[Our pundit class, from Leana Wen to David Leonhardt, have told us
that since we’re all vaccinated we have nothing to worry about, so
all that was asked of attendees was to provide proof of immunization.
Would that it were so simple.] [[link removed]]

LAUGHING OURSELVES TO DEATH AT THE GRIDIRON DINNER  
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Gregg Gonsalves
April 14, 2022
The Nation
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_ Our pundit class, from Leana Wen to David Leonhardt, have told us
that since we’re all vaccinated we have nothing to worry about, so
all that was asked of attendees was to provide proof of immunization.
Would that it were so simple. _

,

 

Last week more than 50 of the crème-de-la-crème of American politics
and journalism—almost all Democrats—made the personal lifestyle
decision to get Covid-19 at the Gridiron Dinner
[[link removed]],
where a brass band
[[link removed]] kicked
off the festivities, “some of the comic skits featured
actors dressed as the coronavirus
[[link removed]],
like large, green bouncing balls with red frills,” and, as tradition
would have it, guests joined hands for the singing of “Auld Lang
Syne” to conclude the evening.

Our pundit class, from Leana Wen to David Leonhardt, have told us that
since we’re all vaccinated we have nothing to worry about, so all
that was asked of attendees was to provide proof of immunization. In
D.C. now, they are all vaxxed-and-done and, gosh-darn-it, they mean
it. No pre-event testing, no special attention to ventilation in the
ballroom, no thought of spacing out attendees rather than have them
sit at long, narrow tables for hours. Because everything is optional
now, everything is up to individuals. Here is Leana Wen saying the
quiet part out loud
[[link removed]] in _The
Washington Post_: “I also think it’s acceptable if event
organizers choose not to exercise precautions, and instead put the
onus on individuals to decide the acceptable risk for their own
medical situation.” Normal means never having to say you’re sorry.
Even if your guests get Covid-19 , they’ll always have Paxlovid,
prescribed for them by the White House physician or concierge
internists in the district. As David Leonhardt reminds us
[[link removed]],
masks and other protections are only for the recently infected,
progressive Covid dead-enders, residents of nursing homes, and people
with cancer.

What makes the Gridiron Dinner deplorable is that no one really gave a
damn about doing the bare minimum such as the mitigation efforts I
just described—and then made it almost certain that the setting
would be most hospitable to the virus. Inviting a brass band and
singing a New Year’s Eve anthem? In April, indoors? Might as well
have gotten out a garden mister and sprayed the room with SARS-CoV-2.
Right now, as we read
[[link removed]] in _The
New York Times_, “there are no reports of any symptoms more serious
than a sore throat or mild fever”—which is indeed a blessing—but
knocking out a cabinet secretary for two weeks or, God forbid, sending
them to the hospital was a risk everyone seemed willing to take. And
remember, more than a few of the folks at the shindig were in their
70s and 80s, and no one seems to have thought twice about them either,
including my old friend Tony Fauci, who is 81 and was in attendance.

There is a decadence to the Democratic embrace of rugged American
individualism, where we owe each other nothing, that’s almost, well,
Republican in spirit. Personal risk. Personal choices. Personal
responsibility. Paul Ryan—remember him?—would be proud
[[link removed]].
The Gridiron Dinner was just American Covid-19 policy personified: no
precautions beyond vaccination and Paxlovid for the unfortunate few
who catch SARS-CoV-2.

Except that this is policy for the privileged, who are boosted
(probably twice by now—and, full admission, I am doubly boosted
myself) and know just whom to call to ensure they get the best medical
care should they get sick. But, as Harvard emergency physician Jeremy
Faust just wrote, this notion that we can calculate our own personal
risk is a chimera
[[link removed]]:
“Nobody has a good handle on what their individual risks truly are.
How could they?… the math is remarkably complicated. We can’t
expect people, even experts, to do this on the daily. That makes the
‘leave it all up to individuals’ approach pretty unworkable at the
moment.”

Furthermore, as Aparna Nair, a historian of public health, told Ed
Yong
[[link removed]] at _The
Atlantic_ last year, “Framing one’s health as a matter of
personal choice ‘is fundamentally against the very notion of public
health.’” This isn’t just a theoretical concern. Right now, the
anemic Covid-19 funding bill in Congress has no money
[[link removed]] for
the Health Resources and Services Administration’s program for
Covid-19 testing and treatment for the uninsured. Until the Biden
Administration extended the national Covid-19 public health emergency
yesterda
[[link removed]]y,
millions were at risk of being kicked off the Medicaid rolls on April
15; now they have a reprieve for 90 days. Moreover, only 30 percent
[[link removed]] of
Americans are boosted, meaning they lack critical protection against
current Covid-19 variants, and many areas of the country are still far
behind in getting people even the first series of shots.
Meanwhile states are closing
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testing and vaccination sites.

I am not even sure anyone is trying anymore in the heady reaches of
the Biden administration. Scott Kominers, a professor at Harvard
Business School, last week excoriated
[[link removed]] the
new Covid.gov website—meant to provide links to all anyone might
need to find testing and treatment, but which he described as a
labyrinthine boondoggle, full of dead-ends and false leads. Of course
if you have the right connections, you will never go to a site like
this, because you will have everything delivered to you on a silver
platter with just a text.

If you like this article, please give
[[link removed]] today to help
fund _The Nation_’s work.

Covid lingers too, among the potentially millions with long Covid
[[link removed]], among the hundreds of
thousands of orphan children
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millions more grieving
[[link removed]] their dead. What
happens to them, now? If it’s just about what you and I do in our
private lives, do any of those people really matter?

Republicans and Democrats alike, we are essentially leaning into
public health apartheid in America now—creating two tiers, one for
the privileged and those with resources, and another for everyone
else. It’s brutal, but is being normalized by our elected officials
and their appointees, and by pundits like Wen and Leonhardt, who
frankly see more to gain from telling people what they want to hear
rather than what the nation as a whole needs: to keep our eyes on the
prize, keep key programs in place, do better on everything from
vaccination and boosters to providing masks and tests, to improving
ventilation in public and private buildings. And that’s without even
considering programs to mitigate the social and economic toll of the
pandemic.

Yes, the political headwinds are strong, but if you pretend the
pandemic is over, you’ll soon be begging for the bare
minimum—which is exactly the position the White House now finds
itself in, even as it acknowledges
[[link removed]] that
we will need far more resources for this fight now and for the
foreseeable future.

Instead, we are heading into this spring and summer less prepared than
we were a year ago. Everyone seems to be betting against the virus,
literally betting our lives the worst is behind us, that we won’t
see anything like the carnage of the past winter—when nearly 200,000
Americans died of a variant David Leonhardt again and again told us
was mild
[[link removed]],
of little concern to most people. Jacob Bacharach wrote about
Leonhardt’s relentless positive spin on the pandemic in _The New
Republic_
[[link removed]]:
“I cannot for the life of me decide if he is Dr. Pangloss or if he
is Candide—the relentless crackpot optimist or the disappointed
student who finally throws up his hands and concludes that we must,
each of us, tend our gardens alone.”

_Gregg Gonsalves is The Nation’s public health correspondent and
codirector of the Global Health Justice Partnership and an associate
professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. A
cofounder of the Treatment Action Group, he was the winner of a 2018
MacArthur fellowship. Twitter. [[link removed]]_

_Copyright c 2022 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
[[link removed]].
Distributed by PARS International Corp
[[link removed]].
Please support progressive journalism. Get a digital subscription
[[link removed]]
to The Nation for just $24.95!    _

 

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