Friday, June 12, 2020

Joe Biden is the best you could get for POTUS during this pandemic

My wife and I are in high-risk categories for people to be infected by the novel Coronavirus. My in-laws are more immunocompromised than I am. We did a run-through of one of us (me) infecting everyone else in the house with the flu in February. I was tested - it wasn't COVID-19 but it worried us all enough for my wife, a nurse, to take me then my mother-in-law to the E.R. I was laid out for most of a week. My in-laws were laid out for a week-and-a-half. la My wife rarely misses work for sickness - she missed two days. About 6 - 8 weeks after recovering, I tested for COVID-19 antibodies: I had none. Others recounted on social media about contracting a strain of influenza that was nastier than anything that they had before in February. One other friend who had that flu, got laid out pretty badly by it also tested negative. I feel like that flu in February - March was a bullet whizzing past my head. 

I freely admit that I could seem self-involved about my concerns about contracting Coronavirus, but I know others will be threatened by it, too. The nihilism of those who deny the lethality of the virus defies description. It's changed my priorities. I haven't gone out to protest the killing of George Floyd because of it. Last weekend my wife and I took my octogenarian mom out for dinner to Pacific Beach. We were surrounded by young people everywhere who wouldn't be bothered to wear a mask; I won't be going back until after the pandemic. Everyone in our house has a gun to their heads: I don't think the vaccination for this Coronavirus won't be ready until Fall 2021 at the earliest, sorry Oxford. The next POTUS would have been sworn in 9 months before. 

It impacts what I see for voters in the U.S.A., whose choices for POTUS are:

  1. An old man who has most likely assaulted women (no one is debating that), shows no capacity for the nuances of science and would continue to put profit ahead of saving people from a pandemic.
  2. Another old man has a mediocre/unremarkable record on women's rights (Anita Hill's testimony). He has built up the penal industrial complex. To his credit, he has demonstrated the capacity of understanding complex concepts. This Number Two might trade some integrities to save more people: he'll know what the best thing to do would be but is conditioned to look at legislation that 60 - 70% of what is needed as golden.
Will Donald Trump dither with that time until a vaccine is ready? He most certainly has dithered with the time since the pandemic began. Trump has not used the War Powers act to produce and stockpile sufficient PPE. His Health and Human Services Administration has not protected nursing homes. You can fill most of the large stadiums in the U.S. with all who have died from the disease today (those numbers may be undercounted). Donald Trump and his cult following are a threat to my life until the region around San Diego reaches herd immunity to this novel Coronavirus.

I'm writing this for everyone who I know in person and from social media who are like me dissatisfied with the office of POTUS and/or the nation governed by it. They have all kinds of reasons for being #NeverBiden. I understand those reasons and they would be more valid if there weren't a pandemic. Think about it: would Joe Biden as POTUS handle the pandemic better if not screw up less than Trump would in a second term? Biden would almost assuredly get the federal government to do its best to make sure that a vaccine for this novel Coronavirus gets to us and the people around us.  With Biden, there would be a bottom to how bad the United States could be. Without Biden, I believe that me, my family, BIPOC, the poor, uninsured and essential workers would be much more vulnerable.