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Unsanitized: The COVID-19 Report for Sept. 4, 2020

Republicans Working on the Least They Can Possibly Do
Plus, the politicization of vaccines

 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is throwing a last-minute wrench into Senate
Republicans' coronavirus relief gambit. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

First Response

The second-to-last jobs report before the election would sound really
great if you were airlifted in from the International Space Station
after a year of isolation. The economy added 1.37 million jobs
and dropped the
topline unemployment rate to 8.4 percent. This is down from 1.7 million
added in July, and remains 11.5 million jobs under

the number in February, a 7.5 percent loss since the beginning of the
pandemic. Permanent job loss is actually falling more quickly than it
did during the Great Recession, at 3.4 million. In all 19 million
workers are either unemployed or have lost their jobs, based on this
report. And it includes 237,000 Census hires, who will lose their jobs
shortly.

The report is indicative of a country where the rich have completely
cleaved themselves off from the rest of society. As Tim Noah writes
,
the prediction that we were living in a plutonomy, a nation of, by, and
for the 1 percent, has now come to pass. You can have an economy without
caring about the welfare of an exceedingly large section of the
population, if you just shut your eyes. Food bank participation and the
stock market are nearing record highs, simultaneously. Threat of
eviction and rental debt has never been this elevated, and neither have
bank profits

from investments and trading. You either have it or you don't.

So expecting a bunch of haves in the Senate Republican caucus to figure
out how to prevent disaster for the have-nots might be a foolish
enterprise. Senate Republicans can enable a Federal Reserve bailout
("The Fed created a bubble where life could go on-not unlike the NBA
bubble," is one great quote from that above-linked Wall Street Journal
piece), but helping invisible people they never come into contact with
in a typical day? Come on, they're not miracle workers!

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So it's not surprising, then, that Senate Republicans can't decide
on what to do, or whether to do anything, about the continuing economic
crisis. Mitch McConnell first announced a $1 trillion legislative
effort, mostly as a coat rack for his scheme to give a liability release
to corporations, hospitals, and schools for wrongful infections or
deaths from COVID-19. That split the caucus almost in half.

McConnell has come back with something about half the size. There's a
$300 a week federal unemployment enhancement, down from the $600/week
that expired in July. There's a round of small business Paycheck
Protection Program funding. There's the $105 billion for schools, and
there's the conversion of an existing $10 billion line of credit for
the Postal Service into a grant. (That's only in there to make this
bill line up with the measure House Democrats passed that was only about
the Postal Service. It's an attempt to limit the negotiation.) And of
course, there's that liability release.

Of course Chuck Schumer is outraged

by the Senate GOP's offer getting smaller, not bigger, as time goes
on. And the lack of funding for state and local government (Los Angeles
just announced the furlough of 15,000 city jobs
),
stimulus checks, rental assistance, and food assistance-those things
the "other" Americans need-makes this wholly inadequate.

What McConnell wants to do is find something his entire caucus can agree
on, or at least the majority of the Senate (so 50 of his 53 members), to
make that the right pole in the negotiation. But that has now been
threatened. Some Republicans are seeing this desire to find common
ground as an opportunity to layer on unrelated ideological demands.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is pushing to add a $5 billion provision

for private school vouchers to the relief bill. Few actually want this
as part of the overall package, rightly reasoning that it has nothing to
do with coronavirus relief. But you just need a handful of
splitters-four to be exact-to derail the entire enterprise. The bill
is supposed to get a vote next week, when the Senate returns to session.

One of the objections is that Cruz' tax credit shouldn't get in
while others get out. You can imagine the mollifying of Senators playing
out with the entry of other tax credits to get their grudging agreement,
turning the relief bill into a tax bill with a little relief.

In the end we're likely not to see any coronavirus bill at all. It's
already September, and at the end of the month government spending runs
out. Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin have reportedly
agreed

on a stopgap that avoids a government shutdown, regardless of the
impasse over stimulus. That stopgap is probably the last chance before
the election for any additional measures. But House Democrats want a
"clean" continuing resolution, which means that it won't be used
to pursue other stimulus efforts.

Again, in a plutonomy, you can't expect plutocrat-owned lawmakers (or
plutocrats themselves) to see past their noses to the non-people in the
streets. The stock market took a tumble

yesterday, but it would take plenty more for official Washington to
notice the pain.

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Not Your Guinea Pig

Anyone who thinks that Donald Trump isn't pressuring public officials
to approve anything he can call a cure for the coronavirus hasn't been
paying attention for the last four years, or really ever. This is a guy
who grasped at a random malaria drug and called it a silver bullet. He
mused about injecting bleach to clean the body. Of course he's going
to want to roll out a vaccine

before the election! He's losing!

Just because Trump wants to announce something doesn't mean the states
have to accept it, however. And three blue states have come out and said

they would have to confirm the efficacy of any vaccine or treatment
before allowing it to be used on their populations.

This is the danger of the politicization of science. If government
cannot be trusted, then no vaccine will resolve the crisis. It won't
get the kind of widespread takeup needed to eradicate the virus. Blue
states making these noises about a Trump-declared vaccine will be
followed by Republican states rejecting a Biden-declared vaccine. The
politics of the situation will overwhelm the public health effect. There
are likely good reasons to be wary of Trump's October Deus ex machina.
But the impact on public health could be grave.

On a related note, read Rick Perlstein

on Gerald Ford's rush to present a swine flu vaccine in 1976, which
totally backfired. (I have the exact same anecdote in a feature story
coming out soon, but don't mind me, it's a well-told tale.)

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Today I Learned

* Speaking of vaccines, here's Derek Lowe

on the latest. (Science magazine)

* The rise of "COVID fatigue
."
(Axios)

* Senate Democrats may use the Congressional Review Act

to try to nullify the payroll tax deferral. (CNBC)

* An example of what's happening on college campuses

everywhere. The "blame the students" vibe is persistent, and wrong.
(The News-Gazette)

* Trump administration yanks funding

for disinfecting the New York City subways. (New York Daily News)

* Batman got the virus
.
The impact on Hollywood filming has been really dramatic. (New York
Times)

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