Trump Is Asking Us to Play Russian Roulette With Our
Lives
Are we
really going to bet that we can go back to life as normal without proper
coronavirus tracking in place?
Opinion
Columnist
·
April 18, 2020
With
these three short tweets last week, President Trump attempted to kick off the
post-lockdown phase of America’s coronavirus crisis. It should be called:
“American Russian roulette: The Covid-19 version.’’
What
Trump was saying with those tweets was: Everybody just go back to work. From
now on, each of us individually, and our society collectively, is going to play
Russian roulette. We’re going to bet that we can spin through our daily lives —
work, shopping, school, travel — without the coronavirus landing on us. And if
it does, we’ll also bet that it won’t kill us.
More
specifically: As a society, we will be betting that as large numbers of people
stop sheltering in place, the number of people who will still get infected with
Covid-19 and require hospitalization will be less than the number of hospital
beds, intensive care units, respirators, doctors, nurses and protective gear
needed to take care of them.
Because it is clear that
millions of Americans are going to stop sheltering in place — their own
President is now urging them to liberate themselves — before we have a proper testing, tracking and tracing system set up. Until we have
a vaccine, that kind of system is the only path to
dramatically lowering the risk of infection while partially opening society —
while also protecting the elderly and infirm — as Germany has demonstrated.
And as
individuals, every person will be playing Russian roulette every minute of
every day: Do I get on this crowded bus to go to work or not? What if I get on
the subway and the person next to me is not wearing gloves and a mask? What if
they sneeze? Do I get in the elevator at the office if there is another person
on it? Do I go into the office lunchroom or not? Do I stop for a drink at this
bar, where the stools are six feet apart, or that crowded one my friends chose?
Do I use this toilet or that drinking fountain? Do I send my kid back to school
or not? Do I stay in a hotel? Ride an airplane? Let the plumber in? Do I go to
the doctor to check that strange lump or not?
What
will be so cruel about this American version of Russian roulette is how unfair
it will be. Some people will have no choice but to take the subway or the bus
to work. Some people will have to send their kids back to school because they
can’t afford to stay home from work. Some bosses will demand that their
employees show up to reopen their workplace, but some of those employees may be
afraid to come back. Do you fire them? Do they bring a lawsuit against you if
you do, or do they go on Twitter and post a picture of how closely together you
forced them to work — six inches apart, not six feet?
This is
the state of play when you have a president who one minute is responsibly issuing
sober guidelines for when and how people should go back to work, and the next
minute is telling states that they are responsible for getting the testing,
tracking and tracing units that we need in place and then, in the third minute,
is inciting people on Twitter to “liberate” their workplaces, cities and
beaches — even though none of the conditions are in place to do so safely.
“Liberate”?
Think about the use of that word. We were not in jail! We were not doing
something wrong! We were doing what our president, governor, mayor, and
national epidemic experts told us to do: behave responsibly and shelter in
place to break the transmission of this virus.
Trump was cynically
trying to curry favor with his base by implying that the Democratic governors,
following his own national guidelines, were unfairly locking people up, depriving
them of their livelihoods. Is there anything more irresponsible that this
president could do, after weeks of complimenting the American people for how
they pulled together and sacrificed to shelter in place — patriotically doing
their part to bend the curve of this virus?
So,
folks, forget about all those White House briefings. You don’t have to tune in
another day. When the president is calling on governors to “let their people
go” before comprehensive testing facilities are in place, he is basically
saying that, until there is a vaccine, we are betting on herd immunity.
Achieving herd immunity requires
that more than two-thirds of a community be immune, a process that could
involve many more deaths, if proper preparations are not in place.
That
may work out for some places and people. It may not. I do not know. Every
choice in dealing with this virus is fraught with huge tradeoffs between saving
lives and saving the economy that sustains lives. I just know three things:
First,
this is the bet Trump is urging you to make in his “liberate” tweets — when he
should be ordering out the National Guard and mobilizing American industry to
get testing everywhere.
Second,
this bet will fall very unfairly and unevenly in our society, when so little
testing and tracing is in place.
And
third, if this is the future, every business, restaurant, hotel, theater,
sporting facility, factory, nonprofit and government office needs to ask
itself: What does my business look like when, on the best days, the responsible
people coming to my door will be wearing a mask, gloves, distancing six feet
apart and volunteering to have their temperature taken before they enter, and
the irresponsible ones won’t be? How do I handle that? Whom do I serve? What
kind of business will I really have? Because that will be our economy until we
have a vaccine or have established herd immunity.
Bottom line, my fellow
Americans: Your president is telling you that you’re on your own to make these
decisions. And if this strategy works, you can be sure that he will take
credit. And if it doesn’t, you can be sure that he will tweet that it was all
Anthony Fauci’s idea.
