1. Welcome to the Next Level
|
|
Before we get started:
I have a new podcast with my friends Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell! It's once a week and it's called The Next Level and you can listen to the first episode here.
I think the show is pretty good. I hope you like it, too.
Now, about last night . . .
Do you remember when President Trump was impeached? That's a thing that happened, just 8 months ago.
Do you remember when Neil Gorsuch wrote the Bostock opinion and social conservatives swore off the Republican party and said they now realized that Trump had been a fool's bargain? That was in the middle of June.
|
|
|
Do you remember when the first excerpt of John Bolton's book revealed that the president had enthusiastically encouraged the Chinese president to move forward with building concentration camps? That was a couple days later.
|
|
Then there are the COVID deaths—180,000, so far. Even a non-hysterical accounting suggests that at least tens of thousands of these deaths are directly attributable to the actions of Donald Trump and would not have occurred if any other even marginally competent political figure—Mike Pence, Elizabeth Warren, Tom Cotton, Hillary Clinton, take your forking pick—had been president.
That's all happening, right now. If this administration had a resumé, the tag on the COVID entry would say "January 2020 - Present."
Same with the economy. The stock market as a whole is doing great because a bunch of tech companies are eating the post-pandemic world. The rest of the economy? Not as much. And unemployment? Still over 10 percent. Higher than it's been in a generation.
And we're supposed to believe that people are going to look at all of this—just since January—and then say, "Yeah but those riots in Kenosha are really bad. Vote Trump!"
I'm not trying to be glib here. For some voters that is exactly what is happening. Those voters are the soft Rs who had floated away from Trump over the last 30 weeks. They've been looking for an excuse—any excuse—to come home to him.
My theory has been that a very large majority of those people were always going to come home eventually, no matter what. "Law and Order" is just the proximate excuse.
But it is . . . interesting . . . which laws and which order matter to people. The entire RNC White House production was a violation of the Hatch Act. That's a law. Even Republican senators John Cornyn and John Thune understood that back when they were trying to waive Trump away from the idea.
There's this weird thing where a whole mess of Trump's advisors—Steve Bannon, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone—are actually in jail. I mean, except for Stone, because Trump sprung him. Because law and order or whatever?
There's Derek Chauvin, the cop who killed George Floyd. Would you like to know what Trump supporters think about "law and order" in regards to him? Here's Trump Super Fan John Hinderaker asking "Who Killed George Floyd?" Don't worry. He's just asking question. Because Trumpers care so much about law and order.
Which leave us . . . where?
It sure looks like we're headed back to Biden +5 / Biden +6. There will be a massive attempt to scramble the narrative of the election coupled with chaos—both natural and man-made—in the actual voting and vote counting.
Biden's lead remains significant and Trump's path remains narrow.
But when it comes to the wisdom of the great and good American people, I've come to expect not a whole lot more than tribalism, mixed with invincible ignorance, then processed according to the principles of last-in, first-out thinking.
Good luck.
|
|
We had two really big pieces of COVID news this week that are very encouraging.
The first is that the FDA has approved a new simple rapid test.
Here's how it works: You get a nasal swap. The provider rubs the swab on a piece of paper. Fifteen minutes later the paper either shows you 1 line (negative) or 2 lines (positive).
This is a really big deal, for a few reasons.
First, a test that requires off-site processing of one or more days is only marginally useful. Having a rapid test that can be conducted on-site is going change the game when it comes to test-and-trace.
Second, because the test is so simple, it can be produced at scale cheaply. The manufacturer, Abbott Diagnostics, says that they plan on making 50 million tests a month.
To date we've conducted 79 million tests in the United States. So this would be an evolutionary leap.
Which brings us to the other bit of good news: The University of Arizona found a way to stop an outbreak before it started.
I'm going to paraphrase the story as reported by Charles Fishman (author of one of the best books I've ever read about economics and business: The Walmart Effect):
- If you have the coronavirus, it sheds significantly in your stool.
- So your poop is a pretty strong indicator for infection.
- At the University of Arizona, they set up wastewater testing for on-campus dorms.
- The wastewater testing showed virus coming from one dorm (Likins Hall).
- The school did rapid tests (like the one we just talked about) on all 311 residents of the dorm.
- They caught two positives, who were asymptomatic.
- They moved these two cases to isolation and then traced their contacts.
- BOOM!
That's how you do infectious disease management. (For a primer on how not to do infectious disease management, look at the University of Alabama, where faculty have been instructed not to talk about COVID and, if they become aware of infections, not to tell students.)
Why is this good news? Well, this approach doesn't scale. You can only do it in relatively small closed systems. But America has a lot of relatively small closed systems. Like, for instance, universities. So this offers a path forward.
But more important is this: It shows that we can fight the spread of the virus. We aren't fated to just sit here waiting for herd immunity. We don't have to keep silent about it and pretend it's not happening. We don't have to retreat to wishcasting about how if we don't test, then everything will be fine.
If we are serious about managing this disease, then it can be done.
Better late than never.
|
|
|
Subscribe to the Bulwark Podcast with Charlie Sykes for the latest on COVID-19, Trump, and the 2020 election.
|
|
|
Hang in there. Stay safe. And you can always email me at JVL[at]thebulwark.com and I'll do my best to get back to you, if I can.
Jonathan V. Last
Editor
|
|
|
Are you a fan of The Bulwark? Would you like to support our work? Even better. We're not a fan of paywalls, and we're not a fan of ads. But if you'd like to throw a few bucks our way to show your support, that'd make our day.
|
|
|
|
