We shouldn't forget the pandemic

 

This was the scene at one of my local stores (I know - a Walmart) just days after the WHO announced that Covid-19 was a global pandemic. To be blunt, this was starting to happen well ahead of then. This aisle was the one where you were supposed to find toilet paper, paper towels and the like. If I hadn't been so focused on just getting the last necessities my household needed to survive for a few weeks, I would have taken tons more photos of the other aisles. By that point, there was almost nothing left on most shelves, except perhaps for items that were not necessities. The behavior was about what I would have expected. People were panicked and the federal government was already AWOL. Trump did nothing to reassure the nation that the full power of our national emergency services, our public health agencies (CDC), etc. would be used to make sure we were as safe as possible. There was no clear display of empathy. There was nothing but bluster. Most state governments in my area were just as pathetic in their response to the crisis. Naturally people panicked and they did what frightened people normally do: fend for themselves even if it means making some very irrational purchases that might deprive their neighbors of fundamental necessities. You might remember the long lines where food and supplies were being distributed, as a lot of folks found themselves out of work and no means to pay for necessities even if they were on the store shelves. Keeping relatively cool through all that took every ounce of energy I could muster.

And this is a good time to remind you of how we arrived at that sorry state of affairs. We cannot completely avoid pandemics. That our aching planet managed to go roughly a century between global pandemics was something of a blessing. But we should not count on being in the clear for a century hence. With competent government management, the worst of a pandemic can be mitigated. That's the rub: competent government management. Trump had already done everything he could possibly do to expose Americans to the full force of Covid-19. Digby takes a moment to lay out just how bad it was and how eliminating safeguards put in place by the Obama administration at the start of Trump's first presidency set the stage for the tragedy that would unfold in 2020. And with Trump back occupying the Oval Office, we can probably expect the response to the next pandemic to be even worse.  

The sort of collective amnesia that has taken hold is dangerous. That what was arguably the most life-altering crisis we all went through is somehow going down the memory hole is nothing short of insanity. That we have prominent political figures attempting to present a revisionist history of the pandemic is an outrage. What we don't know or refuse to acknowledge can and will hurt us. And the truth is that we have no agencies left at the federal level that can be trusted as DonOld Trump and oligarch buddy Dunning Krugerrand (aka Elon Musk just in case I got too clever for my own good) have gutted those agencies and placed into position political lackeys who will do no more than spout the GOP party line. 

In other words, in the event that the next pandemic happens in the next few years, many of us, depending on which state we live in, will be well and truly on our own. There will be no one coming to the rescue.