10 SR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020TO THE EDITOR:
Re “The Steep Costs of ‘Herd
Immunity,’” by John M. Barry
(Op-Ed, Oct. 20):
Having failed miserably at
protecting Americans from
becoming sick or dying of
Covid-19, President Trump,
attempting to seize victory from
the jaws of defeat, now seems
to want as many healthy Ameri-
cans as possible to catch the
virus. That way, those who are
left alive will be immune and
the pandemic will disappear —
like magic, or hydroxychloro-
quine or Clorox! Herd immuni-
ty is the president’s latest pan-
demic panacea.
Even if the warnings of ex-
pert scientists prevail, Mr.
Trump has further encouraged
a Covid-weary population,
eager to breathe free, to stop
wearing masks and keeping
their distance. And while
younger people sneeze and
cough their way to presumed
immunity, how might older
people escape this potentially
deadly infection?MARY-LOU WEISMAN
WESTPORT, CONN.TO THE EDITOR:
John M. Barry makes a great
case for what an unethical and
untenable idea it is to pursue
herd immunity for Covid-19. But
he leaves out the implicit eu-
genics of the approach. Those
who are constitutionally
weaker, those who are minor-
ities (who seem to have greater
morbidity and mortality) and
those who are lower in socio-
economic classes or in public
service jobs (New York City
transit workers have a 25 per-
cent infection rate, according to
one study) would all be sacri-
ficed for the greater good.
There is a saying that “the
greatness of a nation can be
judged by how it treats its
weakest members.”
DAVID J. MELVIN, CHESTER, N.J.TO THE EDITOR:
Thank you for Prof. John M.
Barry’s sober article addressing
the possibility of herd immunity
from Covid-19. Such advice
coming from the White House
reminds me of a notorious
excuse from the time of the
Vietnam War: “We had to de-
stroy the village in order to
save it.”
Heaven help us.BARRY SPIKINGS
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.TO THE EDITOR:
President Trump says Ameri-
cans are “tired of Covid-19” and
mocks Joe Biden for pledging to
follow the science.
He’s right that Americans are
tired of the virus. But his con-
clusion that we want to ignore
the pandemic and get back to
our normal routines despite the
imminent danger is dead
wrong. Americans want our
leaders to be responsible in
getting us out of this deadly
health threat, and to do that we
want them to follow the science.
That is why people overwhelm-
ingly trust Dr. Anthony Fauci
and distrust the president.
In mocking Joe Biden, and by
ignoring the deadly effects of
the pandemic, Mr. Trump is
following his familiar playbook.
When faced with financial
failure he declares bankruptcy
and leaves others to pay the
bills. When faced with personal
failure he deflects with lies and
humiliation. When faced with
political failure he doubles
down with demagogy and ap-
peals to racism that inflame
passions and divide Americans.
He is a mockery of a leader,
and more than anything, we are
tired of him.
SEYMOUR ROSENBLOOM
ELKINS PARK, PA.
The writer, a rabbi, is a board
member of Democratic Jewish
Outreach PA.TO THE EDITOR:
In August almost half a million
bikers from all over the country
attended a 10-day-long party in
South Dakota, the Sturgis
Motorcycle Rally, with almost
no masks or social distancing.
Is there any doubt that this
contributed to the Covid surge?
Yes, mask mandates are an
infringement on a person’s
freedom, but so are speed lim-
its, zoning laws, building codes,
and food and drug laws. But all
of these things are part of the
price we have to pay if we want
to live together safely.
John Stuart Mill wrote that
liberty means “doing as we like,
subject to such consequences
as may follow, without impedi-
ment from our fellow creatures,
as long as what we do does not
harm themeven though they
should think our conduct fool-
ish, perverse or wrong” (em-
phasis added).
The guy who won’t wear a
mask thinks he is saying: “I’m
a big strong guy; I’m not afraidof a virus. I might get sick for a
few days but I’ll recover.” What
he is actually saying is: “I’m a
selfish guy. I don’t care if I
spread the virus to a bunch of
others even if some of them
might die.”(REV.) DAVID X. STUMP
JERSEY CITY, N.J.TO THE EDITOR:
“There’s a Word for Why We
Wear Masks, and Liberals
Should Say It,” by Michael
Tomasky (Op-Ed, nytimes.com,
Oct. 17), is on target. He’s ad-
dressing conservatives’ use of
the word “freedom.” Liberals
need to start talking about
freedom, too, because the word
really does mean two different
things, depending on who’s
talking.
For conservatives, freedom is
the right to carry a gun, any-
place, anytime. For liberals,
freedom is not having to worry
about getting shot. For conser-
vatives, freedom is not having
to have health care unless you
decide that you want to pay for
it. For liberals, freedom is hav-
ing health care, so that disease
is far less likely to take our life
savings or our lives. Those are
just two examples; there are
many more.
Conservative freedoms seem
to be about walking on a high
wire, with no net if people lose
their footing. Liberal freedoms
are a baseline of protections
that give people fewer dangers
and more choices about how
they live their lives.
I know which freedom I want.
Mr. Tomasky is right. The liber-
als need to talk about it.
CONNIE HOWARD
PALO ALTO, CALIF.TO THE EDITOR:
There are, of course, millions of
Americans who say they are
“pro life,” believe that life be-
gins at conception and don’t
believe that a woman has a
right to choose. Many of these
same people refuse a mask
mandate that saves lives, be-
cause it violates their right to
choose.LAWRENCE LEVY, LOS ANGELESTO THE EDITOR:
As a physician I see that signs
in stores, pronouncements from
public health officials and news
coverage are focused almost
entirely on mask wearing and
no longer stress handwashing.
This is a fatal public health
failure.
Respiratory disease precau-
tions involve both masks and
handwashing! A restaurant
worker who is not sick and
wearing gloves receives a cred-
it card from a person with the
virus. That person processes
the credit card but does not
wash hands or gloves, then
proceeds to contaminate the
next card, then contaminates
the menus, water glasses, the
ketchup. Going from table to
table it’s possible to infect many
other people.
Cleanse your hands when
touching anything another
person has recently touched.
Wash hands or gloves between
every single customer. We are
well on our way to another
full-blown pandemic, with thou-
sands more dying each day.
Public health authorities are
asleep at the switch in terms of
handwashing. Wake up!
THOMAS F. KLINE
RALEIGH, N.C.TO THE EDITOR:
Re “Children Feel as Empty as
the Fields They Used to Roam,”
by Kurt Streeter (Sports of The
Times, Oct. 12):
The decline in youth partici-
pation in sports stemming from
the Covid-19 pandemic is trou-
bling, given what we know
about the physical and mental
health benefits of playing
sports. It’s especially disap-
pointing to me, an Olympic
swimmer, that the virus forced
pool closings, as it affected not
only children training to be
competitive swimmers, but also
the safety of all children.
Pools provide access to life-
saving resources year-round,
like swim lessons, which can
reduce a child’s risk of drown-
ing by nearly 90 percent. This is
notable, considering that
drowning is the leading cause of
accidental death in children 1 to
4 years old, with swimming-
pool deaths of African-Ameri-
can children 5 to 19 years old
occurring at a rate more than
five times that of Caucasian
children.
This critical skill can be mas-
tered safely, as there is no
evidence that Covid-19 is trans-
mitted through chlorinated
water. We need to get children
back into sports and keep them
safe; keeping pools open is a
good way to start.
CULLEN JONES
COLORADO SPRINGSLETTERSHerd Immunity and Masks
Readers are skeptical of herd immunity and view
masks as a limit on one’s freedom that saves lives.
Of all the things President Trump has destroyed, the Repub-
lican Party is among the most dismaying.
“Destroyed” is perhaps too simplistic, though. It would
be more precise to say that Mr. Trump accelerated his par-
ty’s demise, exposing the rot that has been eating at its core
for decades and leaving it a hollowed-out shell devoid of
ideas, values or integrity, committed solely to preserving its
own power even at the expense of democratic norms, insti-
tutions and ideals.
Tomato, tomahto. However you characterize it, the Re-
publican Party’s dissolution under Mr. Trump is bad for
American democracy.
A healthy political system needs robust, competing par-
ties to give citizens a choice of ideological, governing and
policy visions. More specifically, center-right parties have
long been crucial to the health of modern liberal democra-
cies. Among other benefits, a strong center right can co-opt
more palatable aspects of the far right, isolating and drain-
ing energy from the more radical elements that threaten to
destabilize the system.
Today’s G.O.P. does not come close to serving this func-
tion. It has instead allowed itself to be co-opted and radical-
ized by Trumpism. Its ideology has been reduced to a slurry
of paranoia, white grievance and authoritarian populism. Its
governing vision is reactionary, a cross beyond obstruction-
ism and owning the libs. Its policy agenda, as defined by the
party platform, is whatever President Trump wants.
“There is no philosophical underpinning for the Repub-
lican Party anymore,” the veteran strategist Reed Galen re-
cently lamented to this board. A co-founder of the Lincoln
Project, a political action committee run by current and for-
mer Republicans dedicated to defeating Mr. Trump and his
enablers, Mr. Galen characterized the party as a self-serv-
ing, power-hungry gang.
With his dark gospel, the president has enthralled the
Republican base, rendering other party leaders too afraid to
stand up to him. But to stand with Mr. Trump requires a con-
stant betrayal of one’s own integrity and values. This goes
beyond the usual policy flip-flops — what happened to fiscal
hawks anyway? — and political hypocrisy, though there
have been plenty of both. Witness the scramble to fill a Su-
preme Court seat just weeks before Election Day by many of
the same Senate Republicans who denied President Barack
Obama his high court pick in 2016, claiming it would be
wrong to fill a vacancy eight months out from that election.
Mr. Trump demands that his interests be placed above
those of the nation. His presidency has been an extended ex-
ercise in defining deviancy down — and dragging the rest of
his party down with him.
Having long preached “character” and “family values,”
Republicans have given a pass to Mr. Trump’s personal de-
generacy. The affairs, the hush money, the multiple accusa-
tions of assault and harassment, the gross boasts of grab-
bing unsuspecting women — none of it matters. White evan-
gelicals remain especially faithful adherents, in large part
because Mr. Trump has appointed around 200 judges to the
federal bench.
For all their talk about revering the Constitution, Re-
publicans have stood by, slack-jawed, in the face of the presi-
dent’s assault on checks and balances. Mr. Trump has
spurned the concept of congressional oversight of his office.
After losing a budget fight and shutting down the govern-
ment in 2018-19, he declared a phony national emergency at
the southern border so he could siphon money from the Pen-
tagon for his border wall. He put a hold on nearly $400 mil-
lion in Senate-approved aide to Ukraine — a move that
played a central role in his impeachment.
So much for Republicans’ Obama-era nattering about
“executive overreach.”
Despite fetishizing “law and order,” Republicans have
shrugged as Mr. Trump has maligned and politicized federal
law enforcement, occasionally lending a hand. Impeach-
ment offered the most searing example. Parroting the White
House line that the entire process was illegitimate, the pres-
ident’s enablers made clear they had his back no matter
what.
The debasement goes beyond passive indulgence. Con-
gressional bootlickers, channeling Mr. Trump’s rantings
about the Deep State, have used their power to target those
who dared to investigate him. Committee chairmen like
Representative Devin Nunes and Senator Ron Johnson have
conducted hearings aimed at smearing Mr. Trump’s political
opponents and delegitimizing the special counsel’s Russia
inquiry.
As head of the Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee, Mr. Johnson pushed a corruption investi-
gation of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter that he bragged would ex-
pose the former vice president’s “unfitness for office.” In-
stead, he wasted taxpayer money producing an 87-page re-
hash of unsubstantiated claims reeking of a Russian disin-
formation campaign. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, another
Republican on the committee, criticized the inquiry as “a po-
litical exercise,” noting, “It’s not the legitimate role of gov-
ernment or Congress, or for taxpayer expense to be used in
an effort to damage political opponents.”
Not that congressional toadies are the only offenders. A
parade of administration officials — some of whom were
well respected before their Trumpian tour — have stood by,
or pitched in, as the president has denigrated the F.B.I., fed-
eral prosecutors, intelligence agencies and the courts. They
have failed to prioritize election security. They have pushed
the limits of the law and human decency to advance Mr.
Trump’s draconian immigration agenda.
Most horrifically, Republican leaders have stood by as
the president has lied to the public about a pandemic that
has already killed more than 220,000 Americans. They have
watched him politicize masks, testing, the distribution of
emergency equipment and pretty much everything else.
Some echo his incendiary talk, fueling violence in their own
communities. In the campaign’s closing weeks, as case num-
bers and hospitalizations climb and health officials warn of a
rough winter, Mr. Trump is stepping up the attacks on his
scientific advisers, deriding them as “idiots” and declaring
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top expert in infectious
diseases, a “disaster.” Only a smattering of Republican offi-
cials has managed even a tepid defense of Dr. Fauci.
Whether out of fear, fealty or willful ig-
norance, these so-called leaders are
complicit in this national tragedy.
As Republican lawmakers grow in-
creasingly panicked that Mr. Trump will
lose re-election — possibly damaging
their fortunes as well — some are
scrambling to salvage their reputations
by pretending they haven’t spent the past four years letting
him run amok. In an Oct. 14 call with constituents, Senator
Ben Sasse of Nebraska gave a blistering assessment of the
president’s failures and “deficient” values, from his misogy-
ny to his calamitous handling of the pandemic to “the way
he kisses dictators’ butts.” Mr. Sasse was less clear about
why, the occasional targeted criticism notwithstanding, he
has enabled these deficiencies for so long.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, locked in his own tight
re-election race, recently told the local media that he, too,
has disagreed with Mr. Trump on numerous issues, includ-
ing deficit spending, trade policy and his raiding of the de-
fense budget. Mr. Cornyn said he opted to keep his opposi-
tion private rather than get into a public tiff with Mr. Trump
“because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.”
Profiles in courage these are not.
Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on his party would fill a
book. It has, in fact, filled several, as well as a slew of arti-
cles, social media posts and op-eds, written by conserva-
tives both heartbroken and incensed over what has become
of their party.
But many of these disillusioned Republicans also ac-
knowledge that their team has been descending into white
grievance, revanchism and know-nothing populism for dec-
ades. Mr. Trump just greased the slide. “He is the logical
conclusion of what the Republican Party has become in the
last 50 or so years,” the longtime party strategist Stuart
Stevens asserts in his new book, “It Was All a Lie.”
The scars of Mr. Trump’s presidency will linger long af-
ter he leaves office. Some Republicans believe that, if those
scars run only four years deep, rather than eight, their party
can be nursed back to health. Others question whether there
is anything left worth saving. Mr. Stevens’s prescription:
“Burn it to the ground, and start over.”R.I.P., G.O.P.
GUILLEM CASASÚSEDITORIALThe Party of
Lincoln had a
good run. Then
came Mr. Trump
and his many
enablers..