IMPORTANT NOTICE
We share a very compelling message from Jonathan P. Smith, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. He begs us all to recognize the **immediate threat** that COVID-19 presents to our very lives. Please read about how crucial it is that we all *comply* with the social distancing and personal hygiene measures laid out by the national experts (and mandated by some state governors). The link is https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10111300366541710&id=4918513 .
Part One:
DENYING THE TRUTH
We speak with Sharon Kelly about her article in desmogblog, connecting COVID-19 deniers to climate change deniers. A case in point is the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). It is one of many groups with professional-sounding names that have downplayed the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting their conclusions with purportedly scientific writings.
This is not the first time we have been thrust into an Orwellian world, where an advocacy group’s name is the opposite of what the group actually does. For the last 60 years, cigarette manufacturers have purveyed reports from “scientists” which they claim showed that cigarette smoking poses no danger to human health. Even when the vast weight of respectable scientists had recognized and demonstrated that cigarette smoking does indeed cause cancer, the tobacco industry continued to advertise its false propaganda as if it were reliable science.
In 1997, ACSH minimized the threat of climate change, saying that action was not necessary and should not be prioritized. Their advice proved to be wrong. Moreover, it turned out that ACSH received a significant part of its funding from fossil fuel corporations.
Now ACSH – like Pres. Trump – is similarly misleading the public, pooh-poohing the existential risks of COVID-19 and the need for immediate full-speed efforts to combat it. In this case and for the long-term, we need to take action only based on accurate information, based on real science (not junk science), information which is verified and verifiable. In analyzing the varying “scientific” advice, we must pay careful attention to what we know and what we don’t know, pay attention to the source of the information and whether that source is motivated to give the public the unvarnished truth or whether it is motivated by (and paid for by) corporate or other special interests that have an interest in reaching one conclusion rather than another.
Part Two:
We speak with David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, about proposals to invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) in the country’s effort to survive the novel coronavirus. This Act, enacted during the Korean War, allows the government to sign contracts with private companies requiring those companies to produce certain supplies that the government needs in coping with an emergency.
This is the kind of thing we utilized during World War II when many private manufacturers switched their production lines to making war materiel for the US military. (After the war, the companies switched back to manufacturing their regular product lines.) In 2017, Pres. Trump used the Defense Production Act to produce supplies for his new “space force.”
If the US decides to follow this same DPA law to fight COVID-19, it will be an important turning point. It would mean the government taking control of the means of production, a concept that is the classic definition of socialism. America’s capitalist culture will have to recognize that this is the decision we’d be making.
If it is successful – if government control of the means of production seems more likely to get the job done and achieve our goal of defeating COVID-19 – then we’re forced to think about whether Bernie Sanders’ “revolution” (or Elizabeth Warren’s “structural changes” to American capitalism) maybe weren’t such a bad idea after all. And maybe some of the policy changes that the progressives are urging Joe Biden to adopt might be good ideas for Democratic candidates to run on in November.
HOW MUCH MONEY DID YOU SAY WE’LL NEED?
We also discussed the amounts of federal money that will be needed to deal with this crisis effectively. Current proposals are capped at $750 million, but this is not going to be sufficient for us to prevent COVID-19 from ruining our people, our economy and our country. The cost of the million ventilators (at $25-50,000 each) that we will need – without considering any other expenses – would eat up more than that entire amount of money. Indeed, as the debate in Congress continues, we are recognizing more and more needs, which of course will cost a lot more money.
This leads to a difficult political process question: Is the American political system well suited to decide – and to act upon – these issues? With full-throated debate among our representatives, not to mention the unproductive partisan divide that has grown over recent years, can our law-makers accomplish enough to take all the action needed for our country to survive this crisis? And can they accomplish this quickly enough for their decision to matter? Even in the best of times, these questions must be addressed, and now even more so, as Congressmembers are being quarantined, everyone is afraid to congregate in one chamber (or to fly back to D.C.), and we have no provision for members to vote remotely, electronically.
