Bits ‘n’ Pieces: Oct. 22, 2020

By Lorraine H. Marie
Reader Columnist

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:

New Zealand has had one of the world’s most successful COVID-19 pandemic responses. Under 40-year-old Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the nation of 5 million has had fewer than 2,000 COVID-19 cases and just 25 deaths. Ardern orchestrated early hospital preparation, border control policies, stringent lockdowns and a seven-week stay-at-home order, according to The New England Journal of Medicine. 

The stock market is doing well, but 100,000 U.S. restaurants closed in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has put 3 million people out of work, TIME magazine reported. As well, some 100,000 airline workers are now furloughed and Disney recently laid off 28,000 employees. While the House passed a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief package, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has chosen to ignore it, rendering it dead for now, and focused instead on the Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

The final presidential debate will be Thursday, Oct. 22, 6 p.m. (PST). To avoid the raucous nature of the first presidential debate, opponents’ microphones will be turned off if they interrupt, the Commission on Presidential Debates decided. 

On Oct. 14 the U.S. had a record of almost 60,000 new COVID-19 cases, the highest since August, with close to 1,000 people dying that day. As well, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that the Trump administration now favors adopting a policy of “herd immunity.” Health experts say that approach could lead to more than 2 million U.S. deaths.

The Great Barrington Declaration, an approach to addressing COVID-19, caught media scrutiny last week. It calls for isolating those most vulnerable and the elderly (who are willing), and would dispense with lockdowns in favor of “focused protection.” Talking on Democracy Now radio, a signer said the plan does not seek to get people infected, but does call for the most vulnerable to have access to protective devices, paid leave and safer working conditions. The document claims to have 9,000 signatures, but some have come into question, such as “Dr. Johnny Bananas.” The declaration developed from a meeting of the libertarian-leaning American Institute for Economic Research, which draws funding from corporations including Phillip Morris International, ExxonMobil and Chevron, and partners with Koch International, the Ayn Rand Institute and the Cato Institute. AIER publications include Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforests and The Real Reason Nobody Takes Environmentalists Seriously. Epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a declaration signer, told Democracy Now that doing nothing to create herd immunity is “very, very bad” and will kill people in all age categories. He acknowledged that it is right to flatten the COVID-19 curve to avoid overwhelming hospitals. The World Health Organization disagrees with elements in the document, such its lack of reference to how those who initially recover from COVID-19, including the young, but have long-term health consequences.

“I don’t want everybody to vote … our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down,” said Paul Weyrich, co-founder of influential free market, conservative think tank the American Legislative Exchange Council, in 1980. For Republicans to gain election advantage, several voter suppression efforts have been adopted (as reported on frequently by NPR, The Guardian, TIME, the Brennan Center for Justice, the ACLU and numerous others). 

They include: purging voters who have not voted in several election cycles, purging voters whose registration cards do not have exact spellings or addresses (like signatures missing a middle initial) or falsely claiming a voter is not a citizen. In 2016 states removed 17 million voters from the rolls. Slowing the postal service to create havoc with the vote-by-mail process: under President Donald Trump’s new postmaster general, workers’ hours have been cut, street-side letter boxes removed and mail-sorting machines taken out. Using the courts: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts advocated muffling minority votes when serving under Ronald Reagan, and then in 2013 got his chance as on the high court when he said there is no longer “racial disparity,” so the Voting Rights Act of 1965 could be lifted. That opened the gates for states inclined to do so to create roadblocks for minority voters (which saw the closure of 1,688 polling places). Legal efforts to suppress voters have also included suing to stop postage-paid return voting envelopes, suing counties that allow out-of-county poll watchers and suing to stop states from mailing ballots to eligible voters.

Blast from the past:  “There are men in government who shouldn’t be allowed to play with matches.” Will Rogers, 1879-1935, American actor, humorist.