Largely in a lot of parts of the world
The Guardian talks to one of Trump’s billionaire fans about this whole business of billionaire Trump fans having a big influence on whether or not we get to survive the pandemic:
One of Donald Trump’s most fervent billionaire donors is lobbying against strict stay-at-home rules in the election battleground state of Wisconsin, raising troubling new questions about how the president’s rightwing financial supporters may influence the US response to the pandemic.
Liz Uihlein, the billionaire behind Wisconsin’s Uline shipping and packaging company – who with her husband, Richard, has been dubbed the most “powerful conservative couple you’ve never heard of” – is using her clout to try to force Wisconsin’s Democratic governor to relax stay-at-home rules, claiming that the crisis has been “overhyped” by the media.
I don’t think having a shipping and packaging company gives a person the right to put millions of other people at risk from a pandemic. An eccentric view, I know, but I seem to be stuck with it.
Health experts have warned that premature reopening of the US economy could risk US efforts to control the virus, ensuring that it surges in places where rules on lockdowns are relaxed. Trump, who still appears in daily press conferences with a team of public health experts such as Dr Anthony Fauci, has wavered on the issue. He has urged protesters to “liberate” several Democratic states from their lockdowns and usually appears keen for a swift reopening, but he has also criticized the Republican governor of Georgia for reopening too early.
Oh come on now. That’s not Trump “wavering” on an “issue” – it’s Trump saying whatever pops into his echoingly empty head at any given moment, without the slightest attention to whether or not it’s consistent with what he said 30 seconds before.
“It’s overhyped,” she said. “And I don’t wish anybody ill will. You know I don’t wish that, but I think it hurts certain ages in certain places and largely in a lot of parts of the world. In the country it’s not as rampant as the press would have you make it.”
Ah there it is – the not very veiled hint that the virus infects only Those Other People Over There, and not good clean rich white people like ourselves.
The company, which has remained open because it is considered an essential business, has come under fire for allegedly adopting lax safety practices in the face of the pandemic, including initially discouraging employees from working at home and not providing enough space to the non-warehouse employees who did come to work.
Well, come on now. Warehouse employees are obviously in the Those Other People Over There category, as are the non-warehouse employees. Only employERS count as real people.
43,000+ dead in only a short time. At what point is it NOT overhyped? I may be a bad person for this, but I hope the Uihleins get it, and severe.
For this degree of media and institutional attention, she was expecting a lot more deaths. This? Pfft! This is just weak sauce. Should be tucked in under the horoscopes.
But we don’t know that, do we? There’s a strong whiff of the other, like, you know that sentence you just uttered in regards to a pandemic that, in less than four months, has come within spitting distance of killing more Americans than the Vietnam war, in which you thought that it has been “overhyped?” Besides, is it a good idea to “underhype” a pandemic?
Problem is, given the correct circumstances, you could end up being one of those people of a certain age, in a certain place. The virus doesn’t issue invitations which you can decline, it doesn’t announce its presence, it can’t be blocked by call display. It would only take a single slip-up or mistake amongst the security people* of your gated community, or amongst your household staff** (assuming you haven’t cut them off from the outside world) and you might very well be our next contestant.
* I bet they’re well equipped with PPE, and using social distancing protocols to keep you safe.
** See *above.
It’s certainly more rampant than you’d want to be in the midst of, though, isn’t it? Because of the combination of woefull, criminal lack of testing, and asymptomatic spread, there’s no way to know just how rampant it is. And opening businesses prematurely will only make it MORE RAMPANT.
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