The Washington Post - 19.03.2020

THURSDAy, MARCH 19 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ re A25

THURSDAY Opinion

S

o Mitch McConnell thinks his pro-

spective Democratic opponent

should stop running mean ads

against him during the coronavirus

crisis.

The poor dear.

“A s Senator McConnell leads bipartisan

efforts to help Kentuckians and all Ameri-

cans cope with the impact of the coronavi-

rus, Amy McGrath continues to run mil-

lions of dollars in false, negative political

advertising designed to tear us apart,” Mc-

Connell’s campaign manager said in a

statement Tuesday, citing neither ad nor

falsehood but denouncing her “refusal to

stop airing false political advertising dur-

ing the coronavirus outbreak.”

For McConnell, this is a most conve-

nient demand: With the coronavirus crisis

likely to go on for months, McConnell

could have his reelection come and go in

November without anybody running ads

detailing how the Senate majority leader,

the self-styled “grim reaper,” has done

more in recent years than any other per-

son to embitter our politics and incapaci-

tate government.

Making McConnell’s umbrage all the

more cynical: Groups affiliated with him

have gone about their political attacks even

as he claims that he should be immune.

The coronavirus crisis hasn’t stopped the

National Republican Senatorial Committee,

an arm of the Republican Senate leader-

ship, from making statements attacking

Democratic Senate candidate (and gover-

nor) Steve Bullock in Montana (“ran his ad-

ministration like a frat house”), Democratic

Senate candidate Raphael Warnock in

Georgia (“launching a political campaign

with a police report is never a good look”)

and Democratic Senate candidate Mark

Kelly in Arizona (“he’s for sale to the high-

est bidder”).

The crisis didn’t stop One Nation, a dark-

money group allied with McConnell, from

launching a $700,000 ad campaign this

week in support of Sen. Martha McSally

(R-Ariz.) and a $970,000 campaign boost-

ing Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).

The crisis didn’t stop a super PAC run by

McConnell allies, the Senate Leadership

Fund, from meddling last month in a Dem-

ocratic Senate primary in North Carolina,

or this month in a Republican primary in

Georgia. Nor has McConnell expressed sim-

ilar concern about Republican super PACs

attacking Democratic Sen. Gary Peters in

Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate

Sara Gideon in Maine and Democratic Sen-

ate candidate Jaime Harrison in South Car-

olina — all during the current crisis.

The Republicans’ outrage about cam-

paigning during the coronavirus outbreak

appears to reflect a desire to self-isolate Re-

publicans from any political damage from

the response to the virus. For example,

McSally this week said she was temporarily

suspending her campaign — “This is not a

time for politics,” she said — conveniently

just as the McConnell-associated group be-

gan running ads on her behalf. No doubt

Republicans would like social distancing

between themselves and the political fall-

out from the virus — but that’s not how de-

mocracy works.

Certainly, Democrats and Republicans

need to work together now and in the fu-

ture to pass legislation to combat the virus

and its economic impact. But elections go

on during times of crisis and war. And the

bungled handling of the virus is exactly the

sort of mismanagement that should dis-

qualify President Trump from reelection. It

would be political malpractice if Democrats

didn’t point out that the Trump administra-

tion’s lack of preparedness for the virus and

its woeful early response are direct conse-

quences of Trump’s leadership failures —

and of congressional Republicans’ failure to

hold him accountable.

Trump depleted the government of scien-

tific expertise and did little to heed warn-

ings to prepare for a pandemic. He blocked

Congress from conducting meaningful

oversight. He repeatedly proposed cutting

public health and medical research. The

constant turnover and reliance on “acting”

officials eroded competence. His reckless

stimulus legislation during an economic

boom and his badgering of the Federal Re-

serve to lower interest rates left few fiscal

and monetary tools to stop the ongoing

economic panic. His constant stream of

falsehoods misled the nation about the

threat of the virus and contributed to a de-

layed, haphazard response. His administra-

tion badly misjudged the impact of the vi-

rus and was claiming until just a couple of

weeks ago that it would require no addi-

tional government spending.

And now, Trump dodges responsibility.

“It snuck up on us,” he claimed at a White

House briefing Wednesday. “This is a very

unforeseen thing,” he claimed. As for well-

connected people getting tests when others

can’t, he said: “Perhaps that’s been the sto-

ry of life.” He also used the virus briefing to

say that “I’m beating Sleepy Joe Biden by a

lot in Florida,” that “I’m 95 percent of the

Republican Party” and that China may be

punished for the “Chinese virus.”

Snuck up on us? Unforeseen? Trump dis-

missed warning after warning after warn-

ing. Now, we work as one to save our lives

and our economy. But there will be no way

for Trump and McConnell to quarantine

the consequences of their bad leadership.

(The columnist’s wife is a pollster for Ari-

zona Senate candidate Mark Kelly.)

Twitter: @Milbank

DANA MILBANK

WasHIngton sKetcH

The GOP can’t

self-quarantine

from elections

E

ver since John Winthrop boasted

in 1630 that the Massachusetts Bay

Colony would be “a city upon a

hill,” Americans have believed that

we have a mission to lead the world,

whether by the power of example or by

sheer power. That s elf-confidence has been

bolstered by a century of achievements:

We saved Western civilization from Ger-

man and Soviet militarism, built the most

prosperous society in history and landed a

man on the moon.

Our self-confidence, verging on hubris,

should be shaken by the coronavirus. The

United States has been a laggard, not a

world leader, in confronting the pandemic.

As The Post reported, a German company

shipped more than 1.4 million diagnostic

tests for the World Health Organization by

the end of February. During that same

time, U. S. efforts to produce our own test

misfired. By Feb. 28, only 4,000 tests from

the Centers for Disease Control and Pre-

vention had been used. U.S. testing is now

ramping up, but as of Tuesday we had

tested only about 56,000 people, or 1 in

5,800 Americans. South Korea has tested

274,000 people, or 1 in 187 South Koreans.

“Losing two months is close to disastrous,

and that’s what we did,” Ashish Jha,

director of the Harvard Global Health

Institute, told Bloomberg News.

We s hould not be especially surprised by

our failure at pandemic-fighting, because

if we are being honest with ourselves, we

would h ave to admit that the United States

has long been failing. We r emain one of the

richest countries in the world, but by

international standards we look more like

a Third World nation.

As Quartz pointed out in 2017, we lag in

almost every measure of societal well-

b eing among the wealthy nations (now 36)

of the Organization for Economic Cooper-

ation and Development (OECD). As of

2016, we had the second-highest poverty

rate, the highest level of income inequality

and the highest level of obesity. We spent

the most on education but produced

less-than-average results. We were also

below average on renewable energy, infra-

structure investment and voter turnout.

We are the only OECD nation that doesn’t

mandate paid family leave. One area

where we do lead is gun violence. Our

homicide rate is nearly 50 percent above

the OECD average.

Our health-care failures are particularly

important now. We spend more on health

care than any other country in the world,

but we are the only OECD country without

universal medical coverage (27.9 million

Americans lacked health insurance in

2018). Child mortality in the United States

is the highest in the OECD, and life

expectancy is below average. We have far

fewer hospital beds per capita than other

advanced democracies (2.4 compared with

12.2 in South Korea), which makes us

particularly vulnerable to a pandemic.

Why has America become so backward?

That is a complex topic. I would direct

readers to the work of analysts such as

Jonathan Rauch, Francis Fukuyama, and

Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann. But

I would ascribe a lot of what’s wrong to

growing partisan polarization that makes

it almost impossible to address our most

pressing needs. Republicans are getting

more conservative and Democrats more

liberal — although not to the same degree.

The GOP is far more extreme than the

Democratic Party.

President Trump has exacerbated the

problem, but he didn’t start it. He is

himself the product of decades of right-

wing revolt against government and in-

creasingly against reason itself. America is

unusual in having a major party — and a

major television network — devoted to

climate denialism and protecting the

“right” of everyone to own an assault rifle.

The GOP and the right-wing media have

long been a hotbed of nutty conspiracy

theories, and their reluctance to face the

reality of the new coronavirus set back

efforts to save lives.

The Republicans’ decades-long demoni-

zation of government has consequences.

As Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith not-

ed, the federal civilian workforce h as fallen

as a percentage of total nonfarm employ-

ment from 18 percent in 1980 to 15 percent

today, and their salaries top out at just

under $200,000 — “only slightly more

than an entry-level engineer makes at

Google.” There are still plenty of high-

q uality civil servants, but their ranks are

too thin, and they are too much at the

mercy of political yahoos. “When a typical

European parliamentary government

changes hands from one party to another,

the ministers and a handful of staffers turn

over,” Fukuyama notes. “In the U.S., a

change of administration (even within the

same party) opens up some 5,000 ‘Sched-

ule C’ j ob positions t o political appointees.”

That means Trump’s band of grifters can

do far more damage than they could in,

say, France or Germany.

The coronavirus failure should be a

wake-up call that Trump has not made

America great again. Quite the opposite:

He has accelerated our decline. We must

not only beat this pandemic; we must also

address a host of other ills that have been

festering for decades. In recent years,

America has been “exceptional” mainly in

the scale of our governmental failures

compared with those of other industrial-

ized democracies.

Twitter: @MaxBoot

MAX BOOT

A lesson

in our

backwardness

BY CATHY MERRILL

I

b elieve in science, trust experts

and have spent the past week

self-quarantining and yelling at

my k ids to wash their hands. But I

was still floored when the Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention

(CDC) announced that gatherings

should be put off until May 15. I am a

small-business owner with roughly

75 employees. Like most of my busi-

ness-owner friends, I had hope last

week that we could all hunker down

and get through this crisis quickly.

But that hope has been extinguished

by the restrictions on gatherings

urged, and in some cases imposed, by

the Trump administration, the CDC

and state governors.

May 15 is eight weeks away. How

many of the officials setting emergen-

cy policy have ever run a small

business? Very few, I suspect. To be

clear: Two months is not a hiatus; it is

a death sentence for small business.

How can the government help?

Each emergency-related decision

needs to be revisited in shorter and

more predictable periods of time as

the science dictates. Mass testing for

the coronavirus will become avail-

able. We n eed to calibrate for the facts

as they develop.

Let’s all keep social distancing, as

the experts say it will reduce spread,

but let’s revisit curfews and gathering

restrictions in two-week segments.

Give us businesses hope that we

might reopen before May 15. Give

parents hope that their children will

go b ack to school before the end of the

academic year. Parents of the 22 mil-

lion children who receive free and

reduced-price lunches could particu-

larly use that hope. It might be

illusory, but maybe not. (Remember,

social distancing is supposed to

work.) Americans can do anything for

a week or two, but 60 days is a

lifetime. Businesses will go under,

and kids will go on unsanctioned play

dates. And let’s not even talk about

teens and young adults who are

supposed to forgo social life and

dating for that long.

The math is simple. There are

roughly 30 million small businesses

(firms with fewer than 500 employ-

ees) in the United States, represent-

ing 49 percent of private-sector jobs.

Most businesses — big and small —

have a profit margin of roughly 10 to

20 percent (if they are lucky). A

two-month hiatus means their profit

is gone for the year. So, say we aim to

break even. But to break even, we

must rebound fully after the two-

month “hiatus.” Who believes that

will happen? None of my small-

b usiness CEO friends.

So now we are faced with a loss.

What to do? Ta ke a small-business

loan? Why would I create more debt

in uncertain times? Think about it:

For restaurant owners, the biggest

expense after employees is rent. Are

they going to borrow money so they

can just pay the landlord? Why not

close shop and declare bankruptcy?

Maybe start again with a much lower

lease if the economy revs back up a

year from now. If you are near retire-

ment or near the end of your lease,

this decision is easier: quit now while

you still have a little cash left. Layoffs,

which are already happening, will be

enormous and widespread by the

beginning of next week. Bankruptcies

are certain to follow.

As E lon Musk told Te sla employees,

coronavirus panic is worse than the

virus itself. Virus infections can at

least, eventually, be quantified. But

who is going to quantify the number

of deaths from unemployment stress,

food insecurity, depression or lost

health insurance — plus the spike in

suicide rates and heart angina from

the stress of being laid off or fur-

loughed?

Without fast action, our country is

going to experience record unemploy-

ment levels, possibly higher than

even those in the Great Depression.

Government needs to act quickly, but

it also needs to be able to revise

quickly. Set policies, and then amend

as conditions warrant. The notion

that the nation will be able to freeze

small business in place for two

months and restart it with ease is

preposterous.

While I believe that the United

States has the smartest scientists in

the world, I don’t believe anyone can

predict where the country will be

60 days from now. Let’s not try. Let’s

leave the door open to revise policy

and loosen restrictions.

the writer is chief executive and owner of

Washingtonian Magazine.

A death sentence

for small business

daVId ryder/reuters

A restaurant in Kirkland, Wash., on Wednesday.

BY JOSIAH RICH, SCOTT ALLEN

AND MAVIS NIMOH

U

nless government officials act

now, the novel coronavirus

will spread rapidly in our jails

and prisons, endangering not

only prisoners and corrections workers

but the general public as well. As the

country prepares for further spread of

the pandemic, authorities should take

immediate steps to limit the risk posed

by mass confinement, including releas-

ing those detained on bail, along with

elderly prisoners who pose little dan-

ger to the public.

Early on in this pandemic, we

learned that, as with other closed

spaces such as cruise ships and nurs-

ing homes, the novel coronavirus

spread rapidly in Chinese correctional

facilities. Now the United States,

which leads the world when it comes

to incarceration, faces that same chal-

lenge.

It is essential to understand that,

despite being physically secure, jails

and prisons are not isolated from the

community. People continuously enter

and leave, including multiple shifts of

corrections staff; newly arrested,

charged and sentenced individuals;

attorneys; and visitors. Even if this

flow is limited to the extent possible,

correctional facilities remain densely

populated and poorly designed to pre-

vent the inevitable rapid and wide-

spread dissemination of this virus.

At the same time, jails and prisons

house individuals at h igher risk than in

other settings, such as schools and

restaurants, that have been closed to

mitigate contamination. Although cor-

rections facilities cannot be closed,

they must be included in any plan

aimed at slowing the surge in infec-

tions and protecting public safety.

Reassessing security and public

health risks and acting immediately

will save the lives of not only those

incarcerated but also correctional staff

and their families and the community

at large. There are several steps that

authorities should implement as

quickly as possible.

They must screen incoming individ-

uals to prevent and delay infected

individuals from entering facilities.

They must rapidly identify cases and

isolate exposed groups to limit the

spread, as well as quickly transfer

seriously ill patients to appropriate

facilities.

But that won’t be enough. Authori-

ties should release those who do not

pose an immediate danger to public

safety, while also reducing arrests and

delaying sentencings. These moves

carry inherent political risks, but they

are for the greater good of the public at

large. The abrupt onset of severe covid-

19 infections among incarcerated indi-

viduals will require mass transfers to

local hospitals for intensive medical

and ventilator care — highly expensive

interventions that may soon be in very

short supply. Each severely ill patient

coming from corrections who occupies

an ICU bed will mean others may die

for inability to obtain care.

Our ability to release people rapidly

will vary b y type of facility and jurisdic-

tion. Those being held in jails simply

due to their inability to afford bail, or

for minor infractions or violations, can

generally be released promptly by the

judiciary or even the local sheriff. S ome

jurisdictions are already discussing

such mitigation efforts.

Already sentenced individuals pose

a greater challenge — o ne compounded

by the punitive policies of the past few

decades (mandatory minimum sen-

tences, three strikes and life without

parole) that have led to a large, aging

incarcerated population especially vul-

nerable to severe disease. Additionally,

half of all incarcerated people suffer

from at l east one chronic illness, which

means even more will be at risk of a

poor prognosis if they become infected.

Those eligible for parole can and

should be released. Provisions for

“compassionate release/parole” exist

in every state; however, that process is

typically slow, underutilized and very

limited. Fortunately, the people at

highest risk for severe complications of

covid-19 who are incarcerated (the

aging and chronically ill), are, on aver-

age, the least likely to commit a new

crime or need to be re-incarcerated. In

some states, governors have the ability

to commute sentences or pardon indi-

viduals, as does the president in the

federal system.

On the federal level as well, there is a

parallel public health danger lurking

in the immigration detention system,

where thousands of people are being

held in jail-like conditions that pose

similar risks. The Trump administra-

tion could, if it wished, institute a

simple and even temporary policy

change to release those individuals

into the community rather than con-

tain them in an environment where

rapid spread is likely. As unlikely as

this may be given the administration’s

approach to immigration detention,

this may be the easiest fix, given the

broad discretion of the Department of

Homeland Security to change policy.

The spread of the coronavirus may

only be the tipping point for what can

happen when we fail to consider all the

costs and consequences of our system

of mass incarceration. We justify lock-

ing people up to protect public safety.

Ye t public safety will be at even greater

peril if we fail to mitigate risks associ-

ated with confining too many people in

jails, prisons and detention facilities

during a pandemic.

Josiah rich is professor of medicine and

epidemiology at Brown university. scott

allen is professor of medicine emeritus at

the university of california at riverside.

Mavis nimoh is executive director of the

center for Prisoner Health and Human

rights at the Miriam Hospital, of which rich

and allen are co-founders.

The epidemic threat in prisons