by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Donald Trump has some vocabulary issues. Aside from the fact that there is no definitive proof that he has ever read anything beyond the length of a "tweet," Trump also speaks in a very elementary manner and does not seem to be acquainted with many multi-syllable words.
But numbers are a different matter, and while Trump may not possess any extraordinary mathematical skills, he does seem to appreciate numbers and what they can convey. He is obsessed with his popularity which he sometimes refers to in a quantified sense as "ratings," and he knows that he will need big numbers of people voting for him if he is to win the election this November.
He also knows that sometimes big numbers can be bad.
Since the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold in the United States in late February and early March, Trump has been focused on minimizing the numbers related to the rapidly spreading illness. In February when the United States had just fifteen known cases of coronavirus, Trump reminded America that the ordinary flu killed many thousands a year - and he predicted that the coronavirus numbers would decrease from fifteen and be down "around zero" in about a week.
He was, of course, wrong about that - as he is with many things. But he wanted to control the count and control the story.
The next month when the Grand Princess cruise ship was trying to find a port in California that would allow it to disembark with twenty-one known cases of coronavirus on board, Trump fought (unsuccessfully) to keep the ship from docking - even though it's 2,400 passengers were primarily Americans who had been on a pleasure cruise to Mexico. Trump openly stated that he did not want to have to absorb the ship's number of ill passengers and crew into our national total.
He was focused on numbers and the bad things they implied.
Trump's attempt to manipulate the coronavirus tally set the mark for politicians everywhere - particularly Republican politicians.
GOP Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida initially tried to keep the coronavirus tally in Florida artificially low by not identifying deaths in nursing homes by the cause and obfuscating information about the spread of the disease in his state. DeSantis seemed more concerned with opening the state's beaches than he was in protecting the public health. He was thwarted by legal efforts from several news organizations in Florida, but there is concern in the news media that DeSantis and Florida's Health Department still are not accurately reporting coronavirus testing results and deaths in the state.
GOP Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota is threatening two large tribes in her state with court action if they do not withdraw coronavirus checkpoints on public roads within their reservations. Governor Noem claims that the Native Americans are interfering with commerce, and the Indians counter that they are protecting their populations from the killer virus, a necessary precaution because they do not have adequate medical facilities on the reservations to handle an out-of-cotnrol pandemic. Some on both sides are also suggesting that the ultimate problem might lie with efforts to curtail construction of the Keystone XL pipeline across South Dakota.
But . . . checkpoints will undoubtedly reveal cases of the coronavirus that we're not known before - and numbers will go up, and elimination of those checkpoints will serve to curtail numbers, both in South Dakota as well as nationwide - at least for the time being.
And then there is GOP Governor Pete Ricketts of Nebraska. Infection rates were climbing rapidly at meatpacking plants in Nebraska, but suddenly the state quit reporting those numbers because Governor Ricketts was concerned about maintaining the "privacy" rights of the large employers. The plants themselves also quit reporting numbers.
(Donald Trump finally invoked the Defense Production Act just a few weeks ago for the specific purpose of forcing workers at meatpacking plants back to work.)
A recent news report stated that the thirty counties in the United States with the highest per capita prevalence on the coronavirus, ten also happened to be home to major meatpacking plants.
Meanwhile people who work in the meatpacking industry are being denied the specific information about the number os coronavirus cases and deaths at each plant by people like governor Ricketts of Nebraska who are more concerned with maintaining corporate "privacy" than in protecting the lives of American workers.
Donald Trump has dragged his feet on testing for the virus since the beginning days of the pandemic. Testing would reveal new cases - and that would be an increase in numbers of confirmed cases. Now Trump is crowing that we have tested over nine million people (in a country of over 325 million), but other political figures - like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah (who is considerably smarter than Trump) point out that our testing numbers are still far below what they need to be.
Trump is trying to control the numbers for his ultimate political benefit, and he is being assisted in his dishonest reporting by the efforts of GOP governors who are out serving their own political agendas - and his.
Sadly for us, if we are ever to get ahead of this coronavirus catastrophe, accurate knowledge and honest reporting of the numbers will be essential. Anything less and the virus will rage on.
Citizen Journalist
Donald Trump has some vocabulary issues. Aside from the fact that there is no definitive proof that he has ever read anything beyond the length of a "tweet," Trump also speaks in a very elementary manner and does not seem to be acquainted with many multi-syllable words.
But numbers are a different matter, and while Trump may not possess any extraordinary mathematical skills, he does seem to appreciate numbers and what they can convey. He is obsessed with his popularity which he sometimes refers to in a quantified sense as "ratings," and he knows that he will need big numbers of people voting for him if he is to win the election this November.
He also knows that sometimes big numbers can be bad.
Since the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold in the United States in late February and early March, Trump has been focused on minimizing the numbers related to the rapidly spreading illness. In February when the United States had just fifteen known cases of coronavirus, Trump reminded America that the ordinary flu killed many thousands a year - and he predicted that the coronavirus numbers would decrease from fifteen and be down "around zero" in about a week.
He was, of course, wrong about that - as he is with many things. But he wanted to control the count and control the story.
The next month when the Grand Princess cruise ship was trying to find a port in California that would allow it to disembark with twenty-one known cases of coronavirus on board, Trump fought (unsuccessfully) to keep the ship from docking - even though it's 2,400 passengers were primarily Americans who had been on a pleasure cruise to Mexico. Trump openly stated that he did not want to have to absorb the ship's number of ill passengers and crew into our national total.
He was focused on numbers and the bad things they implied.
Trump's attempt to manipulate the coronavirus tally set the mark for politicians everywhere - particularly Republican politicians.
GOP Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida initially tried to keep the coronavirus tally in Florida artificially low by not identifying deaths in nursing homes by the cause and obfuscating information about the spread of the disease in his state. DeSantis seemed more concerned with opening the state's beaches than he was in protecting the public health. He was thwarted by legal efforts from several news organizations in Florida, but there is concern in the news media that DeSantis and Florida's Health Department still are not accurately reporting coronavirus testing results and deaths in the state.
GOP Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota is threatening two large tribes in her state with court action if they do not withdraw coronavirus checkpoints on public roads within their reservations. Governor Noem claims that the Native Americans are interfering with commerce, and the Indians counter that they are protecting their populations from the killer virus, a necessary precaution because they do not have adequate medical facilities on the reservations to handle an out-of-cotnrol pandemic. Some on both sides are also suggesting that the ultimate problem might lie with efforts to curtail construction of the Keystone XL pipeline across South Dakota.
But . . . checkpoints will undoubtedly reveal cases of the coronavirus that we're not known before - and numbers will go up, and elimination of those checkpoints will serve to curtail numbers, both in South Dakota as well as nationwide - at least for the time being.
And then there is GOP Governor Pete Ricketts of Nebraska. Infection rates were climbing rapidly at meatpacking plants in Nebraska, but suddenly the state quit reporting those numbers because Governor Ricketts was concerned about maintaining the "privacy" rights of the large employers. The plants themselves also quit reporting numbers.
(Donald Trump finally invoked the Defense Production Act just a few weeks ago for the specific purpose of forcing workers at meatpacking plants back to work.)
A recent news report stated that the thirty counties in the United States with the highest per capita prevalence on the coronavirus, ten also happened to be home to major meatpacking plants.
Meanwhile people who work in the meatpacking industry are being denied the specific information about the number os coronavirus cases and deaths at each plant by people like governor Ricketts of Nebraska who are more concerned with maintaining corporate "privacy" than in protecting the lives of American workers.
Donald Trump has dragged his feet on testing for the virus since the beginning days of the pandemic. Testing would reveal new cases - and that would be an increase in numbers of confirmed cases. Now Trump is crowing that we have tested over nine million people (in a country of over 325 million), but other political figures - like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah (who is considerably smarter than Trump) point out that our testing numbers are still far below what they need to be.
Trump is trying to control the numbers for his ultimate political benefit, and he is being assisted in his dishonest reporting by the efforts of GOP governors who are out serving their own political agendas - and his.
Sadly for us, if we are ever to get ahead of this coronavirus catastrophe, accurate knowledge and honest reporting of the numbers will be essential. Anything less and the virus will rage on.
No comments:
Post a Comment