I golfed yesterday at Conestoga G.C. with some Sun City buddies: Gaylen, Jim and Lloyd.
I played like shit because I was pre-occupied with my ailing right hip. Every swing was a new adventure, exactly the opposite of what you want. It was a nice day, though, and we had fun, so the day was a success.
(By the way, my scheduled right hip replacement surgery has been moved up six weeks, at my request. It is now scheduled for September 1st. Hallelujah!)
Lloyd and I shared a golf cart, so we chatted between shots. Lloyd is a smart guy who used to be a C.P.A., a business start-up advisor, and a wine grape farmer in the Napa Valley. He is also pretty racist in his comments and has definitely imbibed the Trump Kool Aid. So, he occasionally says some pretty stupid things which I try to ignore.
Yesterday he wanted to talk about the resurgence of Covid-19.
Lloyd is a guy who bought into the coronavirus as a “Democratic hoax”, wants to blame our poor Federal public health response on the Chinese government, and has, until recently, eschewed the wearing of facemasks in public.
Lloyd has now jumped on the Trump bandwagon about testing for Covid-19; i.e. that the only reason cases are spiking all over America is because we’re testing more. In other words, the plague isn’t any worse and, besides, among the people who’ve officially died from Covid-19 “there are a lot of folks who would have died from the flu or other ailments”. So, no big deal.
That’s the level of thinking that Lloyd engages in.
I told him that along with the spike in Covid-19 infections in half of our United States, ICU beds are filling up with very sick people suffering from the coronavirus. That is not a mirage. In fact, I noted that some of Charlie’s bookkeeping and tax clients are doctors in Southern California who are currently overwhelmed with a glut of Covid-19 patients. They’ve told Charlie that this pandemic is going to get worse as the Summer progresses and they anticipate a catastrophe in the Fall; maybe a doubling or more of the death rate.
Lloyd said, “Why aren’t we being told this?”
I’m thinking, “By whom?”
I don’t know where my friend gets his information, but the facts on the pandemic are being loudly broadcast on television, radio, and the Internet. Anyone who claims that they didn’t know that facemasks help reduce transmission of Covid-19, that the President’s Coronavirus Task Force recommends social distancing, that States shouldn’t “re-open” their economies until the infection rate drops for two consecutive weeks…hasn’t been listening. The public health/medical facts are out there…if people’s ears are open.
The fact that our President refuses to wear a facemask in public reinforces the public perception that Covid-19 presents little danger to…manly men like himself and his army of manly men supporters.
Of course, Lloyd wants to believe that the pandemic is overblown, that public health measures to combat it are not necessary, and that this “flu” will go away on its own without stringent social restrictions and limitations on commerce.
When you want to believe something, the stuff you hear tends to reinforce that desire. It’s called “belief bias”, a form of cognitive bias. Like many addicts, Lloyd would steadfastly deny that he’s addicted to bullshit.
President Trump feasts on people who don’t assess things objectively. He is a master salesman who determines what you want to believe, crafts misinformation to reinforce that belief, and creates excuses when he can’t deliver the goods that he’s promised. If you want to believe that the snake oil works, you probably will even when it (hydroxychloroquine?) doesn’t, because Trump will convince you that bad people or bad science are in cahoots against the product.
Lloyd, like all people, wants Covid-19 to go away, wants the economy to be the way it was in January, and wants to resume normal social activity. However, unlike most people, he refuses to accept information that counters these desires; it’s not a reality that he prefers to live in, so he doesn’t want to think about it, and anyone who dares to raise a factual argument is dupe of some sort. They have been co-opted, not he.
America is facing the sad circumstance that Covid-19 will be with us until person-to-person transmission is drastically limited or an effective vaccine is invented and a high percentage of citizens are inoculated. Period.
Many companies and thousands of scientists are working toward developing the miracle vaccine. Past experience shows, unfortunately, that such an endeavor takes years, rather than months. The optimists among us, like President Trump and Lloyd, want to believe that this life-saving medicine is right around the corner, so…we can relax, the solution is at hand, Covid-19 will “just go away”, to quote Mr. Trump.
This is a convenient declaration (i.e. belief), because it minimizes the perceived need to work hard on efforts to minimize transmission of the virus. “We’ve got it under control” has been the Administration position for the past five months, as top officials, including the President, refused to socially distance or wear facemasks (while 127,000 Americans perished). So, if gullible people like Lloyd believe that, they also can be convinced that “re-opening the economy” is the prudent thing to do.
Which, of course, is salesman Trump’s ultimate objective, as he believes a prosperous economy would help him retain the Presidency.
Most economists, major financial institutions, and revered investors don’t share Donald Trump’s professed optimism about the imminent demise of Covid-19 and a quick turn-around of the national and world economy. They believe that we are in for some rough sledding for the next several years; some say we could be looking at a “lost decade”.
Vice President Pence’s recommended solution is prayer. Of course, that is his recommendation on any problem. He’s a religious guy who won his spot on the Republican ticket because of his creds with evangelical Christians.
I’m not religious and I don’t “believe” in prayer, but I could be convinced if Jesus extinguished the Covid-19 pandemic tomorrow. It would be a very welcome and humanitarian gesture from a guy who supposedly loves us all “Red, Brown, Yellow, Black and White”.
Mr. Pence needs to give the prayer idea some additional thought.
If a plague or pestilence or natural disaster afflicts Earth and its inhabitants, then either (a) God caused it, or (b) God is allowing it, because He is omnipotent…He’s God, He can do whatever he wants. He once flooded the entire earth when he got pissed off, and then helped the Hebrews help themselves to the Promised Land.
Every religious person in the world wants this plague to end, so it is reasonable to assume that every “believer” in Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, or other God imagined by man, from regular parishioners, to priests, to bishops, and even the Pope himself, have been praying non-stop for this nightmare to end.
And, yet, God has not chosen to halt the torture, similar to when He failed to halt the Holocaust.
We humans must have really fucked up this time.
Maybe God is punishing mankind for making Donald Trump “the most powerful man in the World”?
Think about it.