The COVID funding fiasco
At the Atlantic, Ed Yong reminds us that COVID has not disappeared, and that our governing institutions are hardly covering themselves in glory on this issue:
This week, Congress nixed $15 billion in coronavirus funding from a $1.5 trillion spending bill, which President Joe Biden then signed on Tuesday. The decision is catastrophic, and as the White House has noted, its consequences will unfurl quickly. Next week, the government will have to cut shipments of monoclonal-antibody treatments by a third. In April, it will no longer be able to reimburse health-care providers for testing, vaccinating, or treating millions of uninsured Americans, who are disproportionately likely to be unvaccinated and infected. Come June, it won’t be able to support domestic testing manufacturers. It can’t buy extra doses of antiviral pills or infection-preventing treatments that immunocompromised people are banking on but were already struggling to get. It will need to scale back its efforts to improve vaccination rates in poor countries, which increases the odds that dangerous new variants will arise. If such variants arise, they’ll likely catch the U.S. off guard, because surveillance networks will have to be scaled back too. Should people need further booster shots, the government won’t have enough for everyone.
Over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Dan Nexon offers this gloss on the situation:
I think it worth remembering how we got here. A combination of incompetency and mendacity led the Trump administration to botch its response to COVID-19. Faced with this failure, his right-wing media personalities and officials decided to deny the problem itself; to do so, they turned to conspiracy theories, quack doctors… they “flooded the zone.” It worked, sending the base into the epistemic equivalent of a circular firing squad. But where goes the base, so goes the GOP, and here we are.
It’s not clear to me that Republican opposition to vaccines and support for bogus remedies came from right-wing media figures covering for Trump’s failures. Trump himself encouraged crazy thinking about cures (hydroxychloroquine, bleach). Trump was clearly sympathetic to the “herd immunity” strategy pushed by Scott Atlas and the Great Barrington Declaration crew.
And all these ideas were percolating in right-wing think tanks before they were picked up by Fox etc.
The same thing happened with the Republican / right-wing media attack on critical race theory:
Koch-affiliated national think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, and the Manhattan Institute, among others, have used their influence to generate and spread talking points, briefed state and federal legislators on model policy, and attempted to generate grassroots mobilization against local school districts. This influence is not without consequence: State politicians were almost entirely silent on the topic until Koch-funded entities started pushing the issue earlier this year. Now, more than 25 states have introduced legislation or taken other action that, backers claim, is aimed at banning “critical race theory” (CRT) from schools and government programs. Several of these states have already passed these bills.
Finally, congressional Democrats bear some responsibility for the fact that funding for treatments, testing, and vaccines is threatened. They had many opportunities to provide these resources. I am certainly not defending Trump or Republicans here; but when the dust settles, Democrats of all stripes need to acknowledge this failure and attempt to figure out why it happened and how we can do better in the future. Republicans are not going to help Democrats make government more effective, Democrats are going to have to carry this water uphill all by themselves.
Eric:
Much of this was in the BBB act which Manchin torpedoed. So Democrats should be responsible for Manchin? Everyone thinks Manchin is in support of coal miners. Coal miners asked Manchin to support the Build Back Better bill. Coal Miners Union Asks Sen. Joe Manchin to Reverse Opposition to ‘Build Back Better’ Act | Inside Edition
He did not.
I guess my view is that the Democrats have passed several huge COVID relief bills, and the need for more spending on vaccines, treatments, and testing was clear from the get-go. I was critical of them for this at the time, and I was hardly the only one . . .
Again, I’m not trying to defend Republicans! They have plenty to answer for. But as someone who wants us to have a competent, functioning government this is disappointing, and Democrats need to be clear-eyed that this is a problem. If we don’t recognize it’s a problem, it’s hard to see how we fix it. There’s a lot riding on this. The next pandemic could be worse. And there are lots of other problems we need to address.
Eric:
I am in AZ now and have to contend with Sinema on her stubbles on just about everything because she wants to be a maverick. She is also willing to take money from pharma and support Medicare Advantage as it rips off traditional Medicare by over coding, which many doctors do in commercial healthcare insurance, denying care to older seniors after coding them and taking the money, etc. Medicare Advantage is no advantage and is far more expensive that traditional Medicare.
I did contend with Stabenow at a garden party in Michigan, challenging her on student loans and why she signed the 2005 Financial Act with stiffened the rules even more so. In public, I asked her if she would take a loan where she had no escape in order to gain an education? Younger people who were students were clapping as an old gray-haired was firing back. I was a minor donner back then.
My Masters at Loyola University – Chicago was an ~$5000. Recently in a visit to my old Econ Prof who is similar in age to me, I learned it was $85,000 and what he called a bargain in Chicago compared to DePaul, Northwestern, etc.
I met Durbin at Showdown in Chicago and then caught pneumonia. I asked him when were the Dems going to act like the party of the majority. Here we are again with one man, a conservative holding the people captive. The best picture of him was being cornered while docked on the upper level of his house boat “Almost Heaven” talking down to a bunch of people in kayaks asking questions. Very fitting of how he thinks.
What is the handle for Manchin? Solve that problem and everything falls into place. November is not far away and we are fumbling around. Also, Garland has not charged anyone and it is becoming apparent he probably will not by election time. Dems appear to be the party of ineptitude. Good intentions with not enough ability to pull things off. Other Dem presidents did far more.
Not disappointed . . . angry and we should be.
Eric
Dems are a political party. they have to go where the people are [to have a chance of doing anything at all, even for the people’s good]. Once the resistance to Covid prevention measures solidified at a level where prevention became impossible…and even leftists were “tired of masks” and restrictions like social distancing…it became impossible and counterproductive for a political party to try to stand in the way of herd insanity.
From my perspective the emergence of left-wing fascism in the form of “forced vaccination” did not help the situation.
I am trying to think of a way it would be possible for “the people,” or a reasonable subset of the people, could take matters into their own hands and do what needs to be done…if they can agree to what that is, and do it without being arrested. not only about covid prevention, but about protecting voting rights, fighting police and local political impunity…unfortunately now endorsed by the Supreme Court…dealing with “school choice”…and other problems our politicians are not able to deal with.
And, at the risk of discrediting myself entirely, I think we might have to begin to think that the forces against us are evil. not their pawns and “first victims” but the Manchin, Tuckers, and Kochs to name a few. We already talk as if they are evil, but we don’t like the word..perhaps wisely, but I think that understanding they intend to hurt people helps me at least to make sense of what they are doing.