saturday, april 4 , 2020. the washington post eZ sU A
the coronavirus pandemic
BY DAVID NAKAMURAFor months, national Republi-
cans hoping to wrest back control
of the House this fall have target-
ed first-term Rep. Sean Casten
(D-Ill.), hitting him on his vote to
impeach President Trump, his
criticism of the U.S. drone killing
of an Iranian general and his
opposition to a federal ban on
fentanyl.
This week, they opened a new
front — accusing Casten of “spew-
ing Communist Party propagan-
da to bash the president” over
Trump’s h andling of the coronavi-
rus pandemic.
Casten’s sin, in the National
Republican Congressional Com-
mittee’s v iew, w as a pair of confer-
ence calls during which he told
constituents that China had acted
“quickly” and “to their credit ...
shut down the entire province
that this was in, and they seem to
largely have isolated the cases.”
As the deadly pathogen has
raced through parts of the United
States and the Trump administra-
tion has struggled to mount a
coordinated response, the matter
of China’s management of the
disease has begun moving to the
center of the domestic political
debate over who is to blame for its
rapid spread.
While Democrats have focused
squarely on Trump’s initial at-
tempts to minimize the threat of
the virus and his unsteady leader-
ship, Republicans have countered
by aiming attention at Beijing’s
early coverup of the disease and
emerging evidence that the Com-
munist Party has continued to
severely underreport the number
of cases in China. They h ave often
accused critics of the administra-
tion’s handling of the crisis of
peddling Chinese talking points.
The GOP argument has been
touted most forcefully by long-
time China hawks — including
Sen. To m Cotton (R-Ark.) and
John Bolton, the former White
house national security adviser —
who cite the coronavirus out-
break as more evidence of Bei-
jing’s malign conduct that should
accelerate a U.S. strategic pivot
toward a more confrontational
approach to the rising Asia pow-
er. But it also has provided a
ballast for Trump’s aides and po-
litical allies to try to deflect blame
from the president for the crucial
weeks his administration squan-
dered in failing to adequately
prepare, as Trump dismissed the
virus as a flu-like illness that
would “miraculously” go away.
“The reality is we could have
been better off if China had been
more forthcoming,” Vice Presi-
dent Pence said on CNN this
week, when asked if the adminis-
tration had been slow to respond
to the outbreak.
The focus on China has trans-
formed beyond the early attempts
from conservatives, including
Trump and Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo, to label the patho-
gen the “Chinese virus” or “Wu-
han virus,” named after the city
where it originated. Trump said
that rhetorical strategy, which
drew criticism from Democrats
that the language was xenopho-
bic, was an effort to counter false
Communist Party propagandathat the virus was deliberately let
loose in Wuhan by U.S. military
personnel.
The China hard-liners were
buoyed this week by a Bloomberg
News report that U.S. intelligence
agencies have concluded that Bei-
jing — after initially trying to
conceal the first reports of the
novel coronavirus — has inten-
tionally underreported cases and
deaths in recent weeks in a bid to
demonstrate that it has gained
control of the outbreak. Business-
es are reopening in the country,
and China has begun offering
massive aid to nations — includ-
ing shipments of masks and other
medical items to the United
States — in a bid to rehabilitate its
reputation.
To some leading Republicans,
the intelligence assessments offer
proof that the United States,
where confirmed infections have
topped 273,000 and deaths 7,000,
should not be negatively com-
pared to China, which officially
has reported 82,500 infections
and 3,300 deaths.“Beyond dispute that #China’s
Communist Party has lied about
#Coronavirus at every stage of
pandemic,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-
Fla.) wrote in a tweet this week.
“Yet in their reporting, tweets &
discussions some continue to
spread Chinese govt propaganda
negatively contrasting our num-
bers to fake Chinese govt ones.”
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said in
a statement: “The claim that the
United States has more coronavi-
rus deaths than China is false.”
Tump has shifted his rhetoric
on China, having recently adopt-
ed a more conciliatory tone and
dropping the “Chinese virus”
phrase after an hour-long phone
call with President Xi Jinping last
week in which they pledged to
cooperate.
“A s to whether or not their
numbers are accurate, I’m not an
accountant from China,” Trump
said Wednesday. “I think we all
understand where it came from
and President Xi understands
that. We don’t have to make a big
deal out of it.”Democrats have scoffed at the
GOP’s case that China’s lack of
transparency somehow absolves
the administration of its mis-
steps, which include a failure to
ensure states had access to virus
testing kits and other crucial sup-
plies. They note that Trump in
January and February publicly
touted Xi’s suggestion that the
virus would peter out as the
weather warmed.
In f act, new Trump administra-
tion projection models this week
showed the pandemic could kill
up to 240,000 people in the Unit-
ed States by mid-June, even with
strict mitigation measures in
place this month in most states.
The Washington Post reported
that U.S. intelligence agencies
had warned in January and Feb-
ruary of the threat of a pandemic
in classified reports, even as
Trump minimized the threat in
public.
“Trump’s new argument that
the failure to prepare for the
pandemic is not his fault because
he got played the [fool] by China
seems like a message that was not
well-thought out,” Dan Pfeiffer, a
former Obama White House aide,
wrote on Twitter.
“I think there is genuine frus-
tration and some outrage about
Chinese behavior throughout this
process, but it’s a big stretch to
say that absolves anybody from
having been underprepared for
what would hit or downplaying it
too long,” said Richard Fontaine,
president of the Center for New
American Security who has ad-
vised Republican presidential
candidates. “It’s too simple an
answer to say none of this would
have happened had we known the
real number of cases in Wuhan a
couple weeks earlier.”
But on the campaign trail, the
argument over China’s role has
accelerated. Republican National
Committee Chairwoman Ronna
McDaniel accused the Chinese
government of waging a “dishon-
esty campaign,” and her aides
have sought to portray former
vice president Joe Biden, the
front-runner for the Democratic
presidential nomination, as soft
on Beijing.Biden’s campaign “is deceiving
the American people by failing to
mention China in their bogus
explainer on how we got here.
Reminder: China is trying to
coverup their role in the corona-
virus outbreak,” Steve Guest, the
RNC’s rapid response director,
wrote in a blog post last month.
In a statement, Andrew Bates,
a Biden campaign spokesman,
said the former vice president
“publicly warned Donald Trump
not to buy China’s spin ... but
instead Trump praised China’s
handling of the outbreak numer-
ous times. If Donald Trump
thinks it’s ‘leadership’ to com-
plain that his failure to prepare
our nation for the worst public
health crisis in generations is
excused because he trusted Chi-
nese government propaganda
more than American medical, in-
telligence, and military experts,
then that says a great deal about
why the United States has more
coronavirus cases than any other
country.”
In Illinois, Casten, who repre-
sents a suburban Chicago House
district that once belonged to the
late Henry Hyde, a powerful Re-
publican, expressed irritation at
the attacks from the NRCC.
Chris Pack, an NRCC spokes-
man, said the organization high-
lighted Casten’s remarks on Chi-
na because “he was praising their
response to how they handled the
coronavirus as if they were not
lying their about their death
counts. That deserves no praise
whatsoever.”
In a n interview, C asten defend-
ed his position that China, along
with other Asian nations, includ-
ing South Korea and Japan,
which had dealt with a SARS
virus outbreak in the early 2000 s,
had moved with more urgency to
shut down schools and take pro-
active measures to contain the
virus.
“A reasonable critic of China
might say if they had moved more
quickly it might have constrained
it even more,” Casten said. “But
leaving that aside, our own presi-
dent was saying less than a month
ago this was the same as the flu.”
[email protected]As Democrats blast Trump’s response, Republicans blame China
Jabin botsford/the Washington Post
President Trump’s speech notes are seen as he consults with the coronavirus task force last month.
After speaking with President Xi Jinping, Trump has stopped using the phrase “Chinese virus.”From almost the beginning of
the coronavirus outbreak,
politicians and pundits have
emphasized the importance of
national borders. As the number
of infections grew in the United
States, President Trump
reiterated his campaign promise
of a wall on the U.S. southern
border. Other leaders demonized
migrants as bearers of an alien
disease.
The response to the
pandemic, argued some
commentators, marked a
resurrection of the nation-state
as the dominant actor in an age
of fear and lockdowns. It hit the
brakes on our interconnected
world, with supply chains shut
down, trade disrupted and travel
temporarily halted. Some
analysts even view the pandemic
as the precursor to a new era,
one in which globalization
unravels and countries turn
inward and seek greater self-
reliance.
In other words, it’s a time for
nationalists and citizens. To be a
migrant, refugee or asylum
seeker during this global crisis is
to find yourself even more out of
luck than you were before.
No matter the desperate
entreaties of aid agencies, there’s
even less international capacity
to attend to the world’s
cramped, ramshackle refugee
camps where the outbreak is
starting to spread. Things aren’t
much better for those fleeing
conflict or deprivation: The
Trump administration, for
o ne, has fast-tracked the
deportations of asylum seekers
arriving at the U. S. border, while
nonprofit groups warn of the
administration’s negligent
treatment of immigrants
exposed to the virus in detention
centers.
Ye t you can argue that
migrants are the unsung, front-
line heroes of the pandemic.
From hospitals to farmlands,
migrants are providing vital
labor to keep societies afloat.
They are also society’s most
vulnerable people — see the
scenes of rural migrants being
forced by lockdowns to walk
hundreds of miles home from
India’s major cities.
Elsewhere, their absence has
deepened the sense of crisis. My
colleagues Michael Birnbaum
and Quentin Ariès reported this
week on the troubles European
countries are facing now that
border closures and travel bans
have deprived them of the
migratory labor on which their
agricultural sectors depend.
“Farms across Western
Europe are deeply dependent on
Eastern Europeans who travel
for work during the growing
season,” t hey reported. “Yet with
lockdowns in place as
agriculture wakes up from its
winter slumber, German
asparagus may start rotting in
the field and French
strawberries may suffer from a
lack of tending. European
countries say they have enough
food, for now. But there are
concerns about what couldhappen if the crisis drags deep
into the growing season, as well
as fears for the livelihoods of
their farmers.”
In the United States, the food
and restaurant industries are
arguably dependent on migrant
labor. Of the approximately
400,0 00 agricultural workers in
California, 60 to 75 percent may
be undocumented migrants,
mostly from Mexico. As most of
America’s workforce stays home,
they remain in the fields,
categorized as “essential” l abor.
“For many workers, the fact
that they are now considered
both illegal and essential is an
irony that is not lost on them,
nor is it for employers who have
long had to navigate a legal
thicket to maintain a work force
in the fields,” noted a piece in
the New York Times.
“It’s sad that it takes a healthcrisis like this to highlight the
farmworkers’ importance,”
Hector Lujan, chief executive of
Reiter Brothers, a large family-
owned berry grower based in
Oxnard, Calif., told the Times.
And, as the Guardian
reported, many of these workers
are subjected to adverse
conditions with little to no
safety equipment, no social
distancing and no additional
support or pay. The $2 trillion
coronavirus stimulus package
passed by Congress offers
nothing for undocumented
people. (Compare that with a
temporary move taken by the
Portuguese government, which
conferred de facto citizenship
status on migrants and asylum
seekers so they could access
public health services.)
“They’re getting paid the
same, yet they’re exposingthemselves to more dangers,”
Irene de Barraicua,
spokesperson for Líderes
Campesinas, an advocacy
organization of Californian
female farmworkers, told the
Guardian. “There is no standard
for safety orientation.
Sometimes we’re hearing they
just get a five-minute talk — stay
six feet apart, don’t do this, don’t
do that — but they’re working in
big crowds. It feels like it’s not
being taken seriously because
the money is more important.”
Meanwhile, on both sides of
the Atlantic, the medical
professionals who are
f ighting the pandemic hail
disproportionately from
immigrant backgrounds. A
2 018 study found that at least
17 percent of the American
health-care workforce was not
born in the United States
— 1 out of 5 pharmacists and
almost 1 out of 3 physicians
were foreign-born. Recognizing
the growing need for help in his
state, New Jersey Gov. Phil
Murphy (D) signed an executive
order Wednesday granting
temporary medical licenses to
foreign doctors.
At least 27,000 U. S. health-
care workers came to the
country as undocumented
children. Their status in the
United States has been
protected by an Obama-era
program that Trump rescinded
in 2017. Their fate, along with
hundreds of thousands of others
like them, is now being weighed
by the Supreme Court.
More than 13 percent of those
working in Britain’s National
Health Service report a non-
British nationality. The first four
doctors in Britain to die of
covid-19, the disease caused
b y the coronavirus, while
treating patients were all from
Muslim and immigrant
backgrounds.
“A ll four men — Alfa Sa’adu;
Amged el-Hawrani; Adil El
Ta yar and Habib Zaidi — were
Muslim and had ancestry in
regions including Africa, Asia
and the Middle East,” noted
Al Jazeera.
“For [the coronavirus] to be
the thing that took him is too
much to bear,” Zaidi’s daughter,
Sarah, who is also a doctor, told
the BBC. “It is reflective of his
sacrifice.”
[email protected]From hospitals to farms, migrants are keeping societies running amid outbreak
Today’s WorldView
Ishaan Tharoorbrent stirton/agence france-Presse/getty images
Workers from Bud Farms harvest celery for both U.S. and export consumption last month i n Oxnard, Calif. The state’s agricultural
workers, at least 60 percent of whom may be undocumented immigrants, are essential to keeping U.S. food supply chains operational.“It’s sad that it takes a
health crisis like this to
highlight the
farmworkers’
importance.”
Hector Lujan, chief executive
of california berry grower
reiter brothers