Carry Trump to Victory? Not on a Bet!
“Unemployment will fall, the economy will grow, the vaccines approved and law restored.”
I understand it is always a good thing to have dreams about the future which can help you prepare yourself for new opportunities. Dreaming and imagination is where we do the work of considering the future.
In this instance, I have to, indeed, I MUST assume you are being satirical and poking fun at the Trump administration because anything else would be too ridiculous to believe, especially in light of your being a professor of ANYTHING in our modern educational engine. Let me share with you a few facts, humble though I may be, I am blessed with clarity of vision and lack the befuddlement of FOX and Sinclair News viewers who seem to live in their own parallel Universe.
The quotation was:
“Unemployment will fall, the economy will grow, the vaccines approved and law restored.”
Unemployment will fall, the economy will grow…:
This is highly unlikely. Even given the derangement known to the Republican party where unemployment was concerned, under the Trump administration, the measure of who was unemployed was one of those less effectively tracked conditions.
Unemployment was always a false measure with the Trump administration since our systems for the analysis of unemployment did not take into consideration citizens who were underemployed; folks who were working in jobs which did not pay well, or offer full time employment either by design or by economic mandate.
Many jobs would only offer part time or work which held employees below a threshold by which they could get benefits such as sick leave or healthcare benefits. As such those jobs would be considered underemployment because they often didn’t pay well either. A perfect storm of economic failure, leaving workers to string two or three such jobs together in order to make their ends meet.
We also didn’t track well those workers who were part of the latest economic confidence hustle, the algorithmic economy. Businesses such as Uber, Postmates, DoorDash and many other such companies managed to use an economic dodge which allowed them to call their employees, contractors, and thus those companies were able to avoid providing resources comparable to the common workforce such as sick time or paid vacation. Instead, employees were told they could work as much as they wanted without realizing the cost of being an employee was being carried by them. Insidious.
Suffice it to say, even before the Age of the Coronavirus we were not on the up and up regarding unemployment statistics which allowed Donald Trump to weasel his way into saying patently untrue factoids regarding the employment of Americans being at 4% nationwide, while avoiding dealing with the long-term unemployed or the underemployed. After the coronavirus struck the economy shed jobs faster than Trump could tell lies.
How fast did we lose jobs? One indicator says we lost 30 million jobs in as little as six weeks.
Those jobs were lost due to entire economic sectors collapsing such as tourism, travel, sports, and entertainment. Followed closely by restaurants and other service industry jobs, including many modern factories. These industries closed because they were built upon an industrial-age engine of employment. Hire workers, pay them as low a wage as they can be paid (prevent unionization if possible), hire as many of them as you can, pack them into as little space as you can and wring out whatever value you are able given those circumstances. Remember, that even though businesses were enjoying record profits, only executives, investors and board members were enjoying any of those profits. The rank and file were given just enough to ensure they could show up for work on Monday. These conditions are directly opposed to the parameters needed to work in the Age of the Coronavirus.
Unless something changes drastically, those jobs will not be returning at the same capacity they functioned at before January 2020 because the potential for outbreaks, particularly since Americans cannot seem to get with the protocols necessary to reduce the coronavirus transfer rate. The American commercial engine has failed to grasp, unless industry and the body politic’s failure to deal with the coronavirus improves, people may be forced back to work by reducing unemployment (another simply insidious scheme), but state governors will eventually have to shut those businesses down as outbreaks flare in those regions, again and again. See: Texas, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Mississippi, Nevada and California.
Vaccines approved…:
I would like to be hopeful and say without a shadow of a doubt we will be on track to create a vaccine for the coronavirus and be able to return to our predatory capitalistic, planet-destroying, corporate-rapine, extreme-consumerism in short order. Alas, even with tens of thousands of scientists and hundreds of pharmaceutical companies working day and night, we will still have quite a wait ahead of us. A wait which will not come in time to save Donald Trump.
Say it isn’t so. I wish I could but responsible science being what it is, there is no way we will come up with a vaccine which will assuredly be able to create antibodies and protect citizens safely in the next 100 days before the election. According to the New York Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker:
Researchers around the world are developing more than 165 vaccines against the coronavirus, and 27 vaccines are in human trials. Vaccines typically require years of research and testing before reaching the clinic, but scientists are racing to produce a safe and effective vaccine by next year.
Just to help put the science in perspective: One of the reasons you don’t want scientists to rush is there is no way to know how effective long-term any vaccine treatment is going to be against the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. With other coronaviruses, SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in particular, the capacity for humans to develop antibodies after exposure was a temporary one, lasting three to six months. After such time, it was possible to be exposed to and catch the disease again. Thus, in addition to the challenge of creating a vaccine, we have to consider it may simply not offer a long-term fix to our problem predicated upon the nature of the disease itself. A long-term fix may not only be challenging to create, it may also be temporary, requiring additional treatments regularly.
The second major challenge is just as important. Scientists need time to determine, as they vet candidate vaccines and begin trials, one of the paramount issues is the safety of the vaccine. Their goal has to be one where they create the safest vaccine possible because it will likely be administered to billions of people before its over. A vaccine going to so many people needs to be as safe as possible because even a tiny margin of error could result in millions of people being sick or even dying from side effects of the vaccine. In American history there are incidents where vaccines were created which did not perform adequately and citizens paid the price.
In April 1955 more than 200,000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned. Subsequent investigations revealed that the vaccine, manufactured by the California-based family firm of Cutter Laboratories, had caused 40 000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.
20% of these children developed polio.
0.1% developed paralysis.
0.005 died.
Using these same numbers on the suspected number of infected people on the planet right now, assuming they were unable to retain effective antibodies without the vaccine (and that the vaccine worked as advertised in all other ways)…
16,500,000 currently have been confirmed to have the disease.
82,500 people could die with those same numbers.
If we were to extrapolate to one billion people with those same numbers
1,000,000,000 billion given a faulty vaccine could result in 500,000 dead.
As much as we might want to rush a vaccine, as dire as the economic conditions may be in countries who have not managed to manage the coronavirus through effective contact tracing and isolation, mask wearing and physical distancing, a bad vaccine could be as devastating as the disease itself. In vaccine development: Safety is job one.
In the meantime, professor, we are likely going to have to rely on treatments which mitigate the effects of the coronavirus and its related COVID-19 syndrome whose boundaries continue to expand with every day of new discoveries. Treatments are far less numerous than vaccine candidates but they do exist and are likely to be our go to once we can get the virus under control through established safety protocols.
The New York Times Coronavirus Drug and Treatment Tracker reports:
The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the greatest challenges modern medicine has ever faced. Doctors and scientists are scrambling to find treatments and drugs that can save the lives of infected people and perhaps even prevent infection.
Below is an updated list of 19 of the most-talked-about treatments for the coronavirus. While some are accumulating evidence that they’re effective, most are still at early stages of research. We also included a warning about a few that are just bunk.
There is no cure yet for COVID-19. And even the most promising treatments to date only help certain groups of patients, and await validation from further trials. The F.D.A. has not fully licensed any treatment specifically for the coronavirus, but it has granted emergency use authorization to a few.
…and law restored…
On the subject of law, professor, I have to ask, which laws did you think would be restored because of a Trump presidency? Which laws do you think he is going to be following or restoring should we be UNFORTUNATE enough to somehow re-elect him to the highest office in the land?
Or perhaps you are talking about the famed LAW AND ORDER stance he blathers on about whenever he mentions the riots… er… justifiably legal protests taking place across the country as a result of the police brutality and unjustified homicides of Black citizens such as:
- George Floyd: May 25, 2020 — One officer has been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter, and the other three will face charges of aiding and abetting murder. George Floyd was unarmed and not engaged in an activity which should have resulted in his death. It took 8 minutes and 46 seconds for Floyd to die while an officer knelt on his neck and the event was recorded in one of the most terrible videos on the Internet. One of the protests’ rallying cries are some of his final words including “I can’t breathe…”
- Breonna Taylor: March 13, 2020 — Killed in the no-knock raid on her apartment which resulted in her being shot in her own home, unarmed, and allowed to bleed out without being offered assistance. One policeman involved has been fired, the other two were placed on administrative leave. To make matters worse, she was killed by a task force whose target had already been arrested a day earlier — an unconscionable series of events. These officers are still not under arrest. They have, however, been sued for wrongful death and excessive force.
- Ahmaud Marquez Arbery: February 23, 2020 — Was fatally shot in Brunswick, Georgia while jogging on Holmes Road. His attackers were three white residents, Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William Bryan. The Glynn County Police Department and the Brunswick District Attorney’s office delayed for over 70 before any arrests were officially made into Arbery’s death. A viral video sparked debates on racial profiling in the United States.
- Elijah Jovan McClain: August 24, 2019 — was a 23-year-old African-American massage therapist from Aurora, Colorado who died following an encounter with the police while walking home. Having committed no crime other than walking home from the store, he was accosted, subdued, held in an illegal carotid choke-hold while paramedics administered ketamine to him. While being transported to the hospital, McClain went into cardiac arrest. He was declared brain dead three days later and taken off life support in August 30, 2019. The officers were placed on paid administrative leave and no charges were filed against them. The case would come under critical review was not investigated by an outside agency until almost a year later.
- Atatiana Koquice Jefferson: October 12, 2019 — Was killed in her home by a police officer who was supposed to be engaged in a wellness check on Ms. Jefferson. Instead when she came to the window to investigate who was outside her home, she was shot and killed by Officer Aaron Dean.
- Stephon Clark: March 18, 2018 — Was hit by seven rounds in Sacramento California by the police investigating a break in. Clark was standing in his grandmother’s back yard and was accused of holding a gun, shooting at him more than twenty times. The officers were able to avoid responsibility by utilizing their special escape phrase: “We feared for our lives, believing the suspect was armed.” No handgun was found at the scene. The release of a video sparked major protests in the city. No officers were brought to justice for this death. The city of Sacramento settled a lawsuit with the family.
To be honest (and made incredibly sad by the fact) I could do this all day. There are so many Black people who are unarmed, killed by police either by accident or through their use of extrajudicial law enforcement actions that it has its own category in the FBI’s investigation programs. The Washington Post investigation recently revealed, the FBI’s count of those deaths is likely undercounted by more than half, since such reporting by police departments is voluntary and many departments fail to do so.
Perhaps if you were to familiarize yourself with the names of some of these citizens upon whose lives these protests are being made it might help you understand the necessity of these protests and why so many people have been involved in them. Names like: George Floyd (46), Breonna Taylor (26), Atatiana Jefferson (28), Aura Rosser (40), Stephon Clark (22), Botham Jean (26), Philando Castille (32), Alton Sterling (37), Michelle Cusseaux (50), Freddy Gray (25), Janisha Fonville (20) Eric Garner (43), Akai Gurley (28), Gabriella Nevarez (22), Tamir Rice (12), Michael Brown (18), Tanisha Anderson (37). There are many, many more.
Speaking of said protests…
As movements go, this protest led by the Black Lives Matter movement which is promoting the idea of reducing the capacity of police departments for extreme responses to the calls they receive. The organization is hoping for both more oversight of police agencies and accountability for the behavior and actions of their officers. More importantly, they hope for the establishment of social service programs in communities instead of a militarized police response.
If anyone has been paying attention, you would have learned this is likely the most significant civil rights movement of its kind, historically speaking, ever, in the United States. A protest which has spread to every state in the Union and to eighteen countries outside of the United States.
But don’t let me tell it. The New York Times states:
The recent Black Lives Matter protests peaked on June 6, when half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the United States. That was a single day in more than a month of protests that still continue to today.
Four recent polls — including one released this week by Civis Analytics, a data science firm that works with businesses and Democratic campaigns — suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others in recent weeks.
These figures would make the recent protests the largest movement in the country’s history, according to interviews with scholars and crowd-counting experts.
Meanwhile, professor, you may be thinking of Donald Trump’s response to these events:
- Trump’s tireless efforts to guide our nation during this coronavirus pandemic by mobilizing corporate powers to create more personal protective equipment to shield our medical staffers on the front line of the pandemic.
- Trump legendary efforts in doing whatever was necessary to see PPE was available to the doctors providing care and later for citizens once it was revealed how beneficial masks were to the community to prevent the spread.
- How he lead the world in a clear-cut, scientifically-informed decision-making process which ensured America’s response to the pandemic was focused, organized and lead by the best scientific data possible.
- Trumps early mobilization of testing resources and being involved in providing the CDC and the WHO with whatever they needed kept the virus to a minimum in the United States, a marvel of the modern world in response to this pernicious disease.
- Trump’s empathetic support of the American citizens engaged in these protests; his focus on healing the rifts between Blacks and whites in America. His calming words gave protesters a reason to believe the government was hearing their words in every city in the nation.
- How Trump worked with state governors to ease the tensions between the local police and the citizens with supportive speeches and funding for national programs to retrain officers with greater emphasis toward de-escalation during police actions, offering to remove militarized hardware from police departments.
You don’t remember these headlines, professor? Neither do I.
We all only wish they were true. The reality was far more terrifying ending with the Trump administration’s efforts toward the coronavirus and the protests to be the same slipshod effort: to mobilize the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security into a ersatz Federal police force led by a man with no police or federal agency experience, Chad Wolf, producing what amount to little more than a team of federal kidnappers working for the executive branch, engaged in activity whose legality remains a question of great debate.
The New Yorker explains it thus:
In a press conference on Tuesday, Chad Wolf, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, responded to media reports that unidentified federal agents using unmarked vehicles have been arresting protesters in Portland, Oregon. Since early July, men in military-style uniforms have waged battle against protesters there, using tear gas and nonlethal munitions; video and photographs coming out of Portland have shown scenes of urban warfare, with what looks like a regular army moving on unarmed protesters night after night. On behalf of the D.H.S. and its uniformed services, Wolf claimed responsibility for the armed presence in Portland. He asserted that his agency was doing exactly what it was created to do. He was right.
Professor, it’s time to wake up.
