Tulsa COVID-19 Case Infection Hits New High as Trump Will Facilitate Transmission at Saturday Rally
June 19, 2020
Campaign waiver that every attendee at Trump’s June 20 rally of 19.000 people at the BOK Center in Tulsa must agree to in order to attend, as virus infection cases are hitting new records there. (Thomas Cizauskas)
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
Current CDC guidelines warn that 'large events and mass gatherings can contribute to the spread of COVID-19' and encourage event organizers 'to prepare for the possibility of outbreaks in their communities.' "
It’s a cliché now that when Trump boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, he meant it.
It takes on new meaning as he prepares to hold his first campaign rally since the Coronavirus cessation on June 20 in Tulsa, even though the hazards of infection transmission are still robust at large gatherings, with rowdy loud crowds. Oklahoma, contrary to Mike Pence’s lie that Coronavirus cases are decreasing and Trump’s statement on Wednesday that the virus “is dying out,” has set new records for confirmed infections this week. Furthermore, Trump is accomplishing several goals with this criminal spreading of the virus.
First, he has been desperate to shift his Coronavirus failure narrative back to the core themes of his 2016 campaign: grievance politics, white supremacy, hatred of immigrants and positioning the media as the enemy of the “real” America. He also loves to be the ringmaster, entertainer and demagogue without peer.
Secondly, he is proving that he can indeed shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it by luring his cult followers to risk virus infection and possible death to revel in the presence of their “flawed emissary of God.” For them, he is fulfilling the role of a “flawed vessel” who will precipitate America’s becoming a Christian nation. In actuality, Trump is a sadistic sociopath, something the media doesn’t in general acknowledge, who glories in his power over who should live and who shall die. He has already exercised his “Godlike” powers by forcing workers back to workplaces that are still not accommodated to minimize COVID-19 transmission. In some industries, such as meatpacking, infections have reached as high as 15,000 or higher. What’s worse, OSHA and the CDC are not enforcing any COVID-19 prevention guidelines as workers are told to return to work or lose unemployment. Trump is creating an economy built on forced labor camps.
It is alarming that the media has not held Trump more responsible for his merciless facilitating of the Coronavirus growth, with 120,000 now dead and a current estimate that 200,000 will die of the virus by the end of September. That, however, is only if states “opening” up start to implement preventive measures. Trump has, however, vowed that he will not “shut down” again.
Meanwhile, the media is caught up in its corporate mind-set of false equivalencies. This leads to massive amounts of disinformation and confusion among the public.
Kayleigh McEnany played to this false equivalency on steroids when she kept responding at a recent press conference that the Trump rallies are just like protests against police brutality. The White House is frequently successful with this strategy, even though Trump is the president of the United States, in this case, and is supposed to be modeling behavior, like wearing a mask, instead of basically discouraging mask wearing, even now allowing White House staffers not to wear masks.
In general, epidemiologists estimate that if everyone wore masks, COVID-19 infection transmission could be reduced by 80% or more. Trump, in essence is committing manslaughter by not encouraging the wearing of masks and cavalierly not wearing one himself.
Masks will be given out at the Tulsa indoor rally, but the Trump campaign is not requiring anyone to wear one (and of course Trump won’t) , so social pressure will probably lead to few people wearing masks, opening the door wide for transmission from asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic carriers.
Indeed, Trump duplicitously told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that we are nearing the end of the pandemic (when Dr. Anthony Fauci recently stated that we are not yet at the end of stage one) and “The president said testing for Covid-19 was overrated and allowed for the possibility that some Americans wore facial coverings not as a preventative measure but as a way to signal disapproval of him.” In short, tests which are vital in containing the virus are of little value, and he implied that masks are part of a conspiracy against him.
Note how the Washington Post reported the failure of a lawsuit this week to stop the Saturday rally due to its likely dangerous public health results: “There have been mounting concerns among Democrats, civil rights activists, and even some Republicans that Trump’s rally could inflame racial tensions in Tulsa and contribute to spreading of the Coronavirus.” What is missing here, of course, is the fact that the decision by Trump to hold a rally in an indoor center at this time is violating science, his own CDC and the best data we currently know now about Coronavirus transmission. This is not a partisan or advocacy issue. It is scientific fact versus magical thinking, and the press should not be perpetuating the canard of “false equivalencies” or partisanship as they have for nearly four years.
This time, however, lives are at stake, tens of thousands of lives, and the press should be putting Trump on notice, not equating false positions or statements with scientific fact. The media should be placing the advice that will best lead us through this pandemic before the malignant lies and deadly thoughts and actions of Trump.
The New York Times which has been a major promoter of false equivalencies in covering Trump (who has been documented by the Washington Post as making more than 18,000 lies) In a June 18th “On Politics” NYT email newsletter, journalist Lisa Lerer compared a Joe Biden small, socially-distanced and CDC guideline arranged address to a small group of about 20 locals in Darby, Pennsylvania to Trump’s upcoming rally in Tulsa.
She concluded the descriptive comparison with this sentence: “In this campaign, Americans are choosing between alternate realities.” No, they aren’t: Americans are choosing between the fabulist lies — many from debunked conspiracy theories — and reality. There is only one reality: the scientific, public health one.
If The New York Times wants to argue with that, they should just let readers know that they haven’t yet caught up to the Age of Enlightenment. Perhaps the NYT model headline should be, “Trump Declares the World Is Flat, Democratic Critics Disagree.” This is not a partisan issue; it is about the reality of the Coronavirus.
After all, modern journalism should be built upon a foundation of basic fact, not equating fact with the discredited blather of an unhinged and malignant man in the White House who has politically weaponized the Coronavirus to make it appear a partisan issue, a narrative which The NYT and other news outlets love.
As journalist and media critic Dan Froomkin noted in a recent column:
Here’s what you should be reading or hearing from our top news organizations:
Donald Trump today condemned tens of thousands of Americans to death, opting to almost completely ignore the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic for political and personal reasons rather than take a series of simple but hugely consequential steps that public health officials consider imperative….
There is so much going on in this crazy world right now, I get that. But our top news organizations still need to keep a singular focus on the Covid-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s calamitous response. And they need to be relentless in holding Trump personally to account.
And there should be no false equivalencies; lives are on the line. The media doesn’t need to take sides in a partisan brawl, as NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet frequently cites as his fear that The NYT might be perceived as part of “the resistance” if it doesn’t provide Trump with a megaphone. No, the NYT and the rest of the media, as practitioners of journalism, need to take a stance on the side of truth.
Right now the Coronavirus is raging out of control. We need the media to lead with the facts and to denounce a morbidly sick man who is holding a toxic rally in the midst of a pandemic. We need the media to state the truth and expose the death that is resulting in the wake of Trump’s flagrant disregard for the facts and for our lives.
Also Read These Other Recent BuzzFlash Editor’s Commentaries:
Trump Intentionally Let the Coronavirus "Wash Over" America, a Failure by Design
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