In states that opened up their economies way too early and too fast in the South and West have experienced a sharp upturn in cases and hospitalizations. An upturn in deaths will certainly follow. Thirty-nine states have also seen an upturn in cases, but most not as much as in the South and West.

This has caused the number of new cases in the U.S. each day to revolve around 60,000 and climbing. That compares with around 30,000 in the March-April previous peak. The daily figure never fell below 20,000. There never was a “flattening of the curve.”

The new upsurge was predicted to occur as states opened up while ignoring the guidelines established by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). One of those consistently making those predictions was Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease.

Dr. Fauci is the most trusted source for information on the virus, polls show. On July 12 he stated that the current upsurge is a public health official’s “worst nightmare”. He also said that the end is “nowhere in sight”.

An article in the July 11 New York Times gave a feel of the situation in the hardest hit states. Here are some excerpts:

“As states across the South and West grapple with shortages of vital testing equipment and and a key antiviral drug, hospitals are being flooded with coronavirus patients, forcing them to cancel elective surgeries, and doctors worry that the escalating hospital crunch may last much longer than in earlier-hit areas like New York ….

“Florida is struggling with one of the worst outbreaks in the country, along with Texas, California and Arizona: 43 intensive care units in 21 Florida counties have hit capacity and have no beds available.

“In South Carolina, National Guard troops are being called in to help insert intravenous lines and check blood pressure ….

“In Mississippi, five of the state’s largest hospitals have already run out of ICU beds for critical patients ….

“Hospital bed capacity, including in ICUs, is generally used to gauge a region’s health care infrastructure and the preparedness of its hospitals to respond to the coronavirus. Data showing ICUs at full or near capacity have made headlines recently, but health experts say that attention to capacity does not paint an entirely accurate picture of the severity of the pandemic.

“Regular beds are easily converted into ICU capacity, doctors and hospital experts say. The bigger challenge is having enough nurses who are qualified to care for such patients and equipment such as ventilators.”

There are many reports of nurses and other staff being exhausted by the long hours, burnt out by the sickness and death they see, or just getting sick including from the virus, so that there can be a shortage of personnel.

The July 14 NYT reports that only 11 states meet the level of testing considered necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus. Four are near that level, and 35 are far below target.

In face of the rising upsurge Trump continues to demand that the economy be fully reopened as it was before the pandemic while it rages on. This has been his position except for a brief period for the last five months. The reality is that the economy can’t be reopened fully until the virus is beaten down. That’s the only realistic order of things, not the other way around.

Part of his demand on the economy is his recent demand that schools be completely reopened in the school year beginning in August-September, with students crowded in classrooms five days a week as they were before the virus hit.

He is consistent, because the economy cannot be fully reopened without schools being reopened, and working parents be freed to return to work. That would also require steps to reopen day care centers, with adequate new safeguards, including finding enough space, put in place for the safety of the children.

The CDC issued guidelines for how schools might reopen to keep children and teachers safe from the pandemic. These included keeping desks apart by six feet, the wearing of masks, closing of communal areas like dining rooms and playgrounds and the installation of physical barriers like Plexiglas guards where necessary.

Trump immediately attacked these guidelines as being too tough and expensive, and demanded that they be revised. It appeared the CDC would do this, but in a few days the CDC said it would stick by its guidelines, and added they were just suggestions and not orders.

It is true that complying with these guidelines would be very expensive. There is simply not enough space in current schools to keep to the six feet separation guidelines. A vast new building program of expanding such space would have to be undertaken. This could not be done by the August-September opening of the school year that Trump wants.

Moreover, the CDC guidelines are just a bare beginning of what has to be done. For example, most schools don’t have adequate ventilation systems to help disperse the virus, another rebuilding task that would have to be done. Educators are considering everything that could and should be done, but it is clear that whatever is necessary would cost many billions of dollars.

Local school systems are not in position to raise such funds, and neither are the states. The only agency which could provide the necessary funds is the federal government, which could shave five or ten billions off the almost one trillion military, CIA, etc. budgets.

But Trump is adamantly opposed to providing such money to do what is necessary to safely open the schools. He insists cramming students into the present schools, which would be creating what all experts say is a perfect breeding ground for the virus.

Trump dismisses these dangers by trivializing the pandemic. He touts the apparent lower rate of children suffering symptoms, ignoring that they can still be carriers to older people in their families and communities.

He ignores that there is much about this virus that we are just learning about, for example that it not just a disease of the lungs as was first thought, but of other organs and systems as well. Some people who have survived hospitalizations have brain damage. Others have suffered blood clots that have caused strokes and heart attacks.

Some, including children, have suffered runaway immune systems that have damaged other organs.

We just don’t know what all the effects on children are.

Trump cannot just issue a fiat that everything is OK for the schools to reopen. Will parents send their children to schools they don’t think are safe? Will teachers go into schools that aren’t safe? (I volunteer to help teachers by tutoring some students one-on-one in high school mathematics, or at least I did until the school was closed in March, and I won’t go back until I am convinced it is safe.)

Already some major school districts, including large ones like Los Angeles and San Diego in California and Atlanta, Georgia, have rejected Trump’s ukase and will hold only online schools this autumn. What’s Trump going to do? Send in the army?

Some states with Trumpist governors, like Florida, say they will force the reopening of the schools – will they send in the state National Guard?

There are states that have reduced the spread of the virus by taking the earlier necessary steps of shutting down, making wearing of masks in public places mandatory, etc. and some are planning some form of carefully reopening of the schools, but as the pandemic rages elsewhere it can spread anywhere and they may have to retreat.

Trump sys he will cut federal funding for school districts that don’t fully open up. It’s not clear that he has the authority to do that, but the threat is another example of his refusal to fund the policies that might open the schools safely.

Trump also is attempting to force all universities and colleges to fully open with no online classes. He says that at any institutions that don’t do that, foreign students there will be deported by ICE. There are one million foreign students in the U.S. Two top institutions, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have sued to stop this threat. Both rely on online courses because of the pandemic.

Trump can’t just issue a decree like Mussolini (fiat is an Italian word for decree – the car company of that name resulted from a Mussolini “fiat”, and lo, it was so) and “poof” the schools will be reopened. He knows that. This whole proposal is aimed at his white racist base, which will believe anything he says, and put the blame on what he calls the “left” which he says includes the Democrats (who are hardly “left” in any traditional sense) for the schools not reopening, at least in the way he wants.

Trump also has stepped up his attacks on the Black Lives Matter upsurge, charging that the protesters are part of a racist hate group, and other slurs that invert reality. He has stationed armed agents of the Department of Homeland Security in some states to protect statues of Confederate generals and other figures who fought to preserve slavery in the Civil War. One such agent guarding a federal court house in Portland, Oregon, shot a protester in the head with a “non-lethal” weapon, inflicting severe damage.

The Oregon governor is demanding that these agents be removed.

Everything Trump is doing and saying is to bolster his white racist base, with a view to attempting to win the November election.

Barry Sheppard

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