Descent into the Maelstrom

By now I'm sure y'all have at least heard tangentially of the New England Journal of Medicine editorial excoriating the U.S. response to the Coronavirus pandemic. I read the journal every week, have done so for at least 25 years. The Journal often features discussion of health policy, representing a range of well-informed and well-argued views, though most of the space is taken up with clinical research, and instructional content for physicians. This is the first time in the nearly 200 year history of NEJM that it has taken an editorial position in an election. 

I don't expect any MAGA cultists to actually read it, because they know better than to confront actual information. But I will quote the bottom line here. Whatever excuses you want to make, you can't escape the consequential reality:

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering,¹ the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.

 They go on to lay out the failures and even intentional sabotage of public health efforts in hideous detail. The writers, by the way, are among the most prominent medical and public health academicians in the world.

This happened because the individual occupying the office of president of the united states is ignorant, unintelligent, incurious and has extreme personality pathology. He has always spouted continuous lies and violent, puerile rants against his rivals and loyalists who, as he always does, he comes to despise for some imagined slight or failure. It wouldn't be fair to say he has lost his mind because he never had it. But somehow the derangement is becoming more contaminated by dementia, panic and mindless rage. (BTW, Kamala Harris is not a Communist, in case you were wondering.) This is a national security crisis. We're all holding our breath to see what Putin or Xi might try to pull off at this moment.

But what is really disturbing is those 40% or so of people who still tell pollsters they will vote for him. My rural town is full of signs and flags touting his greatness. Many people have obviously paid a lot of money for this crap -- billboard sized signs, enormous flags. It is a matter of enormous pride for them, they want to boast of their devotion to the world. What are they seeing? He's done nothing for them and promised them nothing. He despises them, in fact. Is it really just because he gives them permission to behave as repulsively as he does? Is that really 40% of us?