VIRUSES AND POLITICS

You may soon be visited by a “contact tracer” now being recruited by your state government, which is building armies of them. He or she could tell you that you’ve been in contact with a Covid-infected person and require that you be tested. They may even force you into stricter quarantine than you’re already enduring. It’s happening all over the country as you may have heard, but Maine and New Hampshire won’t need as many as Massachusetts which has far more Covid cases.

Though they have the same population, New Hampshire has twice the number of contact tracers (over sixty) than Maine has (thirty) for some reason. A former CDC Director says the entire United States needs 300,000. “The use of contact tracing is one of the oldest public health tactics, dating back centuries,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer for the National Association of County and City Health Officials according to WebMD. It’s been employed at the start of almost every public health threat except one.

My last few columns have dealt with the politicization of Covid-19, but that’s nothing new for the CDC. Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks often of his experience from the earliest stages of the AIDS epidemic and is now advising the USA to implement contact tracing for Covid as a key element in the plan to reopen our economy. Try as I might, I cannot find any online reference to Fauci recommending contract tracing for AIDS. In a 2005 interview broadcast on NHPBS Fauci was asked: “What do you see as some of the missed opportunities [of dealing with AIDS] in the United States in the early years?” 

Homosexual activists blamed everybody but themselves

Fauci didn’t mention contact tracing in his response, but he did say: “It may have been better to be much more aggressive in those very early years about targeting populations, such as the gay population, about safe sex … But I can tell you, having been there, the gay population themselves were very reluctant to hear the safe-sex message, because they were concerned that they had just recently won their sexual liberation that they had fought so many years for, and they didn't want this disease to be used as a way to retarget them.”

Fauci folded under pressure

At an early AIDS conference, Fauci urged homosexuals to use condoms, but, “To my surprise, there were a considerable number of people in the audience who actually got up to the microphone and hooted me down like I was trying to impose my standards of sexual conduct on them.” Fauci hasn’t survived government service for over fifty years without being politically malleable, and he bent to pressure from homosexual activists early on.

Although HIV in the first decades of the epidemic was a death sentence, and the biggest vector for transmission was anal sex, Fauci didn’t seem to push for contact tracing. Writing in a 1993 edition of The Atlantic, Chandler Burr said that, just before the FDA approved first HIV test, two powerful homosexual lobbies filed petitions to prevent the CDC from screening homosexual men. The CDC buckled and declared it would only use HIV tests to screen the blood supply.

Ronald Bayer

"U.S. officials had no alternative but to negotiate the course of AIDS policy with representatives of a well-organized gay community and their allies in the medical and political establishments," wrote Ronald Bayer, a professor at the Columbia University School of Public Health. "In this process, many of the traditional practices of public health that might have been brought to bear were dismissed as inappropriate.” AIDS thus became the first politically-protected disease and Dr. Anthony Fauci was complicit.

Not only was contact tracing not practiced with the HIV-infected, it was actually forbidden. “During the first years of the disease,” said Burr, “legislation urged by civil libertarians [like the ACLU] prohibited physicians and public-health officials from notifying even the spouses of living people who had tested positive for HIV [emphasis mine], some of whom continued to have unprotected sex with their partners.” Evidently the ACLU was more worried about privacy rights of the HIV-infected than the very lives of their spouses. Is Fauci still more sensitive to political pressure than to science? You be the judge.

Governor Mills extends quarantine

Fauci is pushing it hard, but the efficacy of contact tracing for anyone who came within six feet of a Covid-19 infected person in an urban environment is questionable. Sex partners of the HIV-infected would have been much easier to locate, excepting anonymous bathhouse encounters.

Backcountry Resistance

Good will toward government is diminishing in Oxford County, Maine. There has always been healthy skepticism toward centralized authority during the forty-three years I’ve been in residence, but it has grown over the last month of coronavirus shutdown. When Democrat Governor Janet Mills announced her decision last Tuesday to extend the shutdown across the state through most of summer, it took off.

Saturday Demonstration against Mills (from Portland Press Herald)

Shortly after moving here in 1977 as a leftist Democrat from Massachusetts, I was elected to Lovell’s three-man Board of Selectmen on the floor of town meeting. The other selectmen were descendants of our town’s original settlers and we met twice per week. By the end of year one my outlook started moving toward center. By the end of nine years I’d gone past center into right-wing territory. I’d become a strong believer in local control.

The land of Bernie bumper stickers

The rest of Maine and New England, however, was moving in the opposite direction and now all six states are run by left-wing adherents of centralized government control. In early weeks of the pandemic there was little dissent over lockdown and social distancing, but as people learned more about both the virus and about different approaches taken by other countries, many now see lockdowns as ineffective and unnecessary. They figure most of us are going to get it eventually and only the elderly with comorbidities need isolate themselves.

Now that President Trump has allowed governors to make their own decisions about quarantine, Democrat governors, including Maine’s, are exerting what locals see as arbitrary authority over their lives and livelihoods. Maine has not been hit hard and what effect there has been is limited to southern counties of York and Cumberland.  As of last week, Oxford County had no deaths and only fifteen confirmed cases of which twelve have recovered — yet Governor Mills ordered restaurants, hotels, campgrounds, and many other businesses to remain closed.

Saturday's anti-Mills demonstration (from Portland Press Herald)

Tourism is the mainstay of our economy here and local businesses depend on the summer season to get through the rest of the year, so Mills is going to kill off many local businesses permanently. The question now is: will they roll over and die or will they fight? Rick Savage, owner of Sunday River Brewing Company in Oxford County was the first to openly defy Governor Mills. Two days after her order, he went on national TV with Tucker Carlson who owns a place in nearby Andover, Maine and announced he would open on Friday.

Governor Mills pulled Savage’s health license and liquor license immediately and the Boston Globe reported that he shut down again. During a protest at the state house in Augusta Saturday, Savage was interviewed by Newscenter 6 saying he would stay open, pay the daily fines, and fight the order in court. He said other businesses planned to join him. Has Mills’ intimidated them into compliance or will they fight too? It should be an interesting week here in Oxford County.

Saturday's anti-Mills demonstration (from Portland Press Herald)

On Monday Republican leaders declared that Mills didn’t consult them about her shutdown plan. They’re asking majority Democrats to call legislators into special session and end her emergency powers but Democrats refused. Tuesday, Mills’ press secretary said she did communicate with Republicans through a computer portal. Although America’s initial virus response was bipartisan, it no longer is. Efforts to restart the economy have broken down along party lines in Maine and everywhere else.

Maine was supposed to celebrate its bicentennial this year but that’s not likely. It’s nice to be free of Massachusetts but Maine has since spawned its own oligarchy with Mills at the head. What I see in rural Maine seems another manifestation of similar conflicts during Maine’s early settlement. Lately I’ve been reading Liberty Men And Great Proprietors, a 1990 book by historian Alan Taylor. Revolutionary War veterans who settled in backcountry Maine hadn’t been paid for their service and believed they had a right to stake out claims and settle in wilderness areas away from the Province of Maine’s coast.

Maine then was part of Massachusetts whose government and courts were largely controlled by Great Proprietors like Henry Knox, Charles Vaughan, Josiah Little, and their ilk. They claimed ownership of vast land grants — some going back to colonial times. These proprietors wanted veterans and other settlers — the Liberty Men — to pay them for the land. Lawsuits continued for decades before the political influence of wealthy proprietors in the Massachusetts statehouse eventually won out. Rural resistance to state control thus has a long heritage here in backcountry Maine.

Let's Not Take Counsel From Our Fears

We’re finally beginning to look past the virus. Some expect “things” will eventually be back to normal but I’m not one of them, not after what we’ve been through. It’s been unprecedented. The world and the United States have been through many epidemics but this one will have changed us the most by far. Why? It’s not the virus itself so much as the response to it and foremost is damage our response has inflicted on our economy. Ultimately that may kill more people than the virus does.

Do whatever he tells you. What can go wrong?

Americans are ambivalent. The “We’re all in this together” feeling has been nice. We all pulled together to defeat a common enemy much as we did in World War II, but that’s changing. We’re trying to get to herd immunity and that’s a good thing too, but if we also get herd mentality that’s not, and we're seeing two herd mentalities divided along political lines. The blue herd believes we need to be guided by government and the red herd believes we need to think and act for ourselves.

Last month our very-blue Governor Janet Mills closed Maine’s golf courses and beaches because that’s what they did in Massachusetts and those people might come here. Today she said her shutdown will continue through May for most things. Restaurants must stay closed until June — hotels and campgrounds until July. She won’t open northern Maine counties with few if any cases though federal guidelines would allow that. 

Governor Janet Mills telling us what to do last Tuesday

Maine mirrors the nation with an urban/rural political divide both politically and virally. Our two southern counties of York and Cumberland contain nearly half the population but almost all virus cases. Southern Maine is overwhelmingly leftist. Rural northern Maine is largely conservative. A rhetorical question someone asked me: If Montana had half of all the Covid 19 deaths, would we shut down New York City? Similarly, if Maine’s rural Aroostook County had 95% of Maine’s virus deaths, would Governor Mills shut down Portland?

Virus response was handled from Washington at first. President Trump listened to his medical advisors — not soon enough for his chronic critics — but he eventually followed their recommendations. The USA did what most other countries did: we shut down. Then we learned the models used by those medical advisors were faulty. Only then did authority devolve to the governors. Now governors are taking different courses and that’s good, but it begs the question: should we be allowing the decision-making process to take place at an even lower level? 

As I mentioned in a last week’s column, that’s what Sweden has done. Ordinary Swedes make their own decisions about how to react, and it appears to be working. According to NPR, Sweden’s Ambassador to the USA recently announced: “We could reach herd immunity in the capital as early as next month.” That’s the goal, right? We cannot rely on getting a vaccine. That will take over a year at best and there’s little likelihood our economy would survive that long a ahutdown.

Doctor Murphy

Writing Monday in the New York Post, Covid-positive, Bronx ER Doctor Daniel Murphy advises: “I’ve worked the coronavirus front line — and I say it’s time to start opening up.” He was swamped with Covid-19 patients early on, and then noticed the virus peaked at 1:00 pm on April 7th when “the number of arriving COVID-19 patients dropped below the number discharged, transferred or deceased.” He was that specific.

“This was striking,” he continued, “because the community I serve is poor. Some are homeless. Most work in ‘essential,’ low-paying jobs, where distancing isn’t easy. Nevertheless, the wave passed over us, peaked and subsided. The way this transpired tells me the ebb and flow had more to do with the natural course of the outbreak than it did with the lockdown.” This scenario supports the Israeli mathematician I mentioned in last week’s column who said the virus goes through an 8-week cycle regardless of whether there’s a shutdown or not.

Israeli Mathematician Yitzhak Ben-Israel

Our president, governors, and mayors may discover very soon that they’re not in charge of what people do. A tailor in NYC today defied orders and reopened his shop. Nearby businesses admire his courage and declared they will open too. After Governor Mills announcements today, Maine businesses may follow suit. That would be very American. Early in this process we all took counsel from our fears, which many Americans historically warned against including Andrew Jackson, Stonewall Jackson, and George Patton. Let’s remember that as we restart our economy.

Have We Overreacted?

Up to now people worldwide and here at home have largely cooperated with government shutdowns, but things are changing. The economic cost has been unprecedented. More people have lost their jobs than did in the Great Depression. Small businesses people spent their lifetimes building have been severely hurt and some have been destroyed. Trillions in stock values have gone “Poof.” Almost every American life has been disrupted in some way. Backlash has begun around the country with demonstrations at various statehouses where Democrat governors ordered the strictest, most-extended shutdowns.

As we’re learning more about this virus, some are beginning to question whether it was all necessary. Sweden, for example, has allowed businesses and most schools to remain open and left it up to individual citizens how to respond. They’ve come under criticism from across Europe including from neighboring Norway, a very similar country in nearly every way, which shut down much as America has. Sweden wagered that most citizens would eventually get the virus anyway and it would achieve herd immunity more quickly while other countries extended their vulnerability.

By some calculations, Sweden has had more deaths than Norway per capita, but Covid-19 mortality statistics are worked out differently across the globe. Here in America, for example, deaths of people who never tested positive for Covid-19 are nonetheless counted as victims of the virus. Those who did test positive but who may have died of more serious co-morbidities are still counted as victims of Covid-19. As I wrote in last week’s column, our shutdown was largely prompted by a virus model by Neil Ferguson out of Oxford University that has since proven way overblown.

Neil Ferguson caused panic

We don’t yet know if Sweden’s bet will pay off. While its death rate is twice Denmark’s, it’s only half of France’s according to Vanity Fair last Friday. An Israeli study published last week indicates that the virus goes through all human populations in eight weeks regardless of whether a country shuts down or not. President Trump’s Covid-19 Task Force pats itself on the back for saving thousands of lives with its shutdown policies, but are they correct? If the Israeli model proves true, what’s the likelihood that Trump would ever admit he was wrong? In an election year?

Even less likely to admit it would be mainstream media. All through March and April, they’ve done little but spread fear and criticize Trump for not shutting down early enough or strictly enough. Some Libertarians have suggested that neither federal nor state governments have legitimate authority to shut down the country and lawsuits have been filed to challenge them. We have so far used computer models and algorithms to predict the path Covid-19 would take, but now we’re seeing evidence that many models were flawed.

No major media figure nor political leader has dared question whether this has all been necessary. Did total shutdown increase the likelihood of a second viral wave in the fall? We don’t know. Will Sweden’s milder approach decrease that likelihood? We don’t know that either. Political leaders with their medical advisors have been forced to make decisions based on incomplete data. To what degree will they be held responsible if subsequent data prove them wrong? We don’t know, but it’s a safe bet that political partisans will point fingers if they believe it will help them electorally.

As testing for both the virus and antibodies to it are administered more widely, we’re learning unexpected things. So far — and we still have a long way to go — we’re learning that many more of us have been exposed to Covid-19 than expected. It looks like upwards of 30% of Americans may have antibodies but few if any symptoms. Would this be good news or bad news?

Usually I watch Fox’s Bret Baier deliver the news at 6:00 PM weeknights, but he’s often preempted of late by President Trump and his virus team. Trump hogs the podium and repeats things so much that I’ve been switching over to CBS, ABC, and NBC. What strikes me most about network anchors there is their melodrama, especially when reporting on the virus, and wonder if it’s genuine or affected. I suspect the latter.

Swedish leaders and their medical advisors have withstood withering criticism for their outlier policies both from within Sweden and from across the globe. Whatever the outcome, they won’t avoid repercussions. It might be continued condemnation, but it might ultimately be praise. We don’t know yet. How much criticism will this smalltime columnist receive for even suggesting that American politicians and media may have overreacted at enormous cost to our economy and our day-to-day lives? We don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll find out very soon.

To Open Or Not To Open

This week I was determined to write about something other than the virus, but couldn’t make myself do so. More than two decades ago — way back in the 20th century as a matter of fact — I promised myself  I would write columns only about what was most on my mind any given week. I’d write only about what I wanted to write about, not what various editors wanted. That isn’t conducive to furthering a career as a columnist, but it s good for my equilibrium.

Often I start writing about something and as my fingers move around the keyboard, I’ll end up somewhere else and I think, “Where did that come from?” Writing is a way of thinking things through. What starts as a vague idea turns into something coherent as one constructs logical sentences with subject, verb, and direct object, then sequence them into paragraphs. So, what’s on my mind this week? The same thing that’s on everyone’s mind: the virus, but more specifically our individual and collective reactions to it. We’re all wondering when our lives will return to what they were, if they ever do.

Social distancing is easier for my wife and I as we spend most of our time with people to whom we’re closely related. I have a big family: six siblings, three children, six grandchildren, in-laws, as well as nieces and nephews too numerous to count. Several are in the health care professions and some of them are working directly with the virus. I worry about them and pray too. We exchange information I use to hone the working hypothesis to understand event around me. This is a new thing we’re dealing with, hence the moniker “novel” corona virus. Leaders from all over the political spectrum thought at first that this was just another flu. They made statements they now wish they didn’t. We all thought it killed only the elderly and weak, but have since learned that is not always true.

My daughter sent me this

Only three months ago, the World Health Organization said virus didn’t spread human-to-human. Now there are calls to defund the WHO and demands that its director resign. Only weeks ago someone at Oxford University projected over two million dead in the United States. According to the March 16 New York Times, that lead to the near-total shutdown of our lives and economy. Now we hear that projection was way overblown, but the restrictive policies we’re still living under are all based on that. So where do we go from here? Back to how we were?

Some say not until we have a vaccine, but that’s a year out at least. When we get herd immunity? We may be closer to that than we think with so few in California being hospitalized. Were they exposed earlier? We won’t know until they’re all tested. Should we have shut down earlier or has this all been an overreaction? We don’t know without more data. Who can reopen the country? The president alone? The governors? Both together? Democrat governors have been more restrictive than Republican governors. The left wants to maintain the shutdown. The right wants to open up. We had a total economic collapse but we may have a patchwork recovery.

Almost daily I watch Coronavirus Task Force press conferences on Fox because mainstream media don’t all carry them live. President Trump dominates, ,endlessly repeating how government response is terrific and everyone is doing a great job “like nobody’s ever seen before.” That’s true in the sense that never before have the president and governors shut down the entire country. Never before have we printed so much money so quickly. Never before have the stock market, GDP, and the employment tanked further or faster.

In this election year, Trump’s ace in the hole was a strong economy virtually guaranteeing his reelection. Since 2016, stories dominating news have been Russian collusion, emoluments, the 25th Amendment, Stormy Daniels, the Ukraine phone call, impeachment — stories that had Democrats and their mainstream media allies salivating. But none of it worked. Six weeks ago, Democrat hopes rested with Bernie and Biden and it didn’t look good for them at all.

Then, as if it dropped from the sky, the novel coronavirus appeared! Trump’s economy tanked and Democrat hopes were renewed. Now Bernie is gone but Biden looks hapless. Some say Democrats and their media allies are quietly pushing Andrew Cuomo to dislodge Biden at a virtual convention this summer. Liberals and conservatives both insist their policy recommendations are solely based on what’s good for the American people and have nothing to do with partisan politics. Some seem to believe that. Others do not.

Democrat governors say they decide when to open up. Trump says he does. We’ll see.