The Washington Post - 18.03.2020

WEDNESDAy, MARCH 18 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ re K A23

WEDNESDAY Opinion

B

ehold, the perils of the Pinocchio

presidency.

For three years, President

Trump told his supporters that the

federal government perpetrates hoaxes

and frauds, that the media produces fake

news and that nothing is on the level ex-

cept for his tweets. He did the same with

the novel coronavirus, portraying it as an

ordinary flu that would “disappear” and

accusing Democrats of a hoax and the me-

dia of exaggerating.

Belatedly, Trump has begun to speak the

truth about the virus, which by some esti-

mates could kill more than 2 million Amer-

icans without attempts to control it. After

an abrupt change of tone Monday after-

noon, Trump continued to say the right

things, using the same word on Tuesday

that former vice president Joe Biden and

French President Emmanuel Macron have

used: war.

“We have to get rid of this, we have to

win this war, and ideally quickly,” he said

in the White House briefing room. “Be-

cause the longer it takes — it’s not a good

situation. And I’m not even talking about

the economy, I’m talking about the lives of

a lot of people.”

But Trump’s late conversion to reality

has left behind one group of Americans

who will be difficult to convince: his own

supporters. Their alternative-facts diet has

left them intolerant of anything the gov-

ernment and the media feed them.

An alarming new poll from NPR, PBS

NewsHour and Marist shows that the

number of Republicans who believe the vi-

rus is a real threat has actually fallen over

the past month, from 72 percent in Febru-

ary to just 40 percent now. A majority of

Republicans now say the threat has been

blown out of proportion — more than dou-

ble the 23 percent who said so last month.

Naturally, they’re not so inclined to

c ooperate with efforts to slow the virus’s

spread. Only 30 percent of Republicans

plan to avoid large gatherings (vs. 61 per-

cent of Democrats), a Wall Street Journal/

NBC poll found just before Trump pro-

posed such limits. Republicans were half

as likely to say they were rescheduling

travel and a third as likely to stop eating

out at restaurants.

Key Trump allies aren’t cooperating,

e ither. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R)

recommended on Monday: “If you want to

go to Bob Evans and eat, go to Bob Evans

and eat.”

Also Monday, Ron Paul, the former

p residential candidate and father of

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said, “People

should ask themselves whether this coro-

navirus ‘pandemic’ could be a big hoax,

with the actual danger of the disease mas-

sively exaggerated.”

On Sunday, former New York City police

commissioner Bernard Kerik — recently

pardoned by Trump — speculated that

“this hysteria is being created” to “destroy”

Trump’s economic success. And Rep. Devin

Nunes (R-Calif.), a key Trump ally, said “it’s

a great time to just go out, go to a local res-

taurant.... Go to your local pub.” (He later

tried awkwardly to recant that advice.)

Then there’s Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt

(R), who tweeted (and later deleted) a pho-

tograph of him and his children at a

“packed” food hall (Trump expressed his

disagreement); Sen. John Cornyn (R-Te x.),

tweeting a photo of a freshly poured Coro-

na beer at a restaurant and the message

“Be smart. Don’t Panic”; and former Mil-

waukee County, Wis., sheriff David Clarke,

once considered for a senior Trump ad-

ministration job, who speculated that

George Soros may be behind the virus pan-

ic and suggested: “GO INTO THE

STREETS FOLKS. Visit bars, restaurants,

shopping malls... ”

After weeks of false reassurances and

disinformation, Trump abruptly shifted

this week. At Tuesday’s briefing, he lavishly

praised the government scientists and

public health experts he had until lately

been contradicting, and he celebrated re-

cent bipartisanship. Though he let slip an

occasional shot at Democrats and the me-

dia, he made the rare admission that

“we’ve done a poor job in terms of press

r elationship.”

For once, he put his priority where it

should be: on the human toll. “For the mar-

kets, for everything, it’s a very simple, very

simple solution. We want to get rid of it.

We want to have as few deaths as p ossible.”

He spoke to those inclined toward vaca-

tion travel: “I would recommend that they

just enjoy their living room.”

And he admonished those not following

social-distancing guidelines: “I’m not hap-

py with those people.”

There can be no doubt who “those peo-

ple” are: Fox-News-viewing Trump sup-

porters who, until this week, had been en-

couraged to believe Trump’s claims that

the virus was well under control.

At one point Tuesday, Fox News’s John

Roberts asked Trump to move closer to the

microphone so the “people at home” could

hear him.

“You’re right, those are very important

people,” Trump said to Roberts. “Especially

your people.”

He’s got that right. After encouraging

his Fox News fan base for weeks to scoff at

the virus, Trump now finds that his presi-

dency, the U.S. economy and countless

lives depend on him persuading them

o therwise.

Twitter: @Milbank

DANA MILBANK

WAsHIngton sKetCH

The c rowd

Trump needs

to convince now

W

ant to know why the

U.S. economy is in free fall?

Why restaurants and bars are

closing, putting millions out

of work, and why the airline industry is

facing possible bankruptcy? Why schools

across the nation are shutting down,

leaving students to fall behind and par-

ents without safe places to send their

children everyday? Why the stock mar-

ket is plummeting, wiping out the retire-

ment and college savings of millions of

Americans? Why the elderly are isolated

in nursing homes and tens of millions

who don’t h ave the option of teleworking

have no idea how they will pay their bills?

Answer: Because China is a brutal

totalitarian dictatorship.

We are in the midst of a pandemic

lockdown today because the Chinese

Communist regime cared more about

suppressing information than suppress-

ing a virus. Doctors in Wuhan knew in

December that the coronavirus was capa-

ble of human-to-human transmission

because medical workers were getting

sick. But as late as Jan. 15, the head of

China’s Center for Disease Control and

Prevention declared on state television

that “the risk of human-to-human trans-

mission is low.” On Jan. 18, weeks after

President Xi Jinping had taken charge of

the response, authorities allowed a Lu-

nar New Year banquet to go forward in

Wuhan where tens of thousands of fami-

lies shared food — and then let millions

travel out of Wuhan, allowing the disease

to spread across the world. It was not

until Jan. 23 that the Chinese govern-

ment enacted a quarantine in Wuhan.

If the regime had taken action as soon

as human-to-human transmission was

detected, it might have contained the

virus and prevented a global pandemic.

Instead, Chinese officials punished doc-

tors for trying to warn the public and

suppressed information that might have

saved lives. According to the Times of

London, Chinese doctors who had identi-

fied the pathogen in early December

received a gag order from China’s Na-

tional Health Commission with instruc-

tions to stop tests, destroy samples and

suppress the news.

This is what totalitarian regimes do.

First, they lie to themselves, and then,

they lie to the world. The system creates

such fear that people are terrified to

report bad news up the chain, causing

“authoritarian blindness.” Then, when

those at t he top finally discover the truth,

they try to cover it up — because leaders

who abuse their people are less con-

cerned with saving lives than making

sure the world does not discover the

deadly inefficiency of their system.

The ongoing pandemic should serve as

a reminder of the lesson that President

George W. B ush tried to teach us after the

Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: What

happens thousands of miles away in a

foreign land can affect us here at home.

Both viruses and virulent ideologies fes-

ter in the fever swamps of totalitarianism

and then emerge to kill us in our cities

and our streets. Two decades ago, it was a

terrorist attack; today, it is a once-in-a-

generation pathogen. But in both cases,

the lack of freedom in a distant land

created conditions that allowed an un-

precedented threat to grow, bringing

death and destruction to our country.

What Bush called the “freedom agen-

da” is out of vogue today. But we can now

see that caring about freedom is putting

America first, because how China treats

its people affects the health and security

of the American people. The same totali-

tarian system that lied about putting

1 million Uighurs in concentration

camps lied about the outbreak of this

virus, creating a global pandemic. If

China were an open and transparent

society, with an accountable govern-

ment, Americans might not be on lock-

down today.

What can we do about it? We o bviously

can’t turn China into a democracy. But

we can hold China accountable for its

behavior and put a price on its lies and

oppression. We can reaffirm that the

advance of freedom, transparency and

rule of law are central objectives of

U.S. foreign policy, because the lives and

safety of our citizens depend on it. And

we can lay the blame for this crisis where

it belongs: at the feet of the Chinese

Communist Party. Once the crisis has

passed, President Trump should calcu-

late the damage and demand that Beijing

pay for the death and destruction it

unleashed on the United States and the

world.

Some have suggested that calling this

pathogen the “Wuhan virus” — or as

President Trump recently called it, the

“Chinese virus” — is racist. That is

absurd. MERS is called the “Middle East

Respiratory Syndrome” because that is

where it originated. Moreover, the Chi-

nese regime continues to lie, spreading a

conspiracy theory that the source of the

virus is really the U.S. Army.

It is important this virus be forever

linked to the brutal regime that facilitat-

ed its spread. The virus grew in the

cesspool of Chinese Communist tyranny.

It’s time to drain the swamp.

Twitter: @marcthiessen

MARC A. THIESSEN

China should

forever be

linked to the

virus’s spread

BY AMANDA RIPLEY

W

hat if we were told that the

best way to slow the spread

of the coronavirus pan-

demic was to s moke 15 cig-

arettes a day? What would you do?

Loneliness, we know from the re-

search, can be as bad for y our health as

smoking. It’s more predictive of mor-

tality than obesity. And loneliness it-

self was a pandemic long b efore covid-

19 got its name. (Between 1990 and

2010, there was a threefold increase in

the number of Americans who said

they had no one in whom they could

confide.)

So canceling church, school, work

and sports means we are doing some-

thing that can be hazardous to our

health — in an effort to save lives.

It sounds like a trap. But it’s more

like a balancing act — a seesaw we all

have to ride now. You can alter one

side and stay in balance, but only if

you change what’s on the other.

We’ve heard a lot about what not to

do. Now it’s t ime to talk about what we

can do. “Look, I wash my hands a lot,”

says Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical

anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins

Center for Health Security. “But if

that’s all people are told to do, it only

takes you so far.”

There a re at l east four specific activ-

ities that can help compensate for all

the things we are not doing, according

to the research and my conversations

with disaster experts, psychologists

and epidemiologists.

Loneliness creates a kind of toxic

chain reaction in our body: It produc-

es stress, and the chronic release of

stress hormones suppresses our im-

mune response and triggers inflam-

mation. And the elderly, who are most

at risk of dying from covid-19, are

more likely to say they are lonely.

Fear also causes the release of stress

hormones. And a pandemic involves

massive amounts of uncertainty: by

definition, the kind that won’t g o away

quickly. That kind of ongoing stress is

hard for anyone to handle.

So what is the antidote? First, any-

one who can exercise should do more

of it now, every day. Physical exercise

reduces stress and boosts immune

functioning. “Outdoor activities are

good. Going for a walk, riding a bike,

those are all great,” says Caitlin

M. Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns

Hopkins. You can even do this with a

friend, assuming you both feel h ealthy

and are not in high-risk groups (and

assuming you stay six feet apart in

places such as San Francisco, where

public health officials have so or-

dered). “Our overall goal is to reduce

the number of contacts we have with

other people, but you have to strike a

balance.” And there’s never been an

easier time to exercise without going

outside or to the gym. (My current

“gym” is on my phone, through apps

such as Aaptiv, as well as free online

yoga classes.)

Second, social closening. (Yes,

that’s a word, it turns out.) Relation-

ships are as good for the immune

system as exercise. In a meta-analysis

of 148 studies that followed m ore than

300,000 people for an average of eight

years, researchers found that positive

social relationships gave people a

50 p ercent greater chance of surviving

over time compared with people with

weak social ties. This connectedness

had a bigger impact on mortality than

quitting smoking.

To keep your relationships active,

the phone is your lifeline. I’ve set a

personal goal to talk ( actually talk, not

text) with one or two friends, elderly

neighbors or family members by

phone every day until this pandemic

ends.

The one upside of every disaster

I’ve covered over the past two decades

is that people feel a strong impulse to

come together and help each other. S o

far, I’ve seen that same tendency play

out among friends and neighbors, de-

spite social distancing, and we all have

to work to keep that going. The coro-

navirus gives us an excuse to check in

with each other.

The third antidote is mindfulness.

If you have resisted this trend so far,

now may be the time to reconsider.

Meditation reduces inflammation

and enhances our immune functions,

literally undoing the damage of self-

isolation. There is evidence that

prayer can have a similar effect.

I’ve been using the meditation app

Headspace for 10 minutes every day

for the p ast two years. The big s urprise

is that meditation is not about clear-

ing your mind. It’s about managing

your attention, and it’s a hard skill to

learn without some kind of guidance.

It m ay s ound kind of woo woo, but the

science is persuasive. More persuasive

than it is for other things we do (such

as taking multivitamins).

Fourth, do something small for

someone else. In surveys, people say

volunteering gives them a sense of

purpose and reduces anxiety. In Ire-

land, a woman named Helen

O ’Rahilly has helped organize nearly

6,000 volunteers to help elderly and

immune-compromised people get

groceries, almost entirely through

Twitter. In Louisville, Erin Hinson is

matching volunteers with people in

need using Google Docs. My son and

another kid on our street created fliers

offering to help run errands for any-

one who can’t go outside.

Wherever they strike, disasters

have a way of revealing our preexist-

ing weaknesses. But they also open u p

opportunities. I’ve seen this again and

again, from communities destroyed

by Hurricane Katrina to families dev-

astated by 9/11. There is a golden hour

after disaster strikes, a chance t o come

together and build resilience.

But this doesn’t happen automati-

cally. We h ave to seize the opportunity,

without fear. Viruses may be conta-

gious, but so is courage.

Amanda ripley is a contributing writer at

the Atlantic and the author of “the

Unthinkable: Who survives When Disaster

strikes — and Why.”

Combating loneliness

in an age of self-quarantine

DAnIel fIsHel for tHe WAsHIngton Post

BY SUSAN ATHEY

AND DEAN KARLAN

O

ur economy runs on mutual in-

terdependence. As we spend

time in self-isolation, let’s think

about all the people who depend

on us to make a living: the Lyft d river, the

dry cleaner, the child-care provider, the

barista at the coffee shop. As everything

from sports games to evenings out with

friends gets canceled because of covid-19,

economic activity is grinding to a halt.

People are starting t o practice not only

social distancing but also economic dis-

tancing, which leaves a lot of people —

especially the most economically vulner-

able — in the lurch. It’s easy to feel

powerless watching the human toll

mount. What can we do to make a differ-

ence when we’re stuck at home, discon-

nected both socially and economically?

First, if your own income is secure,

you can redirect funds you would have

been spending on commuting, movies

or restaurants to those who don’t have

the privilege of a steady paycheck or

stable housing. As schools, where up to

20 million needy kids get lunch, close

and parents lose child care, and as

workers lose their income, the most

vulnerable families face immediate

challenges meeting basic needs. Local

charities that are picking up the slack

need donations (cash, not goods) now

more than ever. Yo u can find local food

banks and homeless services at Impact-

Matters, which has identified high-im-

pact organizations in 44 cities. Right

now, it’s vital that we create economic

connections through the safety net in

our communities.

Second, act globally. As bad as the

coronavirus has been in wealthy coun-

tries, it will likely be much more devas-

tating in poor countries that have worse

health-care systems. In many places, so-

cial distancing is not even an option.

Imagine how quickly the virus may

spread in a crowded refugee camp with-

out adequate hygiene and sanitation.

Organizations such as the Interna-

tional Rescue Committee already have

the infrastructure and expertise in place

to help when covid-19 spreads through

crowded refugee camps. Donating now

can help them prepare and prevent fur-

ther tragedies for t hose in refugee camps.

A reputable medical charity such as Doc-

tors Without Borders or Partners in

Health can use donations t o buy supplies

and staff up for the pandemic.

What about a global charity that re-

duces economic distancing without in-

creasing social distancing? GiveDirectly

has a unique model, one quite appropri-

ate for t his context. They s end money via

mobile transfers directly (and q uickly) to

low-income households. And they are

evidence-backed, having conducted sev-

eral randomized evaluations with Inno-

vations for Poverty Action to validate

that the money goes to good use. Since

the coronavirus cannot be transmitted

over the phone, it’s the perfect socially

distant/economically close charity for

the occasion.

Third, think a bout other ways you may

be economically distancing yourself in

your daily life. You can try to reverse or

make up for it, if you can afford to. If you

go to a restaurant or coffee shop and

notice how empty it is, you can leave a

large tip. If you have a house cleaner,

tutor for your child or anyone else you

don’t need services from now, consider

continuing to pay them, if you can. If you

aren’t dry cleaning clothes for work, but

always meant to get the curtains or

tablecloths cleaned, now’s probably a

good time if you want your cleaners to

still be in business when our normal

routine resumes. These may seem like

small actions, but they add up (and right

now they are adding up in the wrong

direction).

Obviously not everyone has t he luxury

to take these a ctions right now. But those

who have the means to weather the

storm can help reduce the economic

impact on those who do not. Even at a

time when you may be physically more

isolated than ever before, you can main-

tain economic connection to those who

rely on you, and create new connections

to people from around the world who

need your help.

susan Athey is a professor at the stanford

graduate school of Business and a board

member of Innovations for Poverty Action.

Dean Karlan is a professor at northwestern’s

Kellogg school of Management and founder

of Innovations for Poverty Action.

Some ways people can help soften

the economic impact of the coronavirus