Confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States exceeded 2.5 million on June 28, as reported in America’s southern and western states. Florida, Texas and Arizona were particularly hard hit with a record number of new infections. As more seriously ill people seek medical care, some states are now coping with shortages of ICU hospital beds. The U.S. now has the highest confirmed death toll, more than 125,800, just over 25 percent of the world’s total COVID-19 fatalities.
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which have made substantial progress in containing the virus since April issued a joint travel advisory requiring people arriving from 16 states with escalating COVID 19 cases to quarantine for 14 days. Meanwhile, the European Union, planning to reopen its borders, announced that it will bar travelers from the U.S., Brazil and Russia.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s chief authority on infectious disease, warned that the number of new infections in the U.S. could more than double to 100,000 a day if the country fails to contain the surge that’s now underway. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Dr. Rob Davidson, executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare and an emergency room physician, who examines the cause of the sharp increase of the pandemic across America, the Trump administration’s culpability for the failed federal response and what can be done now to slow the spread of the virus and save lives.
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: Yeah, I mean, I think this has been a long time coming. The denial of science, the politicization of science. I wrote a piece that I’m trying to get published somewhere, but, you know, going back to Galileo and the 1600s, but really starting in the 1980s with the denial of climate change science by the Reagan administration and essentially the pumping of money into a party that has promoted politicians who deny science and therefore have kind of conditioned the public to deny the realities of scientific method and scientific rigor. And so that when we get into a situation like this, where it’s not only, the fate of the planet in some potentially far out place that you maybe can’t imagine, but it’s right up in front of you and it’s your hospital down the street that’s filling up, or it’s your loved one who is in the ICU people are still conditioned to follow the politicians, lead into them to deny the science.
And, you know, unfortunately Trump has sort of positioned himself as the ringleader of this. He’s got many willing fools and state governments around the country and a vice president and other members of the administration. And they’re leading the followers down this rosy path to just the absolute worst thing of this crisis. It’s sad to watch because it didn’t have to be a political football, you know, the act of wearing a mask, the act of staying out of large groups. It’s just sad as someone who’s been doing this for 20 some years to see it play out this way. I hate to have to speak about it politically, but again, our organization has said, Listen, you know, politics determines so much of the fate of folks when it comes to healthcare, we can’t just sit on the sidelines and put out scholarly papers and hope that people listen. We have to get involved in the process.
I wanted to talk about masks for a moment, Dr. Davidson. Donald Trump and the Republican party have politically weaponized the wearing of masks and encourage their followers, sometimes armed protesters to challenge various states’ stay-at-home order and also made masks part of the Republican party culture war. What Donald Trump has sent in terms of a message to his followers is, “Do not wear a mask.” He exhibits that behavior wherever he goes. What’s the antidote to what we’re seeing come out of the White House in terms of the deliberate contradiction of advice by public health officials?
You know, I always like to choose hope and yet I have my fear is that the antidote may be as this virus wreaks its havoc in communities across this country, that’s when people will start to believe. You know, the governor of Arizona just decided to close bars and a few other types of institutions. The governor of Texas finally has said that local municipalities can institute mandates for masks. You know, Jacksonville now has instituted mandates for masks at the RNC (convention). I guess we’ll see how that plays out in August.
But unfortunately I think that that is probably what it’s going to take. I do admit I do as many PSAs as I can as many times as I have a platform to do so, but, you know, unfortunately we’re in such silos of information gathering that you know, it’s hard to break through. And so, you know, like a lot of things, I think it’s going to take when it really hits home for individuals in their communities, that they’ll actually take it seriously. I hope it doesn’t have to happen too many times in too many places because, you know, we don’t want to go back to 2,000 people a day dying like we had going on, you know, back in March and April.
SCOTT HARRIS: You know, I did want to ask you about what the country should be doing right now to save lives in the midst of this spike of cases, a record number of cases that we’re seeing across the country, particularly in the southern states. What should be on the agenda right now?
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: The very first, very simple act of wearing a mask when you’re out in public – that should be number one above all else. We didn’t know early on and we were worried about people using masks and not having enough for health care providers. We now know that cloth masks actually decrease the transmission of virus and that masks work. So if we could simply get people to do that, I think we would have a significant impact.
I understand people like banking on getting us a vaccine and looking for better treatments. You know, technology in American healthcare has never been a problem. We have the most highly advanced health care system in the world, or certainly among the most highly advanced. Our problem is that we don’t do the easy things like we should, you know, we don’t provide primary care like we should to folks, because not enough people have affordable insurance. And something like this pandemic, the easy things like distancing, like wearing masks seemed to be, I don’t know if they’re just not sexy enough for people to talk about enough, but those are the things that are easily done that cost 0 dollars and we can implement today. If we could do that, I think within a few weeks we’re going to start seeing those numbers go back down again.
For more information, visit The Committee To Protect Medicare at committeetoprotect.org.
