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Donald Trump and his allies seem to know a lot about COVID-19— even more than the leading infectious disease, epidemiology, and public health experts. They purport to know so much that they can’t accept the input of an expert if it contradicts their own worldview.

During a Senate committee hearing about reopening the U.S. economy during the coronavirus pandemic, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) even reminded Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, that he wasn’t the “end all” when it came to making decisions about public health. To be fair, Paul is himself a physician, though an ophthalmologist, not an expert in infectious disease, epidemiology, or public health.

Trump’s allies are fond of comparing COVID-19 with the seasonal flu, though evidence says otherwise. Since we first learned about COVID-19, Trump and many others have focused on early speculation that COVID-19 was just a bad flu. They continue to point to “statistics” showing that influenza causes tens of thousands of deaths every year in the U.S. In short, we should see it as just another virus— sure, they say, people die from it, but tens of thousands of people die each year from the flu.

A new paper authored by researchers from Harvard Medical School and Emory University, however, says that comparing the number of flu deaths with the number of COVID-19 deaths is like “comparing apples to oranges.” In comparing the actual number of flu deaths per week with the actual number of COVID-19 deaths per week, the authors found that the peak COVID-19 weekly death count is about 20 times higher than the average weekly peak flu death count..

Some of Trump’s allies seem confident that once you have coronavirus, you are immune, despite the fact that science does not yet have clear evidence regarding immunity. During the Senate hearings on Tuesday, May 13, Senator Rand Paul, who has had COVID-19 himself, stated, without citing any data, that he was pretty sure that he and others were immune once they had recovered from COVID-19. So, he posited, there was no reason why people like him (those who have had COVID-19) shouldn’t be able to go back to work, populate beaches, and go back to more normal interactions.

Though experts say it’s likely that there is at least some degree of immunity for people who have had the virus, there is no definitive evidence as to the degree of immunity. Making the assumption that once you’ve had COVID-19, you’ll never get it again may prove deadly, especially as the country relaxes its social distancing rules.

Chen Dong, a researcher who led a COVID-19 immunity study at the Institute for Immunology and the School of Medicine at Tsinghua University in Beijing, says, “The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has only been circulating in human hosts for five or six months, which means that there is simply no way to know whether immunity to the disease lasts longer than that. How long immunity lasts is a big question…

People who assume they are now immune should take note: Chen also said, “Per our findings, we can only confirm that COVID-19 patients can maintain the adaptive immunity to SARS-CoV-2 for 2 weeks post-discharge.”

Trump’s allies continue to insist that if they don’t have an underlying condition, they don’t need to worry…ignoring the proliferation of hospitalizations of people who aren’t “high risk.” At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the common wisdom was that it was mainly the older population, people with underlying conditions such as heart disease, and immunocompromised people who had to worry about complications. Most others, we were told, would have mild or no symptoms if they contracted the virus.

We know now that anyone can suffer a severe case and/or complications of COVID-19. Take Dr. Joseph Fair, a physician and coronavirus expert who contributes to NBC News and TODAY. Fair, age 42 runs 5-10 miles a day, is clearly in good shape, and has no underlying conditions. Yet he was hospitalized with COVID-19.

“If it can take me down,” said Fair, “it can take anyone down.”

We’re discovering that COVID-19 can even take down our kids, who we’ve thought all along were virtually safe from any complications. An increasing number of children who have had a bout with COVID-19 are developing a serious and potentially deadly post-viral syndrome called multi system inflammatory syndrome. Though experts say the syndrome is not directly caused by the virus, it appears to be a result of the children’s immune response to the virus. Now that we know this, it will be interesting to see whether some of Trump’s allies who are in a rush to open schools will change their minds.

Trump and some of his allies continue to promote the drug Hydroxychloroquine as a “game changing” treatment, even though, after evidence showing cardiac risks prompted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has now recommended against it use for treating treat COVID-19.

Incorrectly citing herd immunity, they also insist that we don’t need to be so cautious about opening back up—in fact, we may be even better off doing so.

Various Trump allies, including Rush Limbaugh, have promoted the idea of herd immunity as justification for ending measures such as lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus.

Researchers David Dowdy and Gypsyamber D’Souza, of of the Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, write, “We have listened with concern to voices erroneously suggesting that herd immunity may ‘soon slow the spread’ of COVID-19. For example, Rush Limbaugh recently claimed that ‘herd immunity has occurred in California.’ As infectious disease epidemiologists, we wish to state clearly that herd immunity against COVID-19 will not be achieved at a population level in 2020, barring a public health catastrophe.

“Some have entertained the idea of ‘controlled voluntary infection,’ akin to the ‘chickenpox parties’ of the 1980s. However, COVID-19 is 100 times more lethal than the chickenpox. Someone who goes to a ‘coronavirus party’ to get infected would not only be substantially increasing their own chance of dying in the next month, they would also be putting their families and friends at risk.”

COVID-19 is currently killing 2,000 Americans per day. Trump and his allies pick and choose “facts,” even disproven ones, about the virus to conveniently support their worldview, frequently contradicting the data and recommendations of public health and infectious disease experts. Though Trump, his base, and many of his allies have disdain for science, they create their own “science” to support their desire to end lockdowns and protect their financial interests.

POWERFUL CONFRONTATION: Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci’s contentious Coronavirus exchange | The Hill [2020-05-12]

Fauci Clashes In Tense Moment At Senate Hearing | NBC Nightly News
[2020-05-12]

It’s time the Trump administration, many GOP members of Congress, and Trump’s base own up to the fact that they are not pro-life. For decades, many Republicans have voted based on a single criterion: whether the candidate was “pro-life.” It’s been evident for nearly as long, though, that their much tossed-around phrase, “the sanctity of life,” is meaningless unless it can be used as a political weapon to fling at an opponent who supports abortion, or as an opportunity to squelch the rights of someone they perceive as morally or socio-economically inferior (women and people of color, for example).

We’re already too familiar with the frequent ways the pro-lifers defile the sanctity of life. We’ve observed how they advocate for babies as long as they’re unborn, yet vote against any forms of relief or assistance for them and their families once the babies are born. We’ve noticed how they oppose affordable or government-sponsored healthcare. We’ve seen how they purported to be concerned for human life when they opposed the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, or “Obamacare”), falsely spreading alarm about Obamacare “death panels” that they said would determine who (the elderly and infirm, for example) would get to live and who they might deem “not worth saving.”

They have voted for pro-life candidates, even if those candidates support other important policies they don’t agree with, and even if the candidates are corrupt (witness our current president). And they’ll vote against candidates who are ethical—religious, even— and whose platforms they otherwise agree with, if the candidate is not “pro-life.”

Some of them think it’s ok to pass such wacky legislation as making it a crime for a woman to have an ectopic pregnancy surgically removed (ectopic pregnancies are never viable pregnancies), and to charge licensed physicians who perform abortions with felony. That is how “pro-life” they claim to be.

With the advent of COVID-19 and local government leaders’ efforts to help mitigate its spread, however, “sanctity of life” has become inconvenient for pro-life conservatives who are against the lockdowns. Staying home, closing businesses to protect workers and customers, wearing masks, and taking other precautions to help slow the spread of the coronavirus have grown old.

When science presents information that threatens our comfort or our bank accounts, some politicize it and call it “tyranny.” Before America even reaches the peak of the COVID-19 spread—let alone a decline—these “pro-lifers” have been demanding that their leaders let Americans “get back to work” (and back to nail salons, gyms, churches, and crowded beaches).

In late March, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested that he and other older Americans should be willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the economy, which he said was in “mortal jeopardy” as a result of COVID-19-related shutdowns.

“Let’s get back to living,” Patrick (R) said. “Let’s be smart about it. And those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves, but don’t sacrifice the country.”

Many Americans found Lt. Governor Patrick’s comments chilling. It seems, however, that in recent weeks, Patrick’s idea has gradually begun to catch on among conservative lockdown protesters, whom we can now only laughingly refer to as “pro-life.”

Let’s repeat what Patrick was saying : Older Americans should be willing to be sacrificed for the good of our economy. (Remember those Obamacare “death panels” they kept clutching their pearls about?)

Many conservative state governors have fully re-opened their states against the advice of public health experts, citing the need to “save the economy” (and the lives of many be damned). Some restaurants, churches, and other areas where people congregate are now dangerously full of mask-less people in close contact with each other.

Public health experts have warned against opening up too soon; they’ve predicted a resurgence of the virus and an uptick in the number of deaths if we’re not cautious.

The relaxing of masks, social distancing, and other health precautions for the sake of “reopening” of the American economy could be a death sentence for many vulnerable Americans, who are at the mercy of the degree of prudence or carelessness (or stupidity) of those around them.

But public caution would require some inconvenience, as well as a hit on our bank accounts. Lockdown protesters in recent weeks have been clear on their position that even though it means more deaths, the economy needs to fully reopen, and reopen now.

It seems the “sanctity of life” is one of the first ideals to be jettisoned when it interferes with finances, re-election prospects, or…a hair appointment.

As long as all that’s required is to condemn abortion and perhaps stand outside an abortion clinic and yell epithets, it’s easy to profess to be “pro-life.” But for those “pro-lifers” who think it’s fine to sacrifice any number of human lives for the sake of their 401K or their “right” to crowd into churches, stores, and bowling alleys, it’s time they admitted that “pro-life” has nothing to do with what they stand for.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Claims Seniors Willing To Die Of Coronavirus For Economy | HuffPost [2020-03-24]

Blackwell presses pastor: How can you be pro-life and keep your church open? | CNN [2020-05-05]

Category: TOPICS

Editorial: Trump Allies Have Their Own “Science”

Editorial: The Party of Trump is Anything but Pro-Life