Smoke and mirrors

 I guess Steve and I have both had a busy week, but I wanted to say a quick word about the Fauci hearing yesterday. The internet is blowing up over this, with some claiming that the doctor’s diary shows pandemic concerns were overblown and others blaming Fauci himself for creating a bio weapon that killed millions. Both claims can’t be true and neither is.

The Fauci hearing was lawfare in its most basic form with Republicans using their position, not to investigate the government’s actions in the pandemic, but to attempt to find something - anything - to use to prosecute the scientist. When it was obvious that wouldn’t work, they chose to humiliate him.

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In context, Fauci’s diary entries don’t say what Republicans say they do. By definition, a diary is a stream of thought, written as events unfold. That Fauci’s view of the virus and unfolding pandemic changed over time should not be surprising. This was a brand new bug that we knew nothing about. 

This was a brand new bug that ended up killing more than a million Americans. It went on until the vaccines stopped the outbreak. Ivermectin didn’t end the pandemic. Neither did hydroxychloroquine. Both those drugs were proven ineffective.

There is no firm evidence to prove the lab leak theory, but if a dangerous virus did escape from Wuhan, wouldn’t that mean that strict protocols were necessary? If the lab leak theory is correct, then so was Fauci.

Fauci had no authority on his own. He could only make recommendations to the president and state governors. Without a doubt, not all of those recommendations were correct, but in the context of a pandemic caused by a novel virus, they are justifiable. 

Voters should ask themselves, why now, five years after the pandemic and two months before the midterms, is Fauci being pilloried? I think there are multiple answers to that question, beginning with the fact that Republican approval is plummeting. Republicans are losing a war with Iran, tariffs and oil prices (from the war) are dragging down the economy with higher prices, Americans are being harassed and detained because they look foreign, and corruption is rampant. Oh, and the Epstein files still have not been released after 556 days.

The hearing was also an attempt to rehabilitate Trump, just as the president has been relitigating the 2020 election. Trump’s handling of COVID played a major role in his loss. Fauci’s diary records that Trump repeatedly asked him to say positive and untrue things to help his reelection campaign, and that Trump was unconcerned about the pandemic.

Along the same lines, with anti-vax sentiment high in the GOP, Republicans want to distance Trump from Operation Warp Speed. Ironically, the effort to rapidly produce a vaccine was the best and most effective policy of the first Trump term, and now Republicans are running away from it. 

Most Republican politicians, including Trump, got vaccinated while many told their constituents not to. The result was a clear partisan divide in the COVID death toll in which Republicans died at a higher rate than Democrats. Republican resistance to the vaccines and safety measures is the clear explanation.

Finally, I’ve always thought that Fauci’s original sin was being more popular than Trump. The calm, competent doctor inspired confidence during the dark days of the pandemic while Trump rambled about injecting disinfectant. Fauci had to be co-opted or destroyed.

I’ll add here that Fauci’s reflections on his newfound fame are unseemly, but not criminal. If the truth were told, I think most of us, if thrust into the spotlight, would be similarly awed and overwhelmed.

Republicans can’t run on their record so they are running on distractions. Perennial Republican accusations of socialism have been ramped up to communism, and while it’s true that the Democratic Socialists present a problem for the Democrats, but they are still a minority of the party. 

The truth is evident when you look at who is attacking Fauci. It’s the Republican politicians and grifters, not doctors and medical experts. Healthcare people know that, as bad as the pandemic was, it could have been worse. 

Dr. Fauci isn’t perfect. He made mistakes, but history will remember him for his effectiveness in fighting the virus. The current attempt to rewrite history is both shameful and disturbing. I’d go so far as to say that such actions are straight out of the communist playbook.

From the Racket News

Healthcare, insurance, and the prospect of poverty

 

I normally sleep pretty well, but I woke up in the middle of the night last night thinking about Ben Sasse. If you don’t recall, Sasse is a former Nebraska senator who announced a few months ago that he has pancreatic cancer. There’s really no kind of cancer that anyone should want to get, but pancreatic cancer is one of the ones that most of us emphatically hope that we never end up with. Because it is hard to diagnose and there are few treatment options for the advanced disease, the lifespan of pancreatic cancer patients tends to be pretty short. 

At least, it did. There are now a growing number of experimental treatments for the dread cancer, and one of them reportedly shrank Sasse’s tumor. I don’t know if Sasse will survive the disease, but at least he has some hope for a positive outcome.

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Many people think I never say anything good about Donald Trump, but I applaud him for signing the Right to Try Act in 2018. This law allows terminally ill patients to try experimental treatments, and I suspect that Sasse’s good news may be related to the law. 

From there, I started thinking about my own experience with prostate cancer. After almost three and a half years, my PSA levels are still very low, which is much better than I had hoped for at the time. 

My nighttime reverie continued as I pondered the US healthcare system. Sasse is a former senator and university president with a lot of money and connections. I had few connections, but I did have savings and good insurance. It was a good thing too. 

If you’ve never had a serious illness, you may not know much about the process. As most of you are aware, health insurance in the US is tied to the employer for the vast majority of us. Whether you have good insurance or not depends not only on your choices, but those of your employer. You may have the choice of a few different plans, such as high or low deductible options, but they’re probably all with the same insurer unless you forgo the company contribution and strike out on your own. 

The same goes for disability insurance. Your company may not offer it. You might not have elected to buy the coverage if it does. 

If you have an illness severe enough to be out of work for a long time, the company will typically use your vacation or PTO (Paid Time Off) days first. Then there is short-term disability and long-term disability with separate time limits if you’re still sick. If you aren’t aware, long-term disability insurance does not pay your full salary; about 50 to 60 percent is typical. 

So, in the case of a long-term illness or injury, you have more bills than normal coming in, especially if you chose the high-deductible plan, and at the same time, your earnings have just been cut by about half. On top of that, if you stay out long enough, you may have to start paying your full health insurance premium out of pocket.

On top of all that, if the condition lasts long enough, you might lose your job when benefits run out. That doesn’t mean the illness goes away, but it does mean that you might lose your insurance. 

That quick walk-through illustrates the insanity of the American health insurance system. Our current system is only marginally more market-based than the national health insurance systems in those “socialized medicine” countries. The consumer doesn’t have much choice under either model. 

In both cases, the health care access is set up to serve people who aren’t very sick. It’s easy to get preventive care or antibiotics, but in the national health care model, you might go on a waiting list for a vital surgery. In the US, you can probably get the surgery scheduled quickly, but you may not be able to pay for it, and the odds are good that you won’t have any idea how much it costs until it’s over. 

For most of my life, the conservative line was about personal responsibility, but under our current system, you can do everything right and still be bankrupted by a medical emergency. If you have a serious, long-term illness, you’d better hope that you can get added to your spouse’s insurance. If you aren’t married, start looking. It also helps with auto insurance. 

In my prostate cancer experience, I was out of work for three months. I had bought the disability insurance and was covered on that for two months. The rub is that after my doctor cleared me to go back to work, I had to wait on the FAA to renew my flight physical. Because this was a paperwork issue, rather than a medical problem, the disability payments stopped. That was an oversight (since corrected) by my employer, and I can thank Senator Raphael Warnock’s office for helping to speed my paperwork along. (I contacted my local Republican congressman first and never got a response.)

I don’t know what the best solution is. I’m not a fan of government-run healthcare any more than I’m a fan of employer-run healthcare. Having said that, putting governments in charge at least makes more sense than tying medical insurance to a job, which makes none at all. 

The healthcare problem also impacts the retirement problem. If people spend their retirement savings on medical issues or drain their IRAs to survive while out on medical leave, they are likely to run out of money later in life, just when they need it most. 

There has to be a better way, and I think it will take both sides working together to find it. We owe it to ourselves to create a system that can supply timely, effective care without destroying our finances. 

Cancer is already a nightmare. The healthcare system shouldn’t make it worse.

From the Racket News

The war on expertise

 

You may be wondering why we didn’t cover Trump’s crazy speech last week. I didn’t watch it, and it seems like mainstream sources have done well at debunking Trump’s claims. The speech seems to have even dropped off the Republican radar quickly, but what else should we expect from a Republican presidential address that boiled down to the Democrats can run free and fair elections (2016 and 2024), but Trump can’t (2020). I think Republicans often want to forget that Trump, not Biden, was president in 2020.

Instead, I want to spend a little time on two instances that underscore how the Trump Administration is undermining public safety. Both problems arose within the past few days, but the basis for the problems were laid months ago.

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The first example was the Blue Angel low pass in Florida. Over the weekend, videoemerged of the Blue Angels flying extremely low and fast over Pensacola Beach, near the home base of the team. 

My immediate reaction was that, while this made for cool video, it was extremely dangerous to the crowd. Federal Aviation Regulations prohibit low “buzz jobs” and aerobatics over crowds. Military regulations mirror the civil rules. 

Saying this online was like kicking over an anthill. Commenters came out of the woodwork to deny any danger and claim that the team knew exactly what it was doing. These attitudes persisted even after the team leader called the pass “unsafe,” and the pilot of the aircraft in question told a congresswoman that he miscalculated the turn. 

The Navy handled this well. The team leader said the team would debrief and correct the problem. Initially, the Navy said it would conduct a safety review of the incident. 

It takes courage to admit a mistake, especially one as well-documented as the Pensacola pass. The pilot, the Blue Angels, and the Navy should be commended for handling the problem head-on and honestly.

The Navy’s civilian leadership did not perform as well. Defense Secretary Hegseth and Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao rushed to quash the review before it started, Hegseth tweeting, “The flyovers will continue until morale improves.”

The big problem is Hegseth is creating a climate that encourages risky behavior and dismissiveness of safety regulations. This is especially true since the underwhelming concern about the Blue Angels incident follows closely on the heels of other low flying incidents involving Army AH-64 Apache helicopters in Tennessee and South Carolina. It seems the only regulations that concern Hegseth involve PT and shaving.

This sort of attitude gets people killed, and both the Blue Angels and the Air Force Thunderbirds have had fatal crashes in the past, despite the faith of those who believe they can do no wrong. In fact, invulnerability is one of the five hazardous attitudes pilots are trained to avoid. (The others are anti-authority, impulsivity, macho, and resignation. Of these, four easily apply to Hegseth and the Administration.) Crashes at airshows are not unheard of, which is why aircraft aerobatics are kept a safe distance from the crowd.

The second example of a safety problem is the nationwide cyclospora outbreak of parasitic diarrhea. Under RFK’s leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC decreased monitoring of parasitic foodborne infections and the FDA suspended the Foodnet infection tracking program. Further, there is widespread agreement that the Trump Administration’s cuts left the CDC and FDA unable to manage the crisis effectively.

So far, the government has given mixed messaging on the outbreak. The source of the outbreak was originally traced to lettuce imported from Mexico by Taylor Farms and used at Taco Bell, but now the government says that, even though the test that it performed on the lettuce yielded a false positive, Taylor Farms is still the prime suspect. 

Americans are learning the hard way what some of those federal workers in the bloated bureaucracies do. Or did. Prior to DOGE, we may have had a government that was microscopically larger than the one we have today, but it was a government that effectively protected us all but the normal variety of Taco Bell diarrhea. 

DOGE enacted massive cuts to the federal workforce, but the government is still spending more than ever. The minuscule savings were squandered on the Iran war and massive explosion of the anti-immigration police state (which has been involved in more bad shootings recently as well as arresting a legal Chinese immigrant who sought asylum after working as a human rights lawyer in the PRC). 

Right-wingers thought the government was malevolent before, but under the Trump Administration, we’ve seen the altruistic segments of government eviscerated while the unaccountable (and poorly vetted and trained) police state has grown. The anti-government right has created their worst nightmare, and they don’t realize it.

The common thread between these two incidents is an antipathy to expertise, whether it be the aviation safety experts who make it possible for multimillion dollar fighter jets to fly within inches of either or the medical experts who made sure that our food supplies were not tainted. If you listen to the MAGAs, they’re all a bunch of nerds.

Part of the problem is that our safety protocols are so good that people have forgotten what it’s like to have frequent, devastating crashes or disease outbreaks. The one big recent problem that affected the American people, the COVID-19 pandemic, is not perceived as real by a large number of MAGA supporters. 

This line of thinking has taken us to a point where experts doing their jobs are either forced out or ignored. These aren’t the last crises that we will see under the Trump Administration, and all we can do is hope that career military commanders can enforce discipline, the remnants of the scientific corps at HHS can hold the line against microscopic invaders, and that career experts in other agencies can hunker down and be there when we need them. 

It will take years to complete the rebuilding of the government agencies that Trump has gutted. The rebuilding can’t even start for another two years, but voters can slow the destruction by electing politicians in November who will hold the Trump Administration accountable.

From the Racket News