Deaths, COVID-19 and 'Acceptable Losses'

 I was appalled to see a survey that said 57% of republicans believe that 170,000 deaths due to COVID-19 are ‘acceptable’.  Even in the current polarized political atmosphere this is beyond the pale.

I have heard people justify this viewpoint by saying that the primary victims of the pandemic are old and/or medically compromised, and that the pandemic is not much worse than the flu, which kills a large number of people each year.  Another rationalization is that the losses are acceptable in relationship to the risks of economic collapse and its ramifications.

First of all, the flu is a very different phenomenon than COVID-19.  It is not at all clear how many deaths are actually due to the flu.  Almost no one dies from the flu itself.  The deaths attributed to the flu are typically those involving secondary infections of pneumonia or coronary failure.  The estimates of death are purely based on statistical analysis of overall deaths with a lot of assumptions thrown in.  The flu is not tested for or confirmed in the great majority of the deaths that are attributed to it.

Until 2003, the numbers of deaths reported for the flu were very low.  The CDC began to publicize much higher estimates after 2003 in order to provide motivation for people to get vaccinated.

Even given the reported fatality rates, the flu is still much less dangerous than COVID-19.  The reproduction number for the flu is much lower, as is its fatality rate.  Additionally, the long gestation period and, the number of asymptomatic carriers make COVID-19 even more contagious.  If there had not been a near total shutdown of society in the March to May timeframe, we could have seen our healthcare systems overwhelmed and half a million deaths.  The catastrophic scenes in Italy, Spain, France, the UK and New York City would have spread across our nation.  There is no valid comparison between a typical flu season and what occurred in those places.

Moreover, many, if not most of the COVID-19 victims die directly from the disease, not from secondary infections.  Front line physicians and epidemiologists are unified in their portrayal of COVID-19 as a dramatically more brutal and dangerous disease than the flu.  It also can randomly overwhelm young healthy adults and kill them, something the flu almost never does.

Death rates from COVID-19 have decreased as healthcare experts have become more adept at managing treatment regimes.  But cases have continued to spread quite rapidly in the USA even with most cities and states in partial shutdown and people generally keeping social distance and wearing masks.

People were going to die from COVID-19.  It caught the world by surprise.  However, it is the responsibility of each country’s leader to prevent unnecessary deaths.  The initial deaths in the Northeast hub states were tragic, and certainly there were mistakes made and there was mass confusion, but that only accounts for about 60,000 of the current 180,000 deaths. 

By failing to take executive action to lead the nation in battling COVID-19, Trump must accept primary responsibility for most of the deaths that occurred after the beginning of June.  The shortened lockdown, due in great part to Trump’s reelection-conscious drum-beating to ‘get the economy back’, as well as the lack of a national testing, tracking, tracing and quarantine strategy, doomed the USA to a continuous rise in cases and deaths.

Here is the starkest comparison:  Germany, a country with similar people, technology, and healthcare capabilities, enforced their shutdown until the levels of new cases were low enough to test, track and quarantine.  Germany’s population is approximately one fourth of the US population, but the population density is higher, which should make it more difficult to control contagion.  Germany has had bars, restaurants and schools open since late May.  They continue to social distance and wear masks. 

Germany’s testing positivity rate (the % of tests that are positive) is well below 1%, usually between .3 and .6.  Compare this with the US positivity rate of 8-12%.  One cannot adequately monitor and control the contagion with positivity rates that high.

The table below shows the incredibly dramatic difference between Germany’s cases and deaths from June 1 to August 24 versus the USA’s.  The USA has had a hundred times as many deaths and cases with only 4 times the population! 

	Number of new cases from June 1 to August 24	Number of Deaths from June 1 to August 24
USA	4,037,630	71,470
Germany	52,352	718

Interestingly, the fatality rate for Germany’s known cases during this period is about 1.4%.  Given that they are testing at such a low positivity rate and testing so extensively based on tracing each infection, the number of positive tests is probably close to the true total number of people infected.   That would mean that this fatality rate is accurate for the disease in an advanced healthcare system when at risk people are taking extra precautions.  It would be higher in a developing country.  In any event, a fatality rate of 1.4% would be about 14 times the theoretical fatality rate of influenza, which 0.1%.  Again, a strong indication that COVID-19 is very dangerous.

By the way, Germany has had far fewer negative economic ramifications from its longer, but more effective initial shutdown than the USA.  Their unemployment is at about 5.6%, whereas the US is at 10.2%. 

Deaths from disease are only ‘acceptable’ when they could not have reasonably been prevented.  There is absolutely no doubt that the USA could have prevented tens of thousands of deaths had it been resolved to do so and followed the example of Germany and other successful countries.  It is heartless and willfully ignorant to claim that these deaths are 'acceptable'.

I Finally Understand How Hitler Came to Power in Germany

 

I began studying the German language in college when I fell in love with a girl whose family had emigrated from Germany.  I was fascinated by the intellectual depth of her family and their culture.  My studies of German acquainted me with the incredible wealth of German accomplishment – philosophy, theology, music, science, literature, poetry.  I studied at the University of Bonn in 1974-75, while Bonn was the German capital.

Like all Americans of that era, I had grown up on a steady diet of war movies and television shows that depicted Germans as either sadistic Nazis or incompetent German soldiers.  When I studied in Bonn, the country had just begun to intensely study the Third Reich period.  One of the courses I took focused on the period up to Hitler’s installation as Chancellor.  The professor was excellent, and it was fascinating to witness the children of the Nazi period confront their parents’ history.

But even after intense study of the causes and events of the 20’s and early 30’s, I found it difficult to comprehend how a people with such intellectual and cultural refinement could possibly allow Hitler to come to power.  It just didn’t seem to make sense.

Now, upon seeing so many of my neighbors, friends and relatives cling to Donald Trump, even after the evidence of how deeply flawed and damaged he is has accumulated beyond any reasonable doubt, I finally understand how Hitler succeeded.

I am not saying that Trump is as bad as Hitler.  I believe he has many of the same traits – the narcissism, the lack of humility, the vindictiveness, the willingness to do or say anything to promote his own interests, the mendacity, the lack of any ennobling spirit.  I also do not doubt that Trump could become as evil as Hitler if he were given a similar set of circumstances.  But for now, he is inhibited, thank God, by a much more established set of laws and political practices that provide a bulwark against his authoritarian instincts.

Like Hitler, Trump is a man who an objective, unaffected observer would never choose to be a leader.  But between ignorance, cynicism, hunger for power, self-interest and indoctrination, close to half of the nation is willing, if not eager, to keep Trump in office.

Here are the different groups that fall prey to Trump’s appeal, just as they did to Hitler’s:

• The ignorant, whose blind nationalism, subliminal (or overt) racism,  and lack of comprehension and study of economic, social and political issues make them completely susceptible.  This group is mesmerized by the man, just as Germans were bewitched by Hitler.  Now, Hitler’s speeches seem ludicrous and comical, just as Trump’s speeches are incomparably idiotic to anyone not in his thrall.
• The fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, who are so fearful of changes in our culture and society that they are willing to make a pact with the devil himself to attempt a forced return to a mythical world that never really existed. 
• The cynical and self-interested, who recognize Trump’s character flaws but see in his policies financial gain for themselves and are thus willing to ignore them.  This includes all the billionaires and wealthy Americans who are so opposed to any brake on their accelerating good fortune, and so selfishly immersed in the worship of pure capitalism, that they eagerly take the risk of having a demagogue and charlatan as President.
• The power-hungry, whose access to power is currently predicated on loyalty to Trump.  Many of them castigated Trump during his ascent to power and surely still harbor dislike, if not outright detestation of the man.  But they meekly kowtow to him so that they can retain their positions of power, because power is their only desire.  And like the Weimar politicians who believed that Hitler was controllable, they convince themselves that Trump can only cause so much damage.

When do ‘good people’ turn into bad people?  Every human being has the potential for good and evil.  The good person, who is a wonderful friend and neighbor and treats his or her children with love and affection, and goes to church every Sunday, is the same person who stands in a mob opposing peaceful BLM protesters, face distorted with hatred, ready to fight or even kill.  The dark side of human beings is always close to the surface. 

The good Germans who welcomed Hitler with gleeful, patriotic fervor, believing he would ‘make Germany great again’; the good Germans who turned a blind eye because they thought his ascension would bring stability and financial advantage; the good Germans who supported him to keep their positions and power; they all became the bad Germans who set the world on a path of incomprehensible death and misery.

Those good-turned-bad Germans are not unique.  We are the same people, with the same potential for good and evil, walking the same thin line between love and hate, nobility and savagery.  Let us pray that enough of us have the strength, the wisdom and the courage to hold the line.

The Myth of the ‘Assault on Religious Freedom’

In my efforts to understand how otherwise sane and wonderful people who identify as Christians can support Donald Trump, I have identified a basic fear that many Christians have that undergirds this support.  They fear that they are ‘losing their religious rights’, that there is an ‘assault on their religious freedom’.  They are panicked that America is becoming a secular nation and that the ‘family’ values they hold dear are under attack.

They point to the decreasing role that the church and religion play in our society.  They fret that more and more people are leaving the church and becoming agnostics or atheists.  They see changes in sexuality, family make-up, patriotism, demographics and other cultural phenomena and fear that we are on a downhill slide to immorality and decadence.

What do these anxious Christians view as their religious rights, their morality, and their values?  Jesus spoke most about seeking spiritual rather than material wealth, welcoming the stranger, meeting the needs of the poor and hungry, being humble, forgiving and loving.  Are these the values that American Christians think are under assault?  Are these the values that Trump personifies?

No, the values that American Christians (mostly the evangelical ones) espouse have more to do with sexual practices, abortion, homosexuality, prayer in schools and government and other issues that Jesus never or rarely addresses. 

No one is saying that these Christians cannot hold their beliefs or practice their religion.  If they want to remain celibate until marriage, they are free to do so.  If they want to suppress any homosexual urges they or their children may have, no one will stop them. If they want to carry a bible around with them and pray constantly, fine, but don’t force others to do it in school or anywhere else.

And if they want to spurn birth control and have a large family, by all means go for it!  Let’s face it, if they really wanted to dramatically limit abortions, they would be encouraging birth control and sex education rather than trying to pretend that we can go back to an age of no pre-marital sex.  Shall we have our children marrying at 13 again?

On the family values front, it is indeed sad that many families fall apart, that divorce is common, and that single parenting occurs so frequently.  But that trend began well before the decline in church attendance and its causes lie more in the realm of the changing and complex world we live in, and the evolving roles of women and men, than in our religious practices.

Europe and Canada have transitioned to mostly secular societies.  Church affiliation and attendance in those nations is generally below 20% and much lower in Scandinavian nations, for example.  Where is the moral degradation and decline that Christians fear would result?  It is not to be found.  In fact, an argument can easily be made that these nations are much more moral and ethical than America.  They have taken the true substance of religion to heart and jettisoned the façade.

I understand the anxiety that animates conservative, evangelical Christians.  There are always unsettling changes in society as it evolves.  Unfortunately, the rigid dogma that these Christians embrace makes it difficult for them to adapt to these changes and work within them for a better world.  Fundamentalists are profoundly uncomfortable with ambiguity.  They long for absolutes and certainty.  And as they cling desperately to biblical inerrancy, scientific skepticism, and other doomed fallacies in thought, they have blithely enabled, in Trump, the most dangerous assault on our true values (honesty, humility, love, forgiveness, kindness, community) that the country has ever seen.