Via The Guardian: 'Like leaning into a left hook': coronavirus calamity unfolds across divided US. Excerpt from a very depressing report:
A disaster is unfolding in Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King preached and where Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus. Hospitals are running short of drugs to treat Covid-19, intensive care units are close to capacity, and ventilators are running short.
Between 85% and 90% of the very sick and dying are African American.
Amid this gathering storm, the city council met to decide whether to require people to wear masks, a basic protection the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) strongly recommends. Doctors lined up to plead their case.
“This is beyond an epidemic in this area,” said the pulmonologist Bill Saliski. “Our units are full of critically ill covid patients. We have to slow this down.”
His colleague, Nina Nelson-Garrett, described watching undertakers carrying out corpses, 30 minutes apart.
“Something as simple as a mask can save someone’s life,” she said.
Dr Kim McGlothan recounted how she was frequently stopped by white people asking, “Is the media sensationalizing this, is it really as bad as they are making out?”
McGlothan told the council: “People don’t believe the hype. Until you mandate masks, we won’t be able to stop this – we just won’t.”
Then a black resident stood up. Six of his relatives had died from Covid-19. His brother was on a ventilator. “This is not about masks,” he said. “The question on the table is, ‘Do black lives matter?’ I lost six of my family to Covid. How would it feel if it was your family?”
The council debated for two hours. White council members asked if young children could get carbon monoxide poisoning from masks – no, the doctors firmly told them – and spoke portentously about individual rights.
“At the end of the day,” said councilman Brantley Lyons, “if a pandemic comes through, we do not throw our constitutional rights out the window.”
When the vote was called, it divided on largely racial lines. Black members voted for masks, in order to prevent more families losing six loved ones. White members voted against masks, to preserve the fundamental right not to attach a cloth to your face.
In a 4-4 tie, the ordinance failed. As he left the chamber, Dr Saliski uttered just one word: “Unbelievable.”
Unbelievable accurately describes America today. The country is on the brink of a huge surge of Covid-19, as the virus tears through the heartlands while the president praises himself for having done “a great job” and blithely predicts the scourge will “fade away”.
Ask Alabama whether the virus is fading away. Or Arizona, Florida, South Carolina or Texas. The disease is venting its fury on these states, which all reopened their economies – with Donald Trump’s avid blessing – before the contagion was contained.
“Opening while cases are increasing is like leaning into a left hook,” said Tom Frieden, a former CDC director. “You are basically asking to get hit – and that’s what these states did.”
Alabama is enduring a pummeling. It has recorded 32,000 cases and its curve is on a steep upward path.
The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who ushered in one of the earliest and most aggressive reopenings, insisted a few days ago that his state “remains wide-open for business”. Yet he has been unable to ignore reality: that the virus has spread its lethal tentacles to every corner of the state overwhelming hospitals to the point that Houston medical centers are running out of ICU beds. Now, once again, Texas’ bars are closing. One town, near Houston, has even brought in a curfew.
The Lone Star state recorded 6,584 cases on Wednesday alone – a heart-sinking figure that makes its curve look almost vertical.
Florida’s malaise would be wryly amusing were so many lives not at stake. On 20 May the conservative magazine the National Review ran the gloating headline: “Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology?” The article scolded liberal critics of the Republican governor’s lax approach to coronavirus – he famously allowed beaches to remain open in spring break and has permitted shops and restaurants to get back to business – for having got it wrong: there was no spike in Florida.
On 20 May, Florida’s daily infection load stood at 527 new cases. Five weeks later, it reported a record 8,942 on Friday and broke the record again on Saturday with 9,585.
