Unsanitized: The COVID-19 Report for July 8, 2020

COVID-19 as a Bucket on a Swivel
Abdul El-Sayed talks about the crisis moment. Plus, more on the PPP
witch hunt.

 

Abdul El-Sayed, right, appears with Bernie Sanders at a coronavirus
briefing in Romulus, Michigan in March. (Max Ortiz/Detroit News via AP)

First Response

I wasn't familiar with the analogy but I understood the point. Abdul
El-Sayed, a former director of the health department in Detroit,
candidate for governor of Michigan, and prominent Bernie Sanders
supporter, was describing a bucket slowly filling with water, drop by
drop. "The bucket's on a swivel and the drops come into the bucket
until it tips one way, or another," El-Sayed said. "We need to make sure
it tips the right way."

He was specifically talking about the political moment, but the analogy
held for most of our interview. El-Sayed, author of the new book Healing
Politics: A Doctor's Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic
,
reinforced over and over that we're on a knife's edge, that success
or failure is up for grabs, whether in the coronavirus crisis or how we
respond.

El-Sayed is a medical doctor, and actually an epidemiologist, making him
one of the more knowledgeable political figures with whom to discuss the
public health aspects of the crisis. I asked him if the medical
community has gotten any better at handling the disease since its
inception. "We know a lot more about the biology of the disease," he
said. "Think about physicians in Houston or Florida being able to call
colleagues in New York."

But he added that this comes at a cost for properly communicating the
seriousness of the situation. We have talked on Unsanitized

about why deaths may not be spiking yet (here are

some other discussions

of that phenomenon), and this has mostly held. Yesterday's higher
number of deaths
made up
for the lack of reporting over the July 4th holiday; week over week
deaths are still down, and we are a month out from when cases really
took off in key states.

However, as survivability grows, more people may put themselves into
situations to contract the disease. They'll think of masks as a force
field that allows them to enter any environment. "There's a fallacy in
epidemiology called lead time bias," El-Sayed explained. "When you
ascertain the disease earlier in the course, it looks like the outcome
is not as bad. The ultimate truth is this is a very dangerous
situation."  

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In the long term, we don't know the significance of millions of
survivors, and we won't know until things develop. El-Sayed noted how
the understanding of the disease as respiratory has morphed into
something vascular, which can stretch beyond the lungs and to all parts
of the body. "My father-in-law is a nephrologist, he's seeing kidney
disease everywhere," he said. "Look at COVID toe
,
it's stretching to the capillaries in the furthest extremities." These
consequences of unknown length could linger in the younger people
infected and become a lifetime ailment added on to our array of
long-term health consequences. It's why I've discussed having an
option like we do with dialysis for permanently putting COVID sufferers
on Medicare
.

The theme of El-Sayed's book is insecurity, an epidemic of insecurity
actually, where the systems expected to provide prosperity and dignity
have all been "sold off to the highest bidder." In the pandemic that
manifests itself in the hollowing out of public health departments
at the state and
federal levels, producing a lack of basic infrastructure when we needed
it the most and a distortion of what we value in health. "The healthcare
system is kind of like a jail," El-Sayed said. "You want to prevent
people from getting sick in the first place. Healthcare should be a
function of your public health policy. But hey, we have the best atriums
in the world."

El-Sayed is a single payer healthcare supporter, and that need has shone
more brightly during the crisis. He's part of the healthcare task
force set up jointly by the Biden and Sanders campaigns to work on
policy concepts. "I think the Biden team recognizes this critical
moment, and the need to approach it with a broad-shouldered agenda," he
said. "He's not Bernie and never going to be, but I think there are
some real concessions to this moment and the need to stand up to
corporations that have dominated for too long."

That brings us back to the bucket on the swivel. The faults in the
system are recognizable, and the renewed spotlight could allow a better
way forward. "The problem is it could tip the other way," El-Sayed
warned. "There are demagogues on the other side of the gate trying to
leverage the moment to divide us further. There's a version of this
history where we do not succeed."

It's why El-Sayed joined the Biden/Sanders task force, and will try to
work with Biden, he told me. "I spent part of my childhood in Egypt, I
know of a place where there's no democracy. Donald Trump is a threat
to democracy. We as progressives have to recognize, we'd rather be
kicking field goals than playing defense."

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PPP Witch Hunt Update

We now return you to America's favorite pastime, or at least bored
American reporters: posting contextless "accountability" stories about
who got (Dr. Evil face) ONE MILLION DOLLARS in PPP loans. The banks who
"processed" the loans, in scare quotes because they did nothing but
input applications to the Small Business Administration server for
approvals, as all the certifications were on the applicants and there
was no underwriting, made $24 billion
,
but that's not important right now.

Anyway, it's odd that more attention hasn't been paid to the fact
that the list of loan recipients handed out by SBA, the only source
material for a kajillion "investigative" reports, appears to have an
indefinite amount of demonstrable errors
.
Several companies came forward to say they never applied for or received
loans

but were listed on the spreadsheets anyway. Somehow

**that** hasn't been investigated by these intrepid investigators
(maybe because they don't want to face the fact that the only data
they used for their stories was corrupted).

I'd read those investigations. SBA merely had to provide a list and
couldn't get that right? How many names on the list are wrong? Were
they included in SBA's running tally of funds used? Did the first
round close prematurely because of SBA errors in attributing loans to
companies that didn't get them? I guess journalism in context is too
much to ask.

Happily though we won't have this problem again, because the "look Ma
Kanye West got a loan" reporting tendency has probably doomed any
further relief for the small business sector. Democrats and Republicans
in Congress are using the reports as an excuse

to limit further stimulus, lest it fall into the wrong hands. I agree
that firms who were supposed to be barred from receiving PPP funds and
got them anyway

is a bad outcome. But splitting the atom to ensure "responsible"
recipients only will assuredly make it ineffective, especially if still
run through self-interested banks. It's HAMP all over again, and the
media has become willing collaborators in the induced austerity.
Fortunately we have the virus completely under control, so this won't
be a catastrophic mistake.

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Days Without a Bailout Oversight Chair

103
.
In actual reporting, we learned that three airline companies receiving
$338 million (about 100 or so Kanye West PPP loans, for those scoring at
home) from the Treasury Department's slush fund laid off thousands of
workers
,
circumventing rules supposed to prevent that outcome by waiting to sign
the funding agreement and executing the layoffs in the space between
applying and accepting. A bailout oversight chair would have
jurisdiction over the Treasury Payroll Support Program, and could haul
in executives at Gate Gourmet and the other firms and ask about this. We
don't have an oversight chair.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* Jair Bolsonaro tested positive for the virus

because of course he did, will cure it with hydroxychloroquine

because of course he will. (HuffPost; AP)

* Trump replaying the premature pressure to reopen the economy with
premature pressure to reopen schools
,
with no plan to do it safely. (TPM)

* As expected, here come the consolidations, in rooftop solar

and insurance
.
We will see accelerated monopolization if there's no resistance. (

**Wall Street Journal**)

* More Swedes have died per capita than Americans
,
and the Swedish economy fared no better despite essentially remaining
open. (

**New York Times**)

* Protective gear running low again
. (Associated
Press)

* Former FDA commissioner and COVID celeb Scott Gottlieb chairing a soft
lobbying operation

aimed at getting cruises restarted. (CNBC)

* Trump ruining Republican absentee balloting operations

by raising skepticism. (

**Washington Post**)

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