public health experts, the administration is focused on ‘sentinel’ testing of targeted sites that are particularly vulnerable, like nursing homes and inner-city health centers.”

Well, whether that’s a gesture or not, it doesn’t make sense. And although IANAD, a new-to-me text-ism for I Am Not A Doctor, let alone an epidemiologist, but why would we use our currently limited testing capacity to confirm what we already know? Why wouldn’t we use the testing for the purpose of tracing and separating?

As Jennifer Nuzzo, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said, “There’s a belief that we’ve brought our numbers down, we’re out of the woods. That is completely not the case[.] They’ve seen a decline in the sickest patients, but there’s a lot of infection that can spread silently, and suddenly you’re back where you started.”

Uh, yeah, it’s the silent spreading that needs the testing capacity, no?

“Paul Romer, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from New York University, has called for 25 million tests per day, with the capacity to test twice that many in ‘surge’ situations. Mr. Romer said testing 2 percent of the population was ‘not enough to test everyone in health care even once; let alone to keep retesting them every day, which is what it would take to keep those who do get infected from going on shift and infecting their colleagues.’”

Okay, maybe my initial idea is wrong, I’ll give Mr. Romer that. As I said, IANAD, but who knew there was a Center for Health Security? Which we seem not to have much of these days. And what about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization?

How is it that the White House has such a firm stranglehold on, uh, everything that no one can step up to coordinate a national effort based on empirical evidence?

I cannot believe that’s true.

The governors of various states have telephones—they called their counterparts in other states to form pacts for reopening days ago.

Don’t the public health wizards have telephones? Verizon sent me a sweet email this morning telling me all they’ve done and are continuing to do to help in the race against coronavirus. Shall I call them and ask them to offer telephones to Johns Hopkins, Harvard, the W.H.O., and the C.D.C. so they can jam up the airwaves to make a national plan?

“With states not bound by any unified national plan, the different timelines for reopening have created a gulf between those hustling to reopen restaurants, movie theaters and tattoo parlors, and New York and California, which are moving more slowly and cautiously toward reopening.”

Well, yeah.

Many years ago, I had a fashion model-beautiful friend named Audrey. I’d met her at church where I was on staff because she was such a constant volunteer. One day we got to chatting. I knew Audrey was very active in A.A. and I asked her about it since I had my own anonymity as well. I wondered what her libation of choice was.

She stopped stuffing envelopes and cocked her head at me. Finally she said, “Oh, I’ve never had a drink in my life.” I sent her a huh look. “I was the bartender, sweetie,” she went on, “I kept everybody drunk so I could be in control.”

Her answer shimmered in the air between us, and I remember it distinctly, lo, these more than thirty years later.

Could that be what’s happening with the horror show that is the Trump White House? The whole team is reeling drunk—perhaps with power—and they think just pouring for everyone is enough? It could be, but we cannot let it be.

Gesture, Beloved, is a part of the toolkit of an actor. Are you called to take action now? Good. Me, too. Let’s ask: is it appropriate? Is it the right size? Is it the right time? “Hello, Verizon?”

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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