CDC Director Robert Redfield recently said he thought that if Americans uniformly wore masks the COVID-19 crisis in the United States could be “under control” within four to eight weeks. Two months. Sounds doable, Robert. I’m all in… I only see one issue. Americans live in America, and right now America is batshit crazy.
Exhibit A is anti-masking. In June an intrepid internetter deftly lampooned anti-maskers by cutting up clips of Parks and Recreation with scenes of angry constituents at a Florida town hall meeting. The mashup pretty much speaks for itself.
If you’re new to the contemporary American experiment then your question is probably the same one Ron Swanson asks at the end of the video: “What the hell?”
Well, for months Trump’s non-strategy strategy has been to A) pretend the pandemic is no big deal and B) deflect responsibility if strategy A doesn’t pan out. The base has been told over and over again that the virus is overblown. A slightly worse kind of flu. Most people don’t get sick. It will magically go away after the election. Anyone who tells you otherwise is sub-human scum, rooting against the American economy. Oh, and speaking of the economy, let’s get this summbitch started again!
Of course the Trump doctrine on COVID-19 doesn’t exist only in soundbites. It has real world consequences. Governors override municipal mask mandates. States reopen too soon. Hospital data is obfuscated to muddy the true scope of the crisis. Things should be getting under control by now, but instead the daily infections are at all time highs and death counts are again on the rise.
The politicalization of masks has made their universal acceptance impossible, and that should gives us pause. Because if one public health imperative can be made into political fodder, then why not any? Here we arrive at the forthcoming issue of COVID-10 vaccination.
This past Tuesday USA Today published an op-ed attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, penned by White House advisor Peter Navarro. The administration later disavowed the article, but there was a clear subtext to Navarro’s piece: Fauci is the new target. Not to be trusted. He is the one to blame. He is the one who gave Trump the wrong advice.
As these attacks build in the coming weeks and months, as I expect they will, trust in Fauci and other experts will continue to be chipped away (if there’s still any left). Feelings of suspicion––of both the disease and potential cure––will dovetail into a war on vaccinations that’s been growing in the United States for the better part of at least two decades.
From 2001 to 2015 the number of unvaccinated babies and toddlers quadrupled, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And per the WHO, the active refusal to vaccinate against certain diseases was among the org’s top global health threats for 2019. The Karens are gaining ground, and this is bad news is you’re against things like, say, Measles resurgence.
But the Measles vaccine is so 1960’s. What happens if we take a disease that we haven’t even been inoculated against, one that is crippling our society, and blend it with some modern conspiracy thinking and a lethal dose of politicization?
First, we get a protracted public health nightmare. Assuming we do get a workable vaccine (or several) by the start of 2021, rolling out doses to 300+ million people will take a really long time. Months, probably. Public trust will be critical to that undertaking, just as it has been for testing. But what if we can’t even get 80% of the population to buy in?
Is 70% enough for herd immunity? What if that number is closer to 60%? What if less than half? What if the vaccine’s effectiveness wane’s over time? What about people can’t take the vaccine for health reasons, including newborns or immunocompromised individuals? Could anti-vaxxing spur a potential reinfection crisis? Would the government mandate the vaccine, and if so, how would that issue become politicized the way it has been with masks?
Questions abound, but at a minimum we’ve already experienced how the refusal to embrace the treatment prolongs the pain. That, in itself, forecasts a shit show.
Putting public health aside for a moment, let’s consider the issue of electoral health, which over the long term is probably even more concerning. There is a swath of our population that now appears to be cemented in ignorance. It’s the kind of ignorance that permits a person to view masks mandates as tyrannical, but be totally cool with anonymous government agents kidnapping people on the streets of Portland. It is, in short, a cult.
Trump or no Trump, the cult isn’t going away anytime soon. This isn’t a sect of Branch Davidians who are going to burn themselves from the inside out. If they burn, we burn. And right now it’s as if they’re already soaked in gasoline and Supreme Leader Donald will happily hand them a match, if and when it serves his personal ends.
Should Trump win the election, I have no doubt he’ll double down on the hoax rhetoric and the character assassination of public health officials (or anyone) who criticizes his response. In Donald’s twisted, corkscrew mind there’s no better way to not be wrong than to have always been right.
In an interview aired today on Fox News Sunday Trump proclaimed the coronavirus will “disappear” and that he’ll “be right eventually.” His logic would almost be laughable, if it weren’t so callous in the face of 140,000 dead Americans.
If and when infections do draw down, I have no doubt Trump will take the credit. He will repaint the history of his first term in a tacky, golden hue that makes him look like either a savior, or a soothsayer. The virus was never that bad, he’ll say, and he knew it all along. Most people didn’t go to the hospital. It was all politics. A shamdemic, which he beat by the way, even with the Left trying to trip him up at every turn. His followers will lap that shit up.
Even if he loses in November (and actually leaves office peacefully, which he wouldn’t commit to during today’s interview) he’ll still have a direct pipeline to pump his base full of disinformation. These voters are still out there, still ginned up, still ready to follow orders without question. And if Donald’s next venture is to start a fringier version of Fox News (that’s my prediction anyway), I have no doubt there will be an audience.
And if you need content, why not opt for vaccine conspiracies? If it worked for Obama’s birth certificate and Hillary’s emails, then surely a grand scheme by evil Democrats and the corrupt CDC to administer poison for profit will do the trick. Yeah, that’ll get ratings for sure!
I know, I know… everyone can’t wait to get things back to normal, and there’s a view that a vaccine will be the quickest path to get there. Maybe that shared feeling will overwhelm cognitive dissonance. Maybe personal safety will win out over blind allegiance.
But from what I see, normal isn’t a place we’re going to visit for a long time. And even if we do get the vaccine we so desperately crave, it might just be the tipping point of a much bigger societal crisis.
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