Novel

Corona viruses have been around for a while. What makes COVID-19* dangerous is that it's new.

A novel virus is so strange we don't know how to respond. It takes time for our bodies to build up immunity. And while our immune systems try to work it out, so do our health systems. We try many things, hoping that one or a combination of several will work. We make progress in some areas, while failing in others. Each failure is another lesson as we struggle to effectively address the problem.

Some of our efforts seem obviously reasonable, like ventilators for respiratory failure. But we don't even know how effective these measures are; few of those on ventilators survive. We experiment in search of a solution. Different drugs or combinations are tried, not, as one physician said, because we necessarily believe they will work but just to try something. There was anecdotal evidence that chloroquine, an old drug no longer very effective for malaria, might work. So many doctors tried it, only to find it not only ineffective but prone to dangerous side effects.

We even muse about ways that disinfectants, so effective outside our bodies, might somehow be able to kill the virus once it is in our bodies. We are that desperate for a cure.

We are also new to responding socially to this virus. I forget to keep my distance when chatting with neighbors walking past until they remind me to keep my distance. Different communities experiment with different levels of isolation, making their best judgments on balancing rights of personal freedom with community safety and welfare. Some organizations seem to think that health experts are incompetent and that the need to reduce interaction is nonsense; they seem to believe guns are the cure for this virus. Fortunately, these seem to be a small minority—but protesters can be concealed carriers of the virus, and their selfishness is beyond disturbing. Others admit the danger but believe money is more important than life and we should be willing to sacrifice lives to prevent the economy from tanking. As I understand it, this view holds that we are morally obligated to interact with each other pretty much as normal because our economy is what defines us.

Our inability to deal with novelty applies to social infections as well. We expect leaders to think before they speak, even if we disagree with their logic or point of view. When a president spouts whatever fool notion enters his head at the moment, we don't know how to respond. Some follow his musings as instructions.

After being accustomed to presidents who at least tried to seem honest and caring, we were unprepared for one who blatantly lies and then either brags about the veracity of his lies or denies that he said what he said the previous week. We had come to expect someone who would prioritize comfort and solace for those who have lost loved ones in a national tragedy. We were unprepared for one who shirks all accountability, who insults reporters for asking valid questions or calls them liars for telling obvious and demonstrable truths. We were caught off guard by someone who would direct all his influence toward propping up his own ego. We don't know how to deal with this audacious new form of irresponsibility.

News, at its name implies, is about novel events. And this novel contagion at our highest level of government has caught our attention; we are fascinated. Some of us are outraged and research every false statement or otherwise waste energy in reacting. Often we play into his muddled but time-tested strategy of sowing destruction and then picking up the pieces for himself.

But now a new competitor shows up and steals the show. Our president has made a valiant effort at discrediting the newcomer as he has every other challenger. But this one ignores him. The bluster, disinformation, and braggadocio have no effect. The virus goes about its business of serving itself. It has outdone him.

President Trump may manage to ally himself to this new devil, just as he has cozied up to human ones. He may find ways to turn this tragedy into a source of self aggrandizement. He may convince enough of us again that only he can fix it despite his bungled attempts so far.

Or maybe this new disaster will alter the perspectives of some who have embraced the one in the White House. Maybe we will have had enough of what's new and be ready to return to what is less newsworthy and more competent. We might decide that we need more than slogans and blame-shifting to fix the effects of this virus and, while we're at it, to begin to restore other ruins left by this administration.


* Technically, the name of the novel virus is SARS-CoV-2. The disease it causes is COVID-19.

Foreign

When we heard on Wednesday, March 11, that the president was consulting with Stephen Miller prior to his national address, I wondered why. We soon found out.

In the address he blamed foreigners for our problems. In the first sentence the president pointed out that the virus originated in China. He then referred to it as "a foreign virus." He then boasted about restricting travel to the US from China, which, despite his assertions to the contrary, was in keeping with the advice of his advisers (and, by the way, seems to have been a good move).

By the middle of the speech we learned that he was suspending travel from Europe. This action was taken without advice from his experts, other than Miller apparently, and without informing the affected countries, most of whom have been important allies. As with many of his policies, the primary purpose seems to capitalize on an innate fear of others and propose that, if it weren't for THOSE people, we would be safe.

This is nothing new. In 2014, Trump was sewing panic about Ebola. He proposed a travel ban then too, in spite of nearly all health experts advising against it. If he had gotten his way, many would not have been able to go to Liberia, Sierra Leone, or Guinea to help with the crisis. Or, to be more specific, we would have been banned from returning to our families. Fortunately, the administration at that time heeded expert advice.

Of course, in the current crisis, when experts were saying we need to take it very seriously, our president was saying that his China travel ban was a cure-all and there was nothing to worry about. "Do not panic!" is good advice. But the hypocrisy of such advice from someone who did everything in his ability to get people to panic a few years earlier is a hard pill to swallow.

Now, instead of apologizing for disbanding the epidemic teams in the NSC and DHS and for initially downplaying COVID-19, Trump has characteristically chosen to deflect blame to other countries. And of course he couldn't resist comparing our response to that of European countries, concluding that we are much better than they are. This is false, senseless, and divisive, but it is precisely what we have come to expect.

There is an exception to the European travel stoppage. Travelers from the UK are still welcome.* Why? Well, the only answer seems to be that, because Boris Johnson is almost as xenophobic as Trump and has withdrawn from that European Union, no harm can come from his country. Of course, people from the EU can travel to the UK and then to the US, just as travelers from China used connecting flights to get to the US. But the UK exception is in line with Miller's strategy: let's emphasize that this is not about safety from the virus; this is about safety from foreigners who don't share our prejudices.

As it turns out, Miller's ever-toxic advice may have backfired. On Thursday, the stock market stopped dropping only when it was automatically halted because it plunged too far too fast. One can only hope that Wormtongue will lose some of his influence. But I won't hold my breath.

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*March 14: Today the UK and Ireland were added to the list of countries from which travel is restricted. This may in part be due to the UK's controversial strategy of encouraging infection among its lower-risk members of the population.