The Boston Globe - 11.03.2020

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020 The Boston Globe Opinion A

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Morecancellations,

cases,concernsinface

ofspreadingvirus

Everyone, young and old, must be

vigilant in preventing virus spread

In many cases, it won’t be necessary tocallMom (or Dad)

because so many grandparents are helping young families

every day with child care (“Call your Mom: The generation-

al politics of Covid-19,” Opinion, March 10). Grandparents

are on the scene daily while parents of young children are

at work. So, although the younger generations are less sus-

ceptible to death from the virus, they should be no less vigi-

lant in preventing the spread of this virus, or any other ail-

ment for that matter.

All too often, parents send their ill children to school be-

cause of the lack of child care. Unfortunately, the illness

spreads to other children (and teachers), who go home to

parents, grandparents, and siblings — and the vicious circle

begins. There’s no avoiding the intergenerational aspect of

spreading disease, and responsibility for the degree of risk

must be taken seriously by every citizen.

PAT CONWAY

Dennis

A real president would be

leading us through this

I was born when Eisenhower was president. There have

been a few since.

If we had a real president, he or she already would have

given a speech about being more careful so as not to put

others at increased risk, and about caring about the vulner-

able among us. He or she would be leading us by setting

and sharing examples of how to serve each other, to be

there safely for each other. Obama would have. The Bushes

would have, Reagan would have. Clinton would have. Cart-

er would have. Ford would have. Nixon would have. John-

son would have. Kennedy would have. Eisenhower would

have.

When, oh when, will we have a real president again?

RICK SCHRENKER

North Reading

Trump could only stoke

our pandemic fears

The coronavirus creates a new level of pressure on Presi-

dent Trump in his reality struggles. The spread of this pan-

demic arouses primal anxieties in all of us that have to do

with the vulnerability of our bodies and the threat of mor-

tality. Even under ordinary conditions these are powerful

concerns, as reflected in the importance of health care as a

political issue.

The widespread death anxiety created by the present

pandemic cannot be appeased by grandiose claims of per-

fect control over a minimized outbreak. When experiencing

anxiety about medical mortality, we turn mainly to physi-

cians, and they are frequently at odds with Trump’s version

of denial and control. Trump has made uneasy compromis-

es with medical views, but his erratic handling of the pan-

demic and his empty assurances about the economy do not

inspire trust.

We then get a vicious circle of rejection of Trump’s false

claims, leading to his increased anxiety and grandiosity, re-

sulting in further mistrust on the part of the population,

and so on. We can expect additional fantasy and ever more

bitter attacks on those who question it.

DR. ROBERT JAY LIFTON

New York

The writer is a lecturer in psychiatry at Columbia Uni-

versity.

Governor Baker’s Housing Choice bill (“Letting towns solve

the Mass. housing shortage,” Editorial, Feb. 19) will help

towns enact housing reform by implementing a simple ma-

jority vote for zoning decisions, but for people like me and

thousands of others, nothing is simple. There is nothing

simple about realizing you are homeless after just graduat-

ing college. There is nothing simple about having a $70,

college loan debt hanging over your head while being ex-

pected to come up with more than $4,000 for startup costs

for an apartment smaller than the dorm you just left.

Ironically, though I work as a housing case manager at

Metro Housing Boston, I myself have battled homelessness

for the last nine years, often resorting to nights in the driv-

er’s seat of my car. Those who fall into the low- and ex-

tremely-low-income brackets are either relocated to subur-

ban communities or risk losing their vouchers when

project-based buildings are bought and sold like pieces on a

Monopoly board.

I agree with the Globe’s editorial that zoning laws will

not cure all of Massachusetts’ housing woes. And as the

housing crisis continues to worsen, particularly for families

I work with every day, focus on our neighbors with very low

incomes needs to remain a priority.

SARAH DUFFY

Medford

Editor’s note: This letter previously appeared on the Met-

ro Housing Boston website.

Shehasbattledhomelessness,

andshe’sahousingcasemanager

After reading various articles about male vs. female candi-

dates for president, it occurred to me that an interesting ex-

periment would be to find actors to follow the scripts of the

Feb. 25 debate, but with men taking the roles of the female

candidates and women taking the male roles. They would

need to imitate the dynamics of the original debaters for

this experiment to work. What would we learn about our

reactions to these candidates?

VI PATEK

Nahant

Agenderexperimentfor

howweviewthecandidates

sharp increase in US refugee

admissions and a path to citi-

zenship for all undocumented

immigrants. When Obama ran

for the White House in 2008,

by contrast, it was as an

enforcement-first hard-liner.

He cracked down so hard on

those who crossed the border

illegally, he was known for

much of his presidency as the

“deporter-in-chief.”

No Democratic presidential

nominee ever endorsed any-

thing like the radical Green

New Deal, with its price tag in

the tens of trillions of dollars

and its goal of eliminating the

use of all fossil fuels. But Biden

does. No Democratic nominee

ever called for a national mini-

mum wage of $15 an hour. But

Biden does. The former vice

president has moved emphati-

cally leftward on abortion, on

the death penalty, on free trade.

By any understanding of “mod-

erate,” as that term was used

when Obama or Bill Clinton

was president, Biden is no

moderate.

What Biden is today is what

he has always been: a liberal

Democrat. But as his party has

shifted left in a hyperpolarized

era, Biden has shifted with it.

Many of the positions he takes

that are described as centrist

today, observed Axios in Janu-

ary, “would have been liberal

dreams during the Bill Clinton

years and still out of reach in

the Obama era.” On policy,

Biden is a moderate primarily

in the sense that he embraces

positions that most Democrats

no longer fight over.

All of which means that

even if Biden wins the Demo-

cratic nomination, progressive

Democrats will have reason to

rejoice. Their party’s standard-

bearer will be someone whose

platform skews further to the

left than any major party plat-

form in the past. Sanders may

not end up on the November

ballot, but it will unmistakably

reflect his influence. For he and

his band of progressives have

pushed their party to the left

with such success that even the

“moderate” in the race would

be the most liberal Democrat

ever nominated for president.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at

[email protected]. Follow

him on Twitter @jeff_jacoby.

To subscribe to Arguable, his

weekly newsletter, go to

bitly.com/Arguable.

P

resident Trump is so vain, he

thinks the coronavirus is about

him.

To be precise, he thinks it’s all

about his reelection campaign, and

how the virus will affect his political for-

tunes, not its impact on the country. Pre-

dictably, his administration’s handling of

this still-burgeoning crisis is

rigidly on-brand — denials

and lies, served with his usual

slab of ineptitude.

Meanwhile, some

Republicans, like Secretary of

State Mike Pompeo, are now

referring to the coronavirus as

the “Wuhan virus,” for the city

in China where the virus was

first recognized. In a tweet,

House minority leader Kevin

McCarthy called it “Chinese

coronavirus.” The intention

here is clear: to shift attention

from the Trump

administration’s all-thumbs

response, and brand China as

the cause of the virus.

Even before this bigot

pivot, fear of the virus has

been having a devastating

effect on Chinatowns

nationwide and has increased prejudice

against Asians and Asian Americans. Last

week on an MBTA platform, I saw a young

Asian man, wearing a surgical mask,

verbally harassed by an older man who,

with profanity and epithets, repeatedly

called him “a plague.”

World Health

Organization officials

may not be ready to

classify Covid-19 as a

pandemic, but we’re

being consumed by a

pandemic of lies,

xenophobia, and

incompetence.

Oh, and toilet paper panic.

If a crisis reveals who we are, then the

prognosis isn’t too good. This moment

recalls “The Monsters are Due on Maple

Street,” a classic “Twilight Zone” episode.

After a possible meteor and unexplained

power outage, hysteria erupts among

small-town residents. Convinced there is

an alien among them, they quickly turn

on one another in a spiral of accusations,

prejudice, and violence.

Now shoppers are duking it out over

toilet paper. Store shelves that once

stocked disinfectants and hand sanitizers

are empty. People are likely snapping up

these items to resell them online because

nothing says “we’re all in this together”

like price gouging.

Others are resorting to homemade

hand sanitizer recipes — have they never

heard of soap and water? On Monday,

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York

showed off gallons of

sanitizer made by the

state — using prison

labor. (Many inmates

aren’t even allowed to

have hand sanitizers

due to its alcohol

content.)

But hey, at least

Cuomo has been in

New York as the crisis ramped up in his

state — unlike Governor Charlie Baker

who was enjoying a Utah ski vacation as

cases in Massachusetts rose sharply last

weekend. (He returned Monday night

and declared a state of emergency on

Tuesday afternoon.)

From slack leadership and conflicting

messages to disparities in wealth and

health care, this crisis is revealing the ugly

fault lines in this nation. America defines

itself by its strength, but in times like these,

its fragility is what’s most apparent. Based

on the false notion that it will all work out

because, in America, arrogance propels a

lack of preparedness. And, as usual, this

approach ignores society’s

most vulnerable.

When officials say those

experiencing possible

symptoms should consult

their health care provider,

they forget those who don’t

have one. They overlook

that not everyone has paid

sick time or a job that per-

mits them to work from

home. For many children,

food received during

school hours is their only

daily meal. What happens

if schools are closed? And

do their families have

home computers so they

can keep up with their les-

sons remotely, if it comes

to that?

What may be an incon-

venience for some can

prove disastrous for others.

Instead of a president calmly steering us

through an unpredictable storm, we’re

burdened with a tower of babble who lies to

the public, undermines scientists and

health experts, shuns recommendations,

shakes hands along rope lines, and

promises more rallies.

With more than 4,000 deaths

worldwide, we’re not only battling the

coronavirus, but racism, greed, and an

administration with a zealous disregard for

anything that does not directly benefit

Trump. For him, it’s truth and facts that

must be eradicated.

His callous actions are no less

endangering than the coronavirus itself.

And if its spread, enabled by Trump’s lies,

continues, even your hoarded stacks of

toilet paper won’t protect you.

Renée Graham can be reached at

[email protected]. Follow her on

Twitter @reneeygraham.

A pandemic of lies, xenophobia,

and toilet paper panic

GETTY

LESLEY BECKER/GLOBE STAFF; ADOBE; GLOBE FILE PHOTOS

RENÉE GRAHAM

Ifacrisisrevealswho

weare,thenthe

prognosisisnotgood.