Pandemic: Rounding the Final Turn?

 

This graph shows Covid-19 data for the entire USA (source: The New York Times).  It’s not encouraging. 

 

The average daily case counts go up and down, but we’re six months into this and the virus is still out there, cutting an unpredictable path across the nation. Meanwhile, we’re approaching 200,000 deaths.

In my opinion, there’s no telling how long it will last. This data gives me no confidence that we’re "rounding the final turn," as Donald Trump recently predicted. And I’m skeptical of his claim that a vaccine could be ready "within weeks."  

Why do I lack confidence in those predictions? Not to belabor the obvious, but the pandemic has become too politicized, at least in the US. With this administration leading the effort in an election year, it’s going to be very tough for researchers, drug companies and regulators (such as the Food and Drug Administration) to make good scientific decisions. With all the pressure to get something approved and into production, it wouldn’t surprise me if the first-generation vaccine turns out to be ineffective.

Dame Diana Rigg

With the news of Diana Rigg's death, I've been thinking about why she made such an impression on me. I first became aware of her when I was a 13-year-old boy, living in England and avidly watching The Avengers. Like any normal man I was smitten, stung by Cupid's dart.

Rigg once told an interviewer that the name "Emma Peel" was chosen because the show's producers wanted a female character who had "M-appeal," or male appeal. She certainly had that. It wasn't just her beauty and that posh English accent, which slays me whenever I hear it. Diana Rigg had something more. She radiated intelligence, independence, strength. A woman not to be trifled with.

At first, that was just the Emma Peel character. But as the years went by, I was impressed with her behavior in interviews and her determination to continue her theatrical career. She kept taking on the challenging classic roles. She's shown here with Anthony Hopkins in a 1972 production of Macbeth.

And then there was her reappearance in 1989 as the host of a PBS mystery series. She apparently hadn't felt the need to fight the aging process with plastic surgery. I liked the fact that she wasn't afraid to show the wrinkles. I suppose she just didn't think it was important enough to be bothered by.

When she reappeared on television again in 2013, in A Game of Thrones, the aging process was complete. It's nice to think of her surrounded by admiring actresses on the set, smoking and swearing. 

 Obituaries:

• BBC News
• The New York Times
• The Telegraph
  

Trump Suggests Polling Place Double-Check for Mail-In Voters

 [Cartoon by Kevin Kallaugher. The Economist.]

Every few weeks, The President of the United States says or tweets something that irritates, amazes or just plain drives me half-crazy. As to whether this is a deliberate strategy, or just the man’s mental incontinence and quick trigger finger, I cannot decide.  This article by AP News documents the most recent outrage in pretty objective terms.

Trump suggests polling place double-check for mail-in voters
 By Christina A. Cassidy and Deb Riechmann

Some news outlets depicted this as “Trump encourages people to vote twice.” It’s not quite that bad. According to the AP story, he said or at least meant “that people who vote early by mail should show up at their local polling places on Election Day and vote again if their ballots haven’t been counted.” 

But I have to ask: if you’re willing to go to the polls in person to check whether your mail-in ballot has been received, why even bother to vote by mail? Just vote in person. 

I doubt Trump thought it through that way. There are many possibilities. Perhaps he felt an urgent need to rally his troops in a strident call to action, but ended up just shooting from the hip without thinking it through at all. Or perhaps he’s laying the groundwork for a future claim that the election was rigged, a hoax, invalid, fake news, and it’s all because some people’s votes weren’t counted and others were counted twice. That will come in handy if he happens to lose the election. 

Or maybe he simply delights in trying to stir up trouble and confusion, to distract people from something else. 

Whatever his motives, there are all kinds of problems with the approach he’s suggesting. Imagine the chaos if crowds of people show up at the poll in person on Election Day demanding to vote again unless someone can prove to them that their mail-in vote has been "counted." Poll workers would have to deal with disputes and temper tantrums while everyone else waits in line, infecting one another with covid-19. 

In addition, giving people that second chance to vote is bound to increase the risk of an inaccurate count. No system is perfect, and the more people are allowed to vote twice because we can’t find their mail-in ballot, the greater the risk that duplicate votes go undetected. That hurts the public’s confidence in the system. In the worst case, it would give Trump a reason to refuse to accept the results of the election.

Of course, Trump's approach to politics has already hurt confidence in so many things. Never did I imagine that people in this country would come to doubt the fairness of our elections, but somehow it has happened. Two people I know personally are deeply concerned that their vote will not be counted, or will be somehow stolen. Trump's "polling place double-check" idea plays directly to this paranoia. It doubtless appeals to conspiracy theorists and disaffected voters who suspect that shadowy forces are at work, pulling the strings like a diabolical puppet master behind the scenes, trying to thwart the President’s efforts to drain the swamp and Make America Great Again.

It borders on irresponsible for an elected official to make a proposal like Trump's just two months from Election Day. If we're going to consider changing our election process this way, it should be done deliberately and with care. Let's consult experts, such as whoever oversees the election in each state.  Get input from the public. Hold Congressional hearings. Do it carefully and with transparency, not in haste.

Personally, I don't think any of that is necessary. Our election system has worked pretty well for the past 200 or so years. I think mail-in voters should just trust the system to capture their vote effectively. If they cannot get comfortable with that, then they should forget the mail-in idea and vote in person on Election Day.

This post began as a response to someone’s comment on a Facebook post. But at my wife’s insistence I’m trying to avoid doing battle on Facebook. So I turned it into a blog post instead.