Response to Journal Inquirer Editor

 Response to Journal Inquirer Editor

Published in the Journal Inquirer November 6, 2020


In his Oct 26 editorial, “Stop Scaring Connecticut; and Murphy the Red Baiter,” Powell chides Gov. Lamont for “conscientiously” providing regular information on coronavirus cases, “positivity rates,” COVID-related hospitalization figures, and deaths. (https://www.journalinquirer.com/opinion/chris_powell/stop-scaring-connecticut-and-murphy-the-red-baiter/article_1642e540-1723-11eb-9ea2-1734094627e2.html). Considering the impact of this deadly pandemic, in which 230,000 Americans have died thus far, the current uptake of positive cases, and the medical impact of a disease that continues to result in significant, short and long-term health impairment on a larger number of people, Powell’s accusation that the governor is “setting off fears of Doomsday,” is misplaced, to say the least. Due, in no small measure to the CT governor’s conscientious approach in efforts to keep the state reasonably safe, Powell apparently fails to grasp that in so doing, Lamont has helped to keep the positivity rates down, and thereby COVID-related deaths and serious illnesses.

 

Obviously, deaths and serious illnesses only represent a small proportion of total cases, but the reality remains that current deaths in the past seven months have doubled that of US military deaths in WWI. With the trajectory set forth by President Trump’s irresponsible COVID policy, we will be well on the way of matching US military deaths in WWII by the time of the next Inaugural.  To ease up too soon on such common-sense measures as public mask wearing and social distancing, including temporary closings when necessary, until a vaccine and more effective treatments become widely available, would be foolhardy, given that the US suffers from the highest case and deathrates in the world.

 

There may be various reasons for these rates, but it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that a significant causation has been the abject failure of the Trump administration to address this emergency in a constructive, consensus building manner. Instead, he has fought his scientists when they provided information he did not want to accept and has made mask wearing a symbol of the culture wars he has done so much to provoke. As Powell should know, CT was never in a full lockdown and many businesses are currently open, including dine-in restaurants, with the proviso that common-sense safety measures be enforced. Powell’s dismissal of the scientific consensus on how to address the pandemic, bespeaks of an anti-intellectualism that well fits the scholarly acumen of the president of the United States, but not so much that of a critically aware journalist.  Finally, I can only find troubling, Powell’s dismissal of the impact of the pandemic since it primarily affects the elderly. Moreover, his assertion that this factor makes “the virus far less dangerous than imagined,” ignores the realities that even non-symptomatic carriers can spread the disease and that short of death, the virus can have significant, adverse effects across the age spectrum, even while granting the greater impact on the elderly and those experiencing a variety of health complications. In uncritically drawing on the president’s rhetoric that “the supposed cure proves worse than the disease,” Powell draws a false polarity between addressing the needs of the economy and the concerns related to the public health, in which the two are invariably intertwined.

 

Space constraints do not allow substantial comment on Powell’s smear of Senator, Chris Murphy—who some of us take to be CT’s greatest senator since Abe Ribicoff—for accusing Rudi Giuliani of acting as a Russian asset. Powell’s charge that Murphy may be “the worst demagogue in Washington,” is absurdly hilarious when one need only ponder the wrecking ball of Trump himself. One needs to hear the senator on this matter with the backdrop of Giuliani’s effort to disrupt regular diplomatic order in Ukraine to scrounge up dirt on Biden and son and to play directly into the hands of Putin in shifting the charge of interfering in the 2016 election from Russia in support of Trump to Ukraine in support of Clinton. Referring to the latest conspiracy theory, Murphy draws the plausible inference that Giuliani seems to act “effectively” as a Russian asset, whether unwittingly or not, a qualification that Powell conveniently neglects. Consult this YouTube and draw your own conclusions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqLtT9AT8k8

 

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