The World Historical Year 2020: Outbreak

In many ways COVID19 was as bad as a pandemic could get without being really bad. It doesn’t have the virulence of measles combined with the mortality of bubonic plague. This, however, makes it all the more galling that Donald Trump and his cadre of sycophants failed to guide the nation through these straits effectively.

Unlike 9/11, which literally exploded across the nation, we knew this was coming with weeks of lead time and Trump’s team failed to act. Here’s the story of how we got the signals of the threats ahead, how Lauren and I experienced it, and how Trump spread disinformation ahead of it.

Prelude to a Season of Death

In February of 2020, I was due to start a new job. Ahead of it, and knowing that new work tends to dominate life for a little while, Lauren and I planned to take a trip to the beautiful Netherlands. I had long hoped to share the wonders of the Mauritshuis, Zuid Holland, and Amsterdam with her. While we were there, though, the European media, forever ahead of US media in terms of international reporting, was running stories about a highly infectious illness sweeping the Wuhan province of China.

To be honest, Asian viruses were something I’d grown somewhat inured to. Avian flu, swine flu, SARS, etc., these all felt like Asian phenomena that happened in a different world, far away. While I had some concern about it in a general sense, there was no immediate concern. In fact, while away, my new employer emailed to certify that I had not taken nor would I be on contact with anyone who had recently been on a trip to China. It was, in the American imagination, a Chinese problem. On the other hand, some of the reporting by Dutch media suggested that this was a particularly bad virus.

NRC Handelsblad reports crisis from the Wuhan-originating Virus

NRC Handelsblad from 2020-02-01 reports border closing, canceled flights and a crisis as projected by the World Health Organization

Nearly 4,000 kilometers of border between Russia and China closed, hundreds of canceled flights, and the WHO discussing an international crisis...

It’s important to note this strong warning in the international press, especially when it’s considered with the ineffectual and incorrect response advocated by the Trump administration and by Trump himself. As early detection sensors began to report the severity of the illness, our incompetent leader sought to deny reality with:

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

Stevens, Harry and Tan, Shelly. "From ‘It’s going to disappear’ to ‘WE WILL WIN THIS WAR’." Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/trump-coronavirus-statements. Date accessed: 2020-10-07.

and

“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

As we flew back to the US, I felt “off” on the car ride home. After a jet-lag necessitated nap, I immediately went out, bought up all the flu drugs, and told Lauren we were going to need to sleep apart. I came down with flu, hard. I even took the rare step of going to a clinic for help. I was given some retroviral drugs and had the somewhat awkward conversation with my new work that I was going to have to miss the first day. Meanwhile the links between Asia, this virus, and spread grew more solid.

Even during the intake form, the clinic’s questions were whether or not I had recently visited China. As I had not, I was assured that I wasn’t likely to have coronavirus. As I was actively infectious with the flu, the clinic gave me a plastic bag full of surgical masks and sent me home. I recovered, and began my new work in early February.

The focus on China visitation and contact would turn out to me a methodological error for the pandemic. New York’s infection strain would come from Italy.¹ I bring this up to point out how faulty assumptions lead us astray but also to point out that the era where virulent viruses can be assumed to be “Asian problems” is out of date. We live in a globally connected society. The travel that was required to distributed the Black Death to its fatal apex can be achieved in hours. This makes anyone who thinks that geography is an insulation to pandemic both woefully uneducated and woefully out of touch.

While a non-trivial part of Western society was growing in its alarm, Trump continued to to issue unfounded bromides.

February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"
February 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear."

Ever looking to deny reality, science, and plain-old common sense, Trump worked to keep the spectre of a pandemic from washing up on American shores in an election year with baseless spin, outright unbelievable truths, and utter nonsense. His misinformation campaign not only lead the public astray, its service to his narcissism is downright galling. To with, this February 27^th statement:

And you know what? If we were doing a bad job, we should also be criticized. But we have done an incredible job. We’re going to continue. It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.

The fact is, the greatest experts — I’ve spoken to them all. Nobody really knows. But we have done and our professionals have done a fantastic job. We’re working with other countries. We’re trying to help some other countries. A couple of them have gotten hit pretty hard. South Korea and Italy, in particular. They’ve been hit pretty hard. And it’ll all work out. And I just want to thank all of the people that have worked with us in government and some of these great professionals because they have been incredible — the job.

It’s classic Trump: the sentences don’t make sense. They’re strung together by a thought that’s interrupted by a commercial for himself. It covers for every possibility without any data and wallpapers over predictions with empty truths. He said: “it will disappear.” On what grounds? That “it could get worse before it gets better” could be said of the Holocaust, the Black Death, and a blind date. There’s no insight, no empathy, no depth. He’s an unrestrained, immoral, narcissistic monster.

But the failure of leadership and the misread of the Asian transmission vector were about to start collapsing in dangerous ways. Because, we know now, the virus had already entered New York and was slowly ramping up to taking some 20,000 lives. In the next installment, Coronavirus will come to my home and make my household another statistic.

Footnotes

Zimmer, Carl. “Most New York Coronavirus Cases Came from Europe, Genomes Show.” New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html. Date accessed: 2020-10-07.