Every day at roughly 1:00 PM, sometimes a bit later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides online the clearest set of numbers available to catalog America’s disastrous failure to control Covid-19. Every 24 hours the CDC ranks all 50 states and US territories as to each’s seven-day average of Coronavirus infections per 100,000 residents. Additionally, it provides a running cumulative total of US infections and the latest number of deaths. Since mid-October the data has been horrifyingly consistent, well above 150K average new cases per day with at least 1500 deaths reported. As of noon Thursday, more than 19 million Americans have tested positive for Covid, with more than 340,000 perishing from the virus. Few doubt this daily accounting will only grow more alarming as one of our nation’s longest winters proceeds.
From the start of this crisis understanding victory and defeat has been a very straightforward proposition, easily quantifiable. The numbers would tell the story, how many stayed healthy and how many did not. Pretty clear cut. Our government would either work successfully to head an invading novel virus off at the pass or it wouldn’t. Our citizens would rise to the occasion, forsaking routines in a collective demonstration of discipline essential to keeping the disease’s spread in check, thus saving the lives of those most vulnerable to its worst, or we wouldn’t. It was hard to see anything at all ambiguous back in March; it’s even more difficult now. Yet the Trumpist legions and their GOP servants have trouble with basic math, always have. Two plus two never seems to equal four within the MAGA calculus.
Just like their take on videos capturing police brutality, or Presidential election margins of more than 7 million votes, MAGA is not interested in fake news Covid death counts. The more clear and unequivocal things appear, the more fuzzy and complicated they have to be. Don’t believe what you see or what the numbers confirm because if it were that simple we wouldn’t be looking for alternative explanations, would we? Whatever you think they show, we believe differently, and that’s plenty good enough reason to doubt their veracity. Ask Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz. Trump predicted the election was rigged and he was right. The proof? That’s easy… you say he lost!
Trump long ago gave up on anything constructive toward checking the spread of the virus, placing all of his eggs in the vaccine basket while becoming history’s most notorious superspreader. Presidents get credit for what evolves and consolidates during their term, and Lord knows that’s one presidential tradition he is willing to honor. But the vaccine rollout has been deeply flawed, as states compete for supplies and institute their own protocols for administering shots. Just as with every other phase of the crisis the federal government is proving less than helpful as Trump merely shrugs his shoulders. What do you want from me? I delivered a vaccine in stupendously fast time. So unfair! So ungrateful!
A bit more than two weeks from now that’s all going to change. It promises to be night and day. While nobody believes the Biden team walks on water or the Covid response model it develops won’t have some flaws, good faith and accountability will be back in the saddle, adults back at the helm. Expertise, not servility, is what we can again expect during the resurgence of daily briefings geared to actually inform and motivate, not delude and obfuscate. If Biden is present there will be a reason, and his personal prospects will be the last thing the occasions will be about. While such scenarios seem glorious and otherworldly – too good to be true – there is actually one word that best describes it all… normal.
However, regardless how new and improved the federal response to the Coronavirus promises to be, the directives and guidance emanating from DC require good-faith cooperation by states to be effective, and that may very well be a near intractable problem. An entire MAGA political class of flyover governors and state legislatures promise to cement Trump’s legacy of sacrificing public well being to inane political positioning. Since Easter the core Trump pandemic principle has been simply “get used to it.” His legion of statehouse toadies have done just that with policies focused on diluting the horror of ceaseless Covid casualties with distractions equating high principles of freedom to refusing to wear masks or limit public gatherings. In other words, ennobling the civic pettiness that needlessly increases mortality in pursuit of political viability. Truly disgusting stuff.
Whether it’s Florida’s DeSantis or Abbot in Texas, Tennessee’s Lee or Ducey in Arizona, Alabama’s Kay Ivey or the particularly vile Noem in South Dakota, discrediting the data of Coronavirus death has been the top priority for all since their martinet made clear last spring it would be business as usual. It’s hard to envision such a culture and the host of selfish civic sensibilities it caters to transforming with a new President whose election none of the aforementioned are permitted to even acknowledge.
Perhaps the clearest link underscored by the CDC numbers is the influence neighboring states have on each other’s pandemic trends. So, Kentucky Governor Andy Bashear’s efforts to impose best practices within his jurisdiction are undermined by Tennessee MAGA minion Bill Lee’s refusal to do the same. Tennessee, whose leaders have made Covid irresponsibility a political brand, predictably has remained near the top in average cases per 100K residents. This has just as reliably driven Kentucky’s numbers skyward as citizens from both states cross the border and interact. The same can be seen in North Carolina, with Tennessee to the west and South Carolina to the south. Minnesota has to deal with the Dakotas and so forth.
All of which illustrates how the absence of strong and responsible federal guidance since the onset of this national trauma has shaped results on the ground, and the difficulties Biden and his team will face attempting to reassert it. Nullification is not a word one should use carelessly; it is a practice that makes federal governance impossible, a final straw before civil wars are fought.
Yet and still, 140 House Republicans have been joined by Hawley, Cruz and who knows how many others in the Senate to pursue sedition for no other reason than the apparent absence of political downside, primary opponents stifled and Presidential aspirations enriched. Given such clear and present GOP wretchedness, the odds of Red States doing anything other than gratuitously opposing federal Coronavirus initiatives, whether aimed at mitigating spread or accelerating vaccination timetables, seem long indeed. After all, “we are all in this together” has always been anathema to Trump messaging. National unity is for libs and RINOs. Just another hideous legacy his successor will be forced to deal with.