Study calls for unified U.S. response to pandemic
COVID-19 outbreaks in GOP states are undoing progress made in Democratic states like Illinois
President Trump comes in for harsh criticism for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in a study comparing the course of outbreaks in Democratic and Republican states. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
By definition, we’re all in this together in a pandemic, and a unified federal response is necessary to quell the spread of COVID-19 nationwide, according to a new study released this week.
Published on the Medium online platform, “One Virus, Two Americas” looks at the different approaches taken to address the pandemic in Democratic and Republican states. It is unsparing in its criticism of President Trump and GOP governors in their resistance to science and reliance on “propaganda and misinformation.”
The study, written by Cary Shepherd, a legal fellow at the Northwestern University School of Law, and microbiologist William Riedl, points out that the pandemic struck Democratic states first and hardest, for logical reasons.
“While a virus cannot check voting records, the reason for this trend is simple and it was expected by the scientific community,” the study states. “Urban areas have higher percentages of Democrats, and cities have far higher population densities and more numerous travel connections across the globe than their rural counterparts.” Thus, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles were among the first cities to suffer outbreaks.
The study, however, praises the response of Democratic governors in those states, specifically Andrew Cuomo in New York and J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, with their early moves to issue stay-at-home orders and eventual additions of advisories to wear masks and observe social distancing. They “moved mountains to change their fate,” it argues.
“At the height of New York City’s cases, the entire city was on lockdown, but the minimized interactions still left the city with thousands of new cases per day,” it states. “After the early cases began to accumulate in Illinois, Gov. Pritzker ordered a statewide lockdown, effectively grinding the wheels of the state economy to a halt, but almost certainly prevented carnage on the scale that New York experienced, and ultimately enabled businesses to reopen with risk-minimization procedures in place.”
“After the early cases began to accumulate in Illinois, Gov. Pritzker ordered a statewide lockdown, effectively grinding the wheels of the state economy to a halt, but almost certainly prevented carnage on the scale that New York experienced, and ultimately enabled businesses to reopen with risk-minimization procedures in place.”
Pointing out that New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut followed suit, the study cites that “for a short time in late May, the national curve began to flatten because of these Herculean efforts and sacrifices in the name of public health.”
Yet COVID-19 inevitably spread to other states — as it will in a pandemic — and it found a welcome environment in those governed by Republicans with their “well-documented history of distrusting scientific experts,” as with climate change, to cite one glaring example. “The warnings and policy advice coming from those who have studied SARS-CoV2 and similar viruses were largely ignored by Republican officials,” the study states. “Taking advantage of undue skepticism of experts and their perceived mistakes, conservative media sources such as Fox News actively misled their viewers by claiming the virus did not pose a serious risk, causing confusion and false perceptions about the danger.”
It’s especially critical of Trump, pointing out his “numerous false statements downplaying the virus, fueling an echo chamber between himself and conservative media that damages American health and economic well-being,” and adding, “This pattern of sweeping disaster under the rug has repeated itself for about six months, and has displayed no signs of slowing.”
It cites how Trump said in January that “we have it totally under control,” and in June that the virus had been reduced to “ashes.” Even more recently, just last week, Trump claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic was overblown and that widespread testing only served to “show cases, 99 percent of which are totally harmless.”
In the face of Trump’s repeated claims that COVID-19 was inconsequential or had been contained, the study responded, “It has not. Cases across the nation are climbing at the fastest rate since New York’s darkest days.”
It added that “the real-world result has been nothing short of disastrous for regular people living under the authority of Republican officials. Existing in a world of information divorced from science-based evidence, Republican officials have embraced policies — or a lack thereof — to handle the pandemic that have been entirely inadequate. … The complete failure to impose minimally appropriate measures is largely a Republican distinction.”
As an, again, logical result that could and should have been expected: “In the first week of July, there were approximately three times as many new cases each day in Republican states as there were in Democratic states.”
The report emphasized, however, that it is nothing for Democratic states to crow over. As cases have hit record levels in large Republican-controlled states like Florida and Texas, the outbreaks have threatened to undo the progress made in stemming the pandemic in Democratic states.
(Medium/”One Virus, Two Americas”)
According to the latest data from The New York Times, the United States has now reported more than 3 million COVID-19 cases and 133,000 deaths nationwide, with the vast majority of states seeing cases rising — including Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas all at record highs — while even Illinois sees an upswing, although nothing near its earlier peaks. Only three states in the northeast corner of the nation — Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire — are reporting declines in COVID-19 infections.
“Despite superior historical outcomes for case reductions in Democratic states, the truth is that we are a connected system,” the study says. “No rural farmer can sell their crops without connecting through a chain of people to the market where urbanites shop. The borders between our states are porous by design, and our mutual dependence for essential goods and services prevents us from modifying that anytime soon. Because of this, even if one state is successful in reducing cases, proximity to a state with uncontrolled transmission will inevitably lead to new cases through interstate transmission.”
In fact, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot recently imposed a 14-day quarantine on people arriving in the city from states suffering outbreaks — albeit it largely self-enforced. While Pritzker has resisted anything similar on the state level — no doubt because it would likely be ineffectual — Illinois has seen a recent rise in statewide cases, climbing back over 1,000 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases on Thursday for the first time in a month, bringing the state total past 150,000.
On Friday, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported that the state again topped 1,000 new cases, with 1,317 confirmed, for a total of 151,767. While it continued to register a robust number of daily tests, at 32,987, that still produced a positivity rate of 4 percent, pulling the seven-day positivity rate up to 2.9 percent. Deaths remained low, however, with 25 newly recorded deaths Friday bringing the state toll to 7,144.
Returning to the national picture, Shepherd and Riedl concluded: “This fundamental interconnection between states tells us the current state-by-state approach to the pandemic will never be entirely effective when one party is incapable of imposing minimally sufficient measures to reduce transmissions. A uniform response from the federal, state, and local level is the only practical way to address this problem.”
Trump, however, has been unwilling to take that step or accept that responsibility, just as he refused to lead the way on procuring medical equipment or on testing.
Shepherd and Riedl lay out three scenarios going forward. Republicans can change their approach to “reverse course and begin heeding the chorus of health experts — mandated social distancing, face coverings, increased testing, and enhanced sanitation practices.” Democrats, “who currently have a far superior track record for employing evidence-based public health policy,” can take the lead. Or the nation can let the pandemic wash over all states in a bid to create so-called herd immunity, a course “likely to cost hundreds of thousands more lives in the United States.” The study argues that “with readily available alternatives, that is a price that does not need to be paid.”