Instead of Coming Together to Fight for Survival, Our Cities Are Divided and Wracked by Violence-

A wet market (sometimes referred to as a “wildlife market”) sells live and dead animals – including fish, birds, badgers, bats, pangolins (scaly anteaters), and turtles – for human consumption: Google

By Glynn Wilson –

One hundred thousand Americans are dead due the novel coronavirus, likely spawned in on outhouse full of human DNA and animal waste at or near a wet meat market in Wuhan, China, where animal-to-human transmission first took place and then human-to-human contact began to spread it across the entire planet in November, 2019.

Another 40 million Americans are unemployed because of the economic fallout from the global pandemic, all in just three months’ time. Oh, how quickly things can change.

“This week marked a very grim milestone in our nation’s history, where we’ve lost 100,000 to COVID-19,” U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama acknowledged in a Facebook live press conference Thursday. “We hit the number of folks we lost on 9-11. We’ve surpassed the number we lost in the Vietnam War. We’ve lost a third of the number we lost in World War II — in two and half months as opposed to four years. So this is pretty stunning.”

In honoring the fallen in the week of the Memorial Day holiday, Jones featured a Medal of Honor recipient, Sgt. Major Bennie Gene Adkins, who died on April 17 of complications from the virus in Alabama at the age of 86. His family talked about how he had survived the Vietnam War but died from this virus.

“We lost commander Atkins to COVID-19, a war hero who won the Medal of Honor from Alabama for his service in Vietnam,” Jones said, putting a face on the crisis.

Adkins was hospitalized with COVID-19 in March, and was admitted to an intensive care unit and put on a ventilator after experiencing respiratory failure. He was a United States Army soldier and recipient of the U.S. military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions during the Vietnam War. In March 1966 Adkins distinguished himself during a 38-hour close-combat battle against North Vietnamese Army forces during the Battle of A Shau. At the time of the cited action, Adkins was a sergeant first class serving as an Intelligence Sergeant with Detachment A-102, 5th Special Forces Group, 1st Special Forces.

“So I think as we go forward, and as we come off the Memorial Day holiday for our war heroes who lost their lives in battle, that we should now also begin to recognize those who have lost their battle fighting this virus,” Senator Jones said. “And we are probably going to lose more.”

Alabama is still seeing a significant number of cases, he pointed out, surpassing 16,000 cases since mid-March. Over 600 cases were just reported in one day for the first time, and as of Thursday morning, Alabama lost 590 people to COVID-19, half nursing home residents.

“It’s important to remember that everyone of those numbers is a person, a parent or child, brother or sister,” Jones said. “As we open the economy, we are going to have to get people to be more careful than ever.”

The Birmingham Democrat said so far the state’s Republican-led reopening plan has gone forward “carefully and wisely, following the science,” he said. “We’ve got to do it safely. That’s the message I don’t think people are getting as much. You only have to see the pictures from the beeches in Alabama and around the country to see that folks are not quite getting the message that this virus is still out there. It is still dangerous, still deadly.”

The CDC has filed a reopening plan. It calls for reopening, he said, but it also stresses how important it is to practice social distancing, to wash your hands often, to wear a mask and gloves. He indicated that “opening up” is “not inconsistent with what we should be doing to protect ourselves, our families and our communities.”

He said there is a surge going on now in Montgomery, “and they’ve only got a few ICU beds left available.”

“This is really important folks, and I can’t stress this enough. We’ve got to get everybody talking about the need to protect each other and to protect ourselves,” he said. “That’s the most critical thing. What we do today is going to dictate what we can do later in the summer … and the fall.”

He introduced Dr. Scott Harris, the state health officer, who also emphasized the stay at home order and guidelines for social distancing that are still in place, even as part of the reopening plan.

“Those things are more important than they’ve ever been. Because we do now have people back out in public,” he stressed. “We need to remember that those people who are most at risk are senior citizens and people with chronic health problems. Unfortunately, Alabama is not a healthy state overall, on average.”

“So when we talk about chronic health problems we are talking about large numbers of Alabamians that we want to protect,” he said. “So I can’t emphasize enough the importance of social distancing, staying out of crowds, staying home if you’re sick, using face coverings when you are going to be around groups of people who are not from your own household.”

Even if you are not concerned yourself about getting sick, he said, “do that for your family, for your community, your loved ones, those who you are going to be around who are going to be affected by your decision of whether to wear a mask or not.”

Personal responsibility is a big part of what people need to understand, he said. “We really need you to do the right thing. It’s important that we all do this together if we are going to get through this.”

Senator Jones pointed out that a third of the 16,000 cases, about 5,000, have been confirmed just in the past 14 days. The first confirmed case was on March 13.

“That shows that this virus is still in our community,” he said.

It’s not just a senior citizens virus.

“It affects everybody,” he said. “It’s kind of galling when I see the somewhat cavalier attitude with regard to some of our younger folks and even some public officials with regard to the health of our senior citizens. There are people out there with a somewhat cavalier attitude about the health of our seniors, and that’s just wrong. We all have friends and relatives who are in that high risk category. It is our seniors who built this country. We need to protect them.”

There is also a hot spot in Walker County that cannot be attributed to increased testing, one in Tuscaloosa attributed to a nursing home, and another one in Montgomery attributed to community transmission, not increased testing, according to the best available information.

On my question: What would you tell people now that the number of deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. has surpassed 100,000? Many commentators are blaming the White House response. Are the current economic reopening strategies of Alabama and other states premature?

“There is a lot of blame to go around,” Jones said, citing China and the World Health Organization.

“We could have done a better job of testing in this country,” he said. “I’ve been disappointed in the (Trump) administration and their early responses. You talk about cavalier attitudes. The president had one early on. All of that affected where we are now as a country.”

But he said the key right now is “where we are today and what we’re planning on doing going forward. We have a much better opportunity to plan on these surges and spikes going forward than we did early on, when we didn’t know much about this virus, when we didn’t know how quickly it would spread.”

Senator Jones would not go so far as to say the reopening plans are “premature.”

“Unfortunately, I think the public is only listening to the reopening part of this, and not listening to the folks like Dr. Harris who say please continue social distancing. Please continue to wear masks. If we could just get used to that, we could stop the spread,” he said. “Some people just don’t want to be told to do it, and I get that.”

We still don’t have a vaccine, he pointed out, or any real therapeutics to help.

“The only way to combat this virus right now is to continue to practice social distancing … and practice that hygiene.”

His message to people in Alabama who simply won’t follow the recommended guidelines?

“Please get over it,” he said. “Please don’t see this as a political statement. It is very unfortunate that now the wearing of masks has somehow become a political issue. It is not”

More Relief Legislation?

In commenting on a new package of stimulus or relief legislation now under consideration in the Senate, a $3 trillion bill passed by the House that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called “dead on arrival,” Senator Jones said they are trying to consider extending unemployment benefits, more money for state and local governments, and money for the United States Post Office to keep it open.

Will There Be College Football in the Fall?

On a related question, I asked about current discussions ongoing about reopening colleges and universities, and whether or not there is any chance of allowing football games to be played in the fall. Alabama football coach Nick Saban is still being cautious and recommending that people stay at home, and to wear gloves and masks when going out. But many, many people across the country are not doing it, in some cases because the president is not doing it and a number of Republicans are still sending the wrong signals to people.

“What do you think of the chances of restarting contact sports like football when the coronavirus numbers are still growing?” I asked.

The Senator at first jokingly punted the question to Dr. Harris, who said health officials “obviously have a lot of concern about that.”

“There are certainly ways that all activities can be done more safely than we are used to doing them,” he said. “But there are going to be things that are going to be difficult to ever make completely safe. We would obviously love to see better numbers than we are seeing as those kinds of plans get into place.”

He said public health officials have been in direct contact with university officials in charge of athletics programs in the state now trying to plan for the fall when colleges and universities plan to at least partially reopen. That includes testing people involved in college sports in a timely way and increased sanitation.

If more people would participate in social distancing, he pointed out, by football season perhaps the numbers would be under control enough to allow for that.

“What we hope is that we will also continue to do this as a society,” he said. “And everyone would be responsible for doing those things so the degree of disease transmission we have by the time football season rolls around won’t be the same concern that we have right now.”

Senator Jones warned that the football season “may not look like what it has in the past,” if there are new guidelines for fans and such.

No one knows at this point, in May, what the numbers will be like in the fall, he pointed out.

“We’ve still got some time,” he said. “What we do now may dictate what happens in the fall.”

He said he certainly hopes there will be college football in the fall, and that there will be fans in the stands. But he wondered aloud what would happen if star players are quarantined because they test positive.

“We have to consider that just like any other sports injury,” he said. “It may effect the outcome on a game or a season.”

“But if we can work now to do those things now and put those plans in place,” he continued, “I think we can have some sports … and get this country back to the way we have enjoyed sports in the past.”

Testing

On testing, Dr. Harris pointed out that health officials would like to have a way to test and screen everyone, or at least the 700,000 school kids, or the 200,000 college students, or the 25,000 nursing home residents in the state.

“The huge logistics of that is something that we just haven’t figure out yet,” he said. “But that’s really our goal and somewhere we would like to get to at some point.”

He said there are more than 150 labs already reporting test results on patients in Alabama, and the turn around varies widely. He said it takes about four minutes to get a positive result or 15 minutes to get a negative result, in some cases, but in others, it takes 42 to 78 hours to get the results.

“Sometimes it can be longer,” he said. “Most of the private labs are reporting results within a week, depending on the day of the week and how many numbers there are. Clearly that’s not fast enough to make a lot of decisions. We still have a ways to go to improve our process and improve that turn around time.”

Changing Behavior

“Trying to change peoples’ behavior is the most difficult thing of all,” Dr. Harris said. “If we could wave a wand and everybody stayed home for a month and nobody had any interaction, we would all be through with this in a month. But clearly that’s not realistic, because people do have to get out for certain things. But also because some people just haven’t quite taken it seriously enough yet.”

He said Alabama hospitals are stressed, since they’ve had more patients than they are used to because of COVID-10, but so far they have had enough capacity to handle the load and for the foreseeable future.

Mail Voting

Senator Jones said Alabama should consider more absentee, mail in ballots and early voting to make it easier to vote and protect people during elections, measures Republicans and the president have made a point of opposing, alleging fraud without evidence in an effort to prevent poor and minority voters who tend to vote for Democrats from casting their legal votes under the Constitution.

Protests

As this story was going to press, the country was breaking out in protests over police being exposed for killing innocent African American citizens. President Trump was quoted and warned for inciting violence about it on Twitter for an incendiary tweet, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” the exact phrase used by Miami police chief Walter Headley in 1967, according to Washington Post columnist Max Boot.

This is the presidency George Wallace never had

The line was also used by Alabama’s own George Wallace, who in 1968 used the exact same phrase during his third-party campaign for president, following the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. His slogan was “Stand up for America.”

At Madison Square Garden in New York on Oct. 24, 1968, shedding his jacket and clenching his fist, Wallace shouted: “We don’t have riots in Alabama. They start a riot down there, first one of ‘em to pick up a brick gets a bullet in the brain, that’s all. And then you walk over to the next one and say, ‘All right, pick up a brick. We just want to see you pick up one of them bricks, now!’ ”

In contrast to Trump, Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., addressing a nation on edge, challenged white Americans on Friday to fully confront the enduring inequities faced by black Americans because, he said, “the pain is too intense for one community to bear alone.”

“With our complacency, our silence, we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence,” he said, warning that “if we simply allow this wound to scab over once more without treating the underlying injury, we’ll never truly heal.”

So instead of coming together to fight for survival in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and a deep economic recession that could lead to a major depression, American cities are divided and wracked by violence. Instead of Atlas shrugging, Putin is smiling.