----- Forwarded message ----------
From: Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American
<heathercoxrichardson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 05 May 2020 07:25:43 +0000
Subject: May 4, 2020
The big news today is that there has been another leak from the White
House, and this one is colossal. The New York Times obtained a
document suggesting that the administration has misrepresented the
numbers of American deaths expected from this pandemic by pushing an
artificially low estimate for close to a month.
Modeling by the Federal Emergency Management Agency now projects
200,000 new coronavirus cases a day by the end of the month (we
currently have about 25,000 new cases a day), and by June 1, about
3000 deaths every day from Covid-19. Trump revised estimates of the
dead upward to 100,000 yesterday, but the new document suggests even
those are optimistic. The White House pushed back against the leak,
saying that the document had not been vetted or presented to the
coronavirus task force.
We also learned today that the new White House chief of staff, Mark
Meadows, must give his express approval for members of the coronavirus
task force or their aides to appear before Congress this month, so it
certainly looks as though we will not be hearing an explanation of the
discrepancy between Trump’s projections and this document anytime
soon.
Historians are prophets of the past, not the future, and I am
completely unqualified to assess this released model. But I am indeed
qualified to note the political importance of the fact that the
administration appears to have seriously downplayed its own estimates
of the projected death toll from this pandemic. As Andrew Slavitt,
acting administrator for Medicare and Medicaid under President Barack
Obama, explained, Trump’s team told him to expect 100,000 to 250,000
dead, horrific numbers, numbers from which Americans would recoil. But
he revised that number downward based on a model that assumed, for
example, that states without social distancing would not have
outbreaks. The number he offered was around 60,000, a number that
convinced his supporters that Covid-19 was no more serious than a bad
flu, and that Democrats were exaggerating the danger for political
gain.
That was enough to start a push to reopen states.
While there is a lot of talk about Trump wanting to reopen the states
to repair the economy, it’s hard to see how that can happen if the
pandemic continues unabated or even gets worse. Others have suggested
that the president might simply live so entirely in the moment he
cannot adequately assess cause and effect. He wants the economy to get
better, so he is trying to will that into reality despite the death
toll.
But I wonder—and I’m really only wondering tonight, because it’s
already 2:00 and I am too tired to start chasing down the speeches and
statistics I would need to make this as an assertion—if what is really
driving this mad push, funded as we know it is by right-wing political
groups, is a frantic determination to make sure the country does not
turn again now, in the midst of this pandemic, to a government that
regulates business and provides a basic social safety net, a
government like the one we created during the Great Depression.
I mean, if the protesters really wanted to protect workers, wouldn't
they be demanding laws that replaced lost wages? Other developed
countries have passed exactly those sorts of measures, putting their
economies into a holding pattern as the pandemic passes, but the Trump
administration has focused largely on protecting those at the top of
the economy. Reopening states will also keep us from expanding
unemployment programs, since they will keep workers from being able to
claim unemployment benefits. They must work or starve, as opponents of
welfare legislation used to put it. And, of course, people are waiting
too long to get medical care for Covid-19, and thus are spreading it,
not simply because we have insufficient tests but also because they
have no healthcare insurance for treatment anyway.
“It’s not a pandemic,” said a speaker at a rally at the Boston State
House today demanding that Republican Governor Charlie Baker reopen
the state. “The reason why they’re doing this… to turn the United
States of America into the United Socialist States of America.”
This is ridiculous of course, but it sounded very like what
Republicans said in the 1930s as they insisted first that there wasn’t
a Depression, and then that if there was a Depression it was the job
of the destitute states to fix it because federal government
intervention in the economy was socialism. Indeed it sounded so much
like Republican speeches from the 1930s that it instantly brought to
mind Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech when he accepted the
Democratic nomination for president in 1932.
“Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises
with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer
purpose…. I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the
American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves
prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more
than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help,
not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America
to its own people.”
——
Notes:
New numbers and testimony:
http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlUEGOwyAMfE25bUQgadMDh73sNyIDTkM3gQhMs_n9Oq2wxtYgezTjgPCR8mG2VEjUgnkM3tzVdWj7QXjT-XbgIZRxyogrhMVQrii2apfggEKK54KSvdZiNu2kJNzB3u2k9VWrQfnhJlvU4CaQ01WcMiNUHzA6NPjCfKSIYjEz0VYu-vuifrj2fW_iQWHF0ri0MqOkktxkf0LHUAuDSzlFeIVcy9cSXvhVN8-OSjPTuohgzi3Z87upXqmmbewT7ROkPGp36eT6UE2pthC431NHZOMgPyEPin8fp903zW5H7muNgY4RI9gF_ScI-iT39kXHhibiXhYkwvwhOZ2Og-h6wUo-8c1oZgSaMbv0l4ObIfuS4j-14YZX
[http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlUEGOwyAMfE25bUQgadMDh73sNyIDTkM3gQhMs_n9Oq2wxtYgezTjgPCR8mG2VEjUgnkM3tzVdWj7QXjT-XbgIZRxyogrhMVQrii2apfggEKK54KSvdZiNu2kJNzB3u2k9VWrQfnhJlvU4CaQ01WcMiNUHzA6NPjCfKSIYjEz0VYu-vuifrj2fW_iQWHF0ri0MqOkktxkf0LHUAuDSzlFeIVcy9cSXvhVN8-OSjPTuohgzi3Z87upXqmmbewT7ROkPGp36eT6UE2pthC431NHZOMgPyEPin8fp903zW5H7muNgY4RI9gF_ScI-iT39kXHhibiXhYkwvwhOZ2Og-h6wUo-8c1oZgSaMbv0l4ObIfuS4j-14YZX]
http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkEGOwyAMRU9TdlQEkjZdsJjNXCMi8JuQSSAC05ncfkgrLNn6Frb_s4YwxXToPWZiJSMN3umHvPVN1zOnW9f0tfB5eCZgM37VlArYXsbVW0M-hvODFJ1SbNbdEz0EnmhGK9C0t8fjrhTEvb8rp56GnWsGU5xHsNB4IR0xgK16JtrzRX1d5HcNMuuPD9MefaC8YYtXG7eqB_zmT-JTfBF30ZYNgbiNL--4g6E58z3FBZbgOEXug00wGWethBB8R-LOHHw8-FICeMN8vV8K0dV3l52U1-Y6LhgXI8RR2ksrtklecxkzGftzXsKStiYtJvWydqcTy1uuVIaatxI8HQOCGVe4DzD6EH77p2OHPq2sIEL6iJViq2TfdqxucrHODHo-_SDZ-Je8nU1yOYZ_0A2XHw
[http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkEGOwyAMRU9TdlQEkjZdsJjNXCMi8JuQSSAC05ncfkgrLNn6Frb_s4YwxXToPWZiJSMN3umHvPVN1zOnW9f0tfB5eCZgM37VlArYXsbVW0M-hvODFJ1SbNbdEz0EnmhGK9C0t8fjrhTEvb8rp56GnWsGU5xHsNB4IR0xgK16JtrzRX1d5HcNMuuPD9MefaC8YYtXG7eqB_zmT-JTfBF30ZYNgbiNL--4g6E58z3FBZbgOEXug00wGWethBB8R-LOHHw8-FICeMN8vV8K0dV3l52U1-Y6LhgXI8RR2ksrtklecxkzGftzXsKStiYtJvWydqcTy1uuVIaatxI8HQOCGVe4DzD6EH77p2OHPq2sIEL6iJViq2TfdqxucrHODHo-_SDZ-Je8nU1yOYZ_0A2XHw]
About the warping of the death toll:
Boston:
FDR:
http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJw1UEFyhCAQfM1y01JEowcOueQbFg4TZaNgwbDG32d0KwVVDN09DN1gCOcQT72HRCInjKOzepBdX7e9sFrZuufCpfE7Im7GrZpiRrHnaXVgyAV_NciqbRqx6A_VKlmroVF1rbqql107NIMZuq6W2CsjrjGjydahB9T4wngGj2LVC9GeHs3nQ37xPo6j3CMmZ1l3lhnSVKLNzNgAeUNPiWtjLWtSYQBwJ-fnghYs_vvImbXwYXP-_ubNWdwCRL5D8UZZAsG_LjVLYGFPcyhq4diSrKqW14dspSzrcnri9DRVdWb1UNU2yzLlKZGBnxLCJqIGE58m9pLZ-Urqhjmokc8te0fniN5MK9p3hvQO_Y6Ezh21xyOtSITxDXKwqpG9agVPsoHf9HpBw0YihN_oYDHRpuD_AHa3nkg
[http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJw1UEFyhCAQfM1y01JEowcOueQbFg4TZaNgwbDG32d0KwVVDN09DN1gCOcQT72HRCInjKOzepBdX7e9sFrZuufCpfE7Im7GrZpiRrHnaXVgyAV_NciqbRqx6A_VKlmroVF1rbqql107NIMZuq6W2CsjrjGjydahB9T4wngGj2LVC9GeHs3nQ37xPo6j3CMmZ1l3lhnSVKLNzNgAeUNPiWtjLWtSYQBwJ-fnghYs_vvImbXwYXP-_ubNWdwCRL5D8UZZAsG_LjVLYGFPcyhq4diSrKqW14dspSzrcnri9DRVdWb1UNU2yzLlKZGBnxLCJqIGE58m9pLZ-Urqhjmokc8te0fniN5MK9p3hvQO_Y6Ezh21xyOtSITxDXKwqpG9agVPsoHf9HpBw0YihN_oYDHRpuD_AHa3nkg]