A Real Buccaneer

With all sports suspended, the only action appears to be in the NFL where free agency has begun.  Among the surprises, Tom Brady is headed to Tampa Bay.  Carolina has traded Cam Newton for Teddy Bridgewater.  Nick Foles has landed in Chicago, after some talk New England might take a chance on him.

The NBA season is over.  There will be no March Madness.  The NHL is finished for the year.  Major League Baseball has suspended spring training and so we won't be seeing the first pitch until well into the summer, if at all.

It does feel like wartime, but having Trump call himself a "wartime president" for invoking the Defense Production Act is a bit scary.  The only point of doing this is to produce more respirators and other health care equipment to battle the quickly spreading coronavirus.  But, he offered all the rhetoric of past wartime presidents to assuage his bruised ego.

The problem began when Trump didn't take the virus seriously enough.  He thought it was mostly a PR exercise and had his son-in-law Jared advise him on how best to spin this thing in his favor.  When that didn't work out, he called in what he regards as a medical A-Team to address the problem on a massive scale.  Jared is nowhere to be found now, on to his next task, whatever that may be.

Apparently, Trump didn't understand the magnitude of the crisis until Tucker Carlson called attention to it on Fox.  Surrounded by the "best experts" he still turns to Fox for advice, even if many of the talking heads on Fox are still playing COVID-19 as little more than a common flu.

I guess we should be glad that the enormity of the situation finally sunk into his Trumpness's thick skull, more likely because he genuinely feared he might have gotten the virus at CPAC or his resort at Mar-a-Lago, when news spread he came in contact with infected persons.  Nothing like bringing a disease close to home to make you respond properly.

Even still, most of the measures being proposed are cosmetic, meant to calm a panicked nation rather than address the virus head on.  He still hasn't called for a nationwide lockdown, leaving it up to the states to decide for themselves.  As a result, you see some states take stringent measures.  Nevada has closed down all its hotels and casinos.  Others have opted for a more casual approach.  Florida has let Spring Break go on as planned, essentially making itself a petri dish for the contagion.  Although, some Florida municipalities and counties have taken it into their own hands to close down beaches and nightclubs.

We see various acts of personal defiance to the bans, such as Kid Rock refusing to close down his nightclub, and Devin Nunes encouraging his constituency to ignore the state orders.  California Gov. Newsom is on the cusp of declaring martial law in the state to get all the local authorities to comply with the lockdown.  As it is, the National Guard has been called up in some states to deal with the crisis.  Of course such drastic measures are worrisome as we see our democracy slipping into an autocratic state, not much unlike what happened across Europe between WWI and WWII.  Nothing like a pandemic to enact war powers.  We can only hope all this is temporary.

Even in Europe, where you do have universal health care and ready access to hospitals, the virus appears to be spiraling out of control.  Italy reported nearly 500 deaths in less than 24 hours.  It no longer is a question of if, but when the virus will spread throughout the continent.

Oddly enough, China and South Korea, the initial hardest hit countries, appear to have brought the virus under control, at least for the time being.  In both cases, massive mobilization of health care workers and mobile hospitals were key.

If Trump was serious about this thing, he would have MASH units being set up all over the country to treat the rapidly growing number of cases.  This would be putting the military to good use during a time of crisis, rather than have them patrolling the borders.

I suppose the one good thing to come out of all this is that there are far less planes in the air, cars on the roads and people on the streets.  Mother Earth is breathing a big sigh of relief, and magically the canals of Venice clear up, the air feels fresher to breath and the empty streets open up new vistas.  Most European cities are only letting people out for essential work and essential trips to the stores.

But, what to do about all these lost sports?  I imagine some owners will be seeking compensation from all the lost revenue.  After all, this is a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry that has a deep hold on the public imagination.  Yet, few if any are offering compensation to the large staffs put out by this crisis.  It is the players themselves who are stepping up to pay club personnel during the lockdown.

This is also true of the airline industry, which used its tax cuts on stock buybacks, yet now is demanding a relief package in the neighborhood of $60 billion to make up for all the lost revenue.  You can't have it both ways.

Maybe this virus will help us reset our priorities?  I know that is wishful thinking but after WWII European countries created the social welfare systems we see today, hoping that a huge safety net would diminish the rise of populist figures like Mussolini, Franco and Hitler.  For the most part, it has worked these past 70 years.  Only now is it showing signs of stress with fringe figures rising to the fore.

For some reason, many Americans remain immune to common sense.  They would rather go on with the hodge-podge system we have in place rather than see a universal health care system that would greatly easy the medical worries of a nation constantly suffering from lack of health insurance.  The American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and just about every representative association of health care providers have favored a universal payer system and eventually a universal health care system, but the private health insurance and pharmaceutical companies have actively campaigned against it.  As a result we have fewer beds per 1000 persons than most European countries.  Germany has four times more hospital beds available per capita than the US, yet it too fears the onslaught of patients if the pandemic were to infect the majority of the population.

Meanwhile, Trump seems to think he can call on the Medical A-Team whenever he needs it.  He sees no point in having these guys around when times are good.  We just subcontract these services, calling on wartime measures to meet the gaping shortfalls in our health care industry.  Imagine how much better prepared we would be if we had spent some of the money we spend on military defense each year to have a proper functioning public health care system?  After all, these are our taxpayer dollars too.

Easier to think about where Tom Brady will land or if Seattle will resign Jadeveon Clowney.  No one really wants to think about these far more pressing issues until it is too late.