The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

It was probably inevitable, but it still feels disappointing.

As the COVID-19 public health crisis death toll passed 80,000 this week with no end or vaccine in sight, the fact that Washington politicians have now turned this tragedy into a partisan feud shouldn’t come as a surprise. But somehow, it does. And it’s very discouraging.

The novel coronavirus is looking like the worst health disaster in the US since the “Spanish flu” epidemic in 1918. Hopefully, the rising death toll of the current pandemic won’t equal the catastrophic totals from over a century ago.

For the current death toll to match the 1918 epidemic totals as a percentage of overall American population, over 1.1 million people would perish from COVID-19. That seems inconceivable. But is it really unimaginable?

So too, not so many years ago, would have been partisan political bickering over a national health emergency. But here we are.

Last week, Barack Obama shared with “alumni” members of his eight-year administration a few choice thoughts on his successor and coronavirus, among other things. Here is some of what he said on a conference call.

“This election that’s coming up on every level is so important because — what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party. What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends of being selfish, being tribal, being divided and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, we’re seeing that internationally as well. It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anaemic and spotty. It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’—when that mindset is operationalised in our government.”

Obama is far too savvy and experienced to imagine his comments to a private audience would long remain out of the public eye. Sure enough, they were leaked.

Perhaps the most pointed response came from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“I think President Obama should’ve kept his mouth shut,” McConnell said in an interview with Lara Trump, who is the President’s daughter-in-law and an adviser to his re-election campaign.

“I think it’s a little bit classless, frankly, to critique an administration that follows you,” he said. “You had your shot. You were there for eight years.”

Now that McConnell has joined President Donald Trump and other Republicans in firing back at Obama, the gloves are off and we are in for a spectacle of disgraceful partisan sniping while literally thousands of Americans are dying of COVID-19 almost every day.

Politics has become riveting theatre and diverting entertainment in the US over the past 25 years, keeping pace with the 24-hour news cycle and the exponential expansion of human connectivity via the internet. But rarely, if ever, has politics entered and perhaps interfered with the national response to a genuine emergency crisis as it has done in the current situation. It is, at the very least, a regrettable, and avoidable, shame.

Trump cannot seem to care enough to get his facts right

One of the reasons some otherwise loyal Republicans are starting to sag in their support of Trump is his almost daily divergence from the public advice offered by the administration’s leading health experts. As he has done since this awful crisis took over the news cycle two months ago, Trump cannot seem to care enough to get his facts right.

Or maybe he sees his election chances crumbling under the weight of his administration’s slow, weak and almost grudging response to the pandemic. Trump appears to be incapable of seeing the crisis in human terms. He regularly charges that his political foes would prefer the COVID crisis continues until Election Day in November, because that would mean the economy would still be in a slump and he would be vulnerable at the ballot box.

One of the flash points of disagreement with his health experts this week has been on the question of testing to see if individuals are carrying the virus. On Monday, Trump confidently asserted that “any American who wants to be tested can be tested” for COVID-19.

The very next day, appearing virtually before a Senate committee, expert epidemiologist Dr Anthony Fauci offered a direct contradiction: “Only Americans who need to be tested can be tested,” he told the senators.

But what does an actual coronavirus test look and feel like? Here is a first-hand account from this week in Northern Virginia. Not all tests are alike, and the logistics and the reporting of results differ by location and the availability of testing equipment. This is how one locality is administering the tests this week:

First, a doctor must write a prescription for the test. Since hospitals are not serving as test centres, the county has set up a drive-through facility in the parking lot of a county office building that is virtually unoccupied during stay-at-home orders from the governor.

If the physician feels after a virtual consultation with the patient that there is sufficient justification for a test, a faxed order is sent to the county test facility. The patient can then call a specific phone number to get an appointment time. In this case, the doctor’s office advised the patient the faxed order would be processed at the test centre within 15 minutes. The processing time was actually 3 hours 45 minutes.

The doctor’s office said an appointment would be offered the same day. In fact, the first available appointment was three days later.

Once they arrive at the test centre, patients are advised to drive slowly up to the first checkpoint. Signs tell drivers to keep all car windows closed. A nurse speaking through a megaphone advises the patient to show identification such as a driver’s licence through the closed car window. The nurse wears a heavy gown, face shield, gloves and a mask covering nose and mouth.

Several manned police cars are stationed around the parking lot.

Once past the first checkpoint, cars are directed to a second barrier. Here, another similarly-attired nurse asks for insurance information and personal identification again. Documents are plastered against the car’s still-closed window and photographed with an iPad. Once satisfied, the nurse waves the car under a tent.

A different nurse approaches, and signals that the car window should be lowered. Also wearing personal protective equipment, the nurse instructs the patient to open wide and say “aah”. But this isn’t the familiar use of a tongue depressor by an office nurse to check for throat inflammation.

Using a long-stick swab, the nurse reaches in the open car window and proceeds to scrape the cotton end over several parts of the patient’s mouth and throat. The penetration is deep enough in the throat to produce a strong gag reflex in many patients, the nurse reports.

The patient is instructed to close the car window again. The results will be provided in three working days. The doctor’s office had said results would be available within 24 hours.

The whole testing process takes less than ten minutes. There are no exceptions to the rigid adherence to identification and insurance requirements. Failure to produce appropriate and expected documents would have meant the entire process would have been halted and the patient’s vehicle would have been escorted away from the test site by attending police officers.

In retrospect, it’s not too difficult to figure out why the pandemic falls most heavily on the poor. What if someone feels sick and symptomatic, but has neither a regular physician nor acceptable health insurance nor an automobile nor the opportunity to leave his or her place of employment at the random time the appointment is offered?

Missing just one of these requirements would severely limit or even eliminate a patient’s access to this test. To be sure, most jurisdictions offer remedies. But again, you have to have a computer, internet access and the time to figure this out and try to accommodate what you find with possibilities to get tested.

As in so many aspects of our lives, it’s better to have some financial resources.