Corporate Mainstream Media Must Acknowledge Trump's Sociopathology, Save American Lives and Protect Our Children
July 13, 2020
Moloch “a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, through fire or war.” So would Trump sacrifice the children of America to his sociopathological delusion of “reopening” the economy? (Wikipedia)
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
“We are adrift on a ship captained by a madman who has never been to sea, determined to destroy us all and delight in the wreckage. A change of course is imperative.”
The corporate media needs to acknowledge that Trump is a sociopath, as our lives are increasingly at risk from his willingness to walk over dead bodies and pour gasoline on the furnace of the coronavirus to fecklessly try and achieve reelection.
Lives are being lost over a narcissistic effort that has backfired on the economy and will backfire in infections and deaths (primarily of teachers, staff, parents and grandparents) with any full reopening of all schools in the US at this time. Given that the United States is setting records of around 60,000 confirmed infections a day, with 25 percent of the Coronavirus cases in the world and 4 percent of the population, Trump is creating a situation where most school districts cannot reopen in person until the pandemic is contained.
The press should be writing about Trump’s rants and tweets as the statements of a mad man who facilitates the spread of the virus in many ways, including his superspreading rallies that are like the dissolute parties of death during the great plague. The media has normalized these willful celebrations of infection when they should be emphasizing how psychotic they are.
Instead, Trump has once again, as he does daily, hijacked the news cycles to be about him, in this case his diabolical bullying (which he can’t enforce) to reopen schools so parents can go back to be infected on their jobs, given that there is no OSHA enforcement of preventative infection guidelines.
In “dominating” the news, he has gotten the media to back off emphasizing at least four story lines that reflected negatively on him for at least the weekend: first, was the disappearance of almost any reporting on Putin’s bounty on US soldiers that Trump looked the other way on (some call it treason); second, is his commuting of Roger Stone’s sentence to save his own hide regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election (although this was so egregious that the normally reticent Robert Mueller wrote an indignant op-ed for the Washington Post arguing Stone’s guilt); third, Trump was able to put a lid, for now, on Mary Trump’s book on the dysfunction of the Trump family and that Fred Trump molded Donald into, ironically, a sociopath and “killer” (then metaphorically, now in reality); fourth, Bill Barr sent Michael Cohen back to jail from home confinement because Cohen wouldn’t sign a form agreeing not to write a book involving Trump, speak with the media or interact on social media.
That being said, all Americans want to have a strong economy and to reopen schools. There is no argument about the goal.
Yet, we don’t control the virus; it controls us, and we are only at the beginning stage of learning about its devastating effects.
Indeed, there is much we do not know about fully opening up schools. A recent STAT article asks, “How likely are kids to get Covid-19? Scientists see a ‘huge puzzle’ without easy answers.”
We do know that addressing school openings must take into account the different ages of the children and young people. For instance, older teens in high school are much more likely to become symptomatic than younger children.
We. do know that Trump’s own CDC guidelines, which he called too “strong” and “expensive,” determined full school openings to be in the “highest risk” category.
We do know that according to a JAMA Pediatrics study:
Children, teens and young adults are at greater risk for severe complications from COVID-19 than previously thought and those with underlying health conditions are at even greater risk, according to a study coauthored by a Rutgers researcher.
The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, is the first to describe the characteristics of seriously ill pediatric COVID-19 patients in North America.
"The idea that COVID-19 is sparing of young people is just false," said study coauthor Lawrence C. Kleinman, professor and vice chair for academic development and chief of the Department of Pediatrics' Division of Population Health, Quality and Implementation Science at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. "While children are more likely to get very sick if they have other chronic conditions, including obesity, it is important to note that children without chronic illness are also at risk. Parents need to continue to take the virus seriously."
We do know that while children are far less likely to die than adults, they can become sick with secondary diseases caused by the Coronavirus, such as Kawasaki Disease, an inflammatory disease of the blood vessels. The South Carolina Department of Health just reported two such cases in children.
We do know that at least two summer camps had to close early this month because of clusters of Coronavirus infections among both staff and campers.
We do know that more than 1300 confirmed infections occurred in Texas child care centers. That included 441 children. The numbers have risen as Texas, one of the states exploding with Coronavirus, has experienced increasing infection.
This indicates that school districts in states with soaring case loads should categorically not open in-person at this time, and they should seek other alternatives as the virus rages around them. This would be true, for instance, of Coronavirus denialist and Trump loyalist Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who ordered schools opened in August despite the state achieving a national record of more than 15,000 cases on Sunday. (“If Florida were a country, it would rank fourth in the world for the most new cases in a day behind the United States, Brazil and India,” writes HuffPost.)
Trump has tried, as is his specialty, to use analogies that are false, such as comparing the United States to the nations listed below, to buttress his argument, through disinformation:
The USA figure is now over 60,000 new confirmed infections daily, climbing toward what Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted would be 100,000 confirmed infections a day by September. Remember that the confirmed figure, according to the CDC, may be only 1/10th of actual infections, meaning 600,000 were infected a day, and now we may have more than 34,000,000 cases, only 1/10th confirmed by testing nationwide.
We do know that the fate of children is also tied to other people in determining what to do about reopening schools. That includes teachers, staff, the children’s friends and their families. While transmission from children is still not widely researched, it is clear from anecdotal evidence it exists, particularly as children get older. That would likewise apply to teachers and staff infecting children.
We do know that in an Arizona this summer, three teachers taught remote learning from a classroom. They observed all the CDC guidelines on prevention, yet all three came down with Coronavirus, and one died.
The superintendent of the school district where they taught told CNN:
the three teachers were careful and still got Covid-19.
"I think that's really the message or the concern that our staff has is we can't even keep our staff safe by themselves ... how are we going to keep 20 kids in a classroom safe? I just don't see how that's possible to do that," he said.
[Jesse Byrd, husband of the teacher who died] said reopening schools will put people in their small community at risk and he does not want to see other families go through a similar experience.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, alarmingly, reports that a quarter of teachers in the US, 1.5 million men and women, fall into the high-risk category, placing them in harm’s way if schools fully reopen without careful planning, prevention and a pandemic that is under control, not roaring through the nation like a wildfire:
Given the difficulty of maintaining social distancing in a crowded school environment, these at-risk teachers may be reluctant to return to their schools until infection rates fall to much lower levels. At the same time, teaching is not a particularly high-paying profession, so many teachers may feel economically compelled to return to their schools if they reopen, even if those teachers do not feel safe….Assuring the safety of teachers and others at higher risk of serious illness from coronavirus is a crucial part of the calculation around reopening.
Then, of course, there are the parents and families of the students. Will the students bring the virus home to infect their families? Will bus drivers and other ancillary personnel be exposed?
This would lead to a roaring unquenchable flame that Trump would blame for “ruining his presidency,” as millions more become infected and deaths mount even beyond their current horrifying trajectory.
As NYT columnist Michelle Goldberg noted on June 10,
This is a president with negative credibility. The more Trump demands that schools open, the more people who’ve paid close attention to him will fear they all must remain closed.
These are issues the mainstream media should be covering instead of promoting, as The Washington Post did yesterday, an interview with Trump that normalized him, or his shameless PR stunt of wearing a mask at Walter Reed Hospital, as if the nation finally got a toddler to eat his/her spinach. Must we have to endure transcription news reports on a demented Trump yet again saying "everything will be fine,” and that the virus will disappear and hydroxychloroquine is once again an effective treatment.
This is what to report: There never was a federal Coronavirus containment or mitigation plan; there was a political performance "The White House Coronavirus Task Force,” which was aired every day on television and reported in every newspaper, when it was really only “The Daily Trump Propaganda Show.” There never was a federal plan to contain the virus. There never was a serious effort to supply PPE’s (of which there is still a shortage in the new surge). How much disinformation and harm the media’s reporting of this tragic farce has caused will never be fully known.
Could any adult have taken this man seriously after he advised the injection of disinfectant to cure COVID-19?
The corporate media certainly thought it was their role to protect Americans from terrorism after 9/11. They even used that justification to back the deceptively launched Iraq War.
Why does that same media now leave us at the mercy of a sociopath who is guilty of willful manslaughter?
Read More BuzzFlash Commentaries on Trump’s Sociopathology, Disinformation and Corporate Media Malfeasance:
Trump Intentionally Let the Coronavirus "Wash Over" America, a Failure by Design
Tulsa COVID-19 Case Infection Hits New High as Trump Will Facilitate Transmission at Saturday Rally
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