We Need Scientists, Not Politicians, in Charge of the Coronavirus Response

By Bernie Sanders, USA TODAY

06 March 20

Let scientists and health professionals take charge. Stop spreading lies and focus on minimizing the risk and addressing health care needs.

uring an international health crisis like the coronavirus — known as COVID-19 — our government and health care system faces a fundamental test of whether they are adequately prepared to protect the American people. As reported cases of the coronavirus continue to grow and spread in our country and around the world, it is becoming clear that both the Trump administration and our current health care system are failing that test. We must do better.

President Trump’s response to the coronavirus has been incompetent, political and reckless. He has given wrong and misleading information about the outbreak, wasted precious time playing petty politics, and called the criticism of his coronavirus response a hoax. Even worse, he is all but ignoring the recommendations of scientists and public health professionals — the experts we must rely upon if we are to successfully address the pandemic.

In the midst of a global healthcare crisis, how could anybody gain public confidence by appointing Mike Pence to lead the coronavirus task force — a politician with no scientific background. We need a president who believes in science and listens to scientists. We need a president who is for expanding — not cutting — funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). And we need a president who believes in American leadership that works with our international partners in the World Health Organization (WHO), and other entities that deal with global health. 

Government in action

The time has come for Donald Trump to stop playing politics with this deadly virus and put scientists and health experts back in charge.

Here is some of what must be done: the Senate must approve and Trump must sign the bipartisan emergency funding passed by the House, and the administration should provide any additional resources needed by state and local agencies on the frontlines of this effort. To measure the scope of the outbreak, the CDC and other agencies must have the ability to conduct thorough “contact tracing” investigations, so we know who has been exposed and whether they are spreading the disease. Hospitals and clinics must get ahead of this virus by increasing their intensive care unit (ICU), ventilator, and staffing capacity to prepare for a potential surge in cases. And since people who live in close living quarters are especially vulnerable, we must focus attention on institutions like nursing and long-term care facilities to both minimize transmission risk and address the healthcare needs of residents in the event of an outbreak.

Right now, city and state health departments across the country are still unprepared to test the potential number of patients who show symptoms, so the CDC must continue doing everything it can to coordinate and provide testing resources across the country.

Universal health care is a must

When we are dealing with the spread of a deadly virus, the first thing scientists tell us is that it is imperative for anyone who experiences flu-like symptoms to go to a doctor. But, as a result of our dysfunctional healthcare system, tens of millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured and do not seek medical attention when they need it because they cannot afford it. The Trump administration must make clear that, until we pass universal health care, as every major country on earth has done, all Americans right now should be able to receive the medical care they need, without worrying about the cost. If we are to stop the spread of this disease, everybody should get the medical treatment they need regardless of their income. 

Further, with the spread of coronavirus, we have already seen examples of people hit with massive medical bills, simply for doing the right thing by getting tested when they experienced symptoms. Others may face bills in the hundreds of thousands for hospitalization, treatment and quarantine if they need it. This must end.

And once a vaccine is developed, it should be free. It is outrageous that during his Congressional testimony, Trump’s HHS Secretary Alex Azar would not guarantee that a coronavirus vaccine would be affordable to all. 

Finally, must also join every major country on earth and pass paid family and medical leave legislation into law. In America today, millions of workers who notice the early, common symptoms of coronavirus, like a cough or fever, are not able to miss one day of work because their boss could fire them. That is unacceptable. When Americans are forced to go to work sick everyone they come in contact with is at risk of getting sick as well. That is how infectious diseases spread.

Health experts agree that the spread of the coronavirus will likely get worse before it gets better. Donald Trump must stop spreading lies and fear, and leave the science to scientists and health professionals, not politicians. We must make certain that we are prepared for a pandemic, just as we do with FEMA and natural disasters.  

Stop Saying Biden Is the 'Most Electable.' Trump Will Run Rings Round Him

By Nathan Robinson, Guardian UK

06 March 20

Did we learn nothing from 2016? Trump is savagely effective at destroying establishment politicians – and Biden would lose

upporters of Joe Biden are unlikely to be persuaded by most of the common criticisms. They know he can be rambling and unintelligible. They know his record is unimpressive and that he doesn’t really have “policy proposals”. None of this matters, though, because to them he has the most important quality of all: he can beat Donald Trump. Nothing you can say about the former vice-president’s record, platform or mental state matters next to the argument that he is the best hope Democrats have of getting Trump out of office.

There’s just one problem: it’s a myth. It is a myth just as it was a myth that Hillary Clinton was a good candidate against Trump. Biden is not, in fact, the pragmatic choice. He would not beat Trump. He would lose. And we must say this over and over again. Forget his flubs. Forget his finger-nibbling. Biden would be crushed by Trump. If you want Trump out of office, don’t support Biden.

Last time round, Clinton supporters lived in a strange kind of denial. Anyone could see she had unique vulnerabilities Trump could exploit. She was a Wall Street candidate, and he was running to “drain the swamp”. She was under investigation by the FBI, and his pitch was that Washington was corrupt. She had supported the catastrophic Iraq war, and he portrayed himself as an outsider opponent of those wars. Trump could “run to her left” and make criticisms she would be unable to respond to, because they were accurate. Clinton’s attempts to attack Trump as an out-of-touch, reckless billionaire sex criminal would fail, because Trump would point out that she herself was out of touch, bought by billionaires and had an unrepentant alleged sex criminal as her husband and chief campaign surrogate.

Joe Biden will face many of the same problems. He has been in Washington since the age of 30, representing Delaware, the “capital of corporate America”. He is infamous for his connections to the credit card industry, and he has lied about his degree of support for the Iraq war. Even Matthew Yglesias of Vox calls Biden the “Hillary Clinton of 2020” for his corporate ties and war support. It is worth remembering what being the “Hillary Clinton” of anything means in an election against Trump.

Consider the Ukraine scandal, which is far worse for Biden electorally than usually acknowledged. Democrats have made this the centerpiece of their impeachment case against Trump, setting aside Trump’s most consequential crimes in order to focus on the charge that Trump tried to force the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. For Democrats, the scandal is clear-cut: Trump was abusing the power of his office to “damage a political rival”. And they believe that the American people will agree, and will be disturbed by Trump’s unethical behavior. They insist there was “no evidence” that Joe Biden did anything wrong, and that Trump and his associates have been unfairly trying to smear Biden.

Democrats who think this way are walking into a buzzsaw. Let us recall: Hunter Biden was paid up to $50,000 a month by a Ukrainian oil company. Officially, the chief Ukrainian prosecutor had an open investigation into that company. Joe Biden bragged about pressuring Ukraine to fire that prosecutor, which they did. Hunter Biden says he told his father about his position in Ukraine, and Joe Biden did not ask him to step down. Joe Biden contradicts his son’s story, saying they never discussed Hunter Biden’s “work” in Ukraine. One of them is not telling the truth.

Defenders of the Bidens like to point out that the prosecutor was fired for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with Hunter Biden. In fact, there was widespread pressure to fire the prosecutor because he wasn’t doing enough on corruption investigations, and there was a consensus among experts that this was the case. Biden’s actions had absolutely nothing to do with his son and it is ridiculous to suggest that they did.

All this is true. But the important question is: does it sound good? And the answer is: no. It sounds terrible.

One reason Democrats are bad at politics is that they concern themselves too much with facts and not enough with impressions. With Clinton’s “emails scandal”, they tried to show Clinton had not technically violated the law, but having Barack Obama’s FBI actively investigating Clinton for possible criminal wrongdoing looked terrible regardless of the facts.

Left-leaning journalists and pundits love to “fact-check” Trump, as if proving that he has lied is in itself persuasive. But 2016 should have showed us how powerless “debunking” is next to “optics”. If you have a Democratic candidate who looks really corrupt, it doesn’t matter if they’re not. People don’t trust the press and they don’t trust politicians.

Imagine Biden running against Trump. Trump will run ads like this, over and over. Good luck responding. Remember that time you have to spend defending yourself against Trump’s accusations is time not spent talking about issues that affect people’s lives. And Biden has already shown little interest in drawing people’s attention to the areas where Democrats should run strong against Trump, such as healthcare, taxation, working conditions and the climate crisis.

His slogan is “no malarkey”, but since Biden himself is a longtime spewer of malarkey, Trump will successfully paint Biden as a hypocrite. Biden’s central case is that he is “not Trump”, that he will return the country to virtuousness and decency. But if Biden doesn’t actually look virtuous and decent – because he isn’t – the argument that he has made for himself collapses completely.

Biden does have some strengths against Trump that Clinton did not. We mock his rambling and tendency for “gaffes”, but these do mean he never sounds like a “scripted politician”. Clinton was criticized as robotic and focus-grouped. Biden is anything but focus-grouped; whatever pops into his head comes out his mouth.

At the same time, compared to Trump, Biden has:

• No money


• No voter enthusiasm


• No organization


• No agenda


• No real argument for himself

Ask yourself: how likely is such a candidate to win? Is such a person really the one you want to run against Trump? Look at the enthusiasm Trump gets at his rallies. It is real. Trump has fans, and they’re highly motivated. How motivated are Biden’s “fans”? Is Biden going to fill stadiums? Are people going to crisscross the country knocking on doors for him? Say what you want about Clinton, but there were some truly committed Clinton fans, and she had a powerful base of support. By comparison, Biden looks weak, and Trump is savagely effective at preying on and destroying establishment politicians.

Complicated factchecks that attempt to explain the nuances of the Ukrainian criminal prosecution system will not help Biden. People’s already limited enthusiasm for Biden will further wane, and Trump will point to his “strong economy” and “job creation” as evidence Obama and Biden were weak failures. Biden will look tired and irrelevant, and possibly forget why he is even running in the first place. Trump will be re-elected comfortably.

If there are Biden supporters in your life, you need to have serious conversations with them. Do not dwell on things that do not matter to them, like Biden’s record on bussing, or his latest nonsensical comment. Instead, keep the focus on the main argument that is sustaining his campaign: the idea that he is the best candidate to beat Trump. He isn’t. His electability is a myth, and when we look honestly at the facts we can see that Biden is actually a dangerously poor candidate to run.