My Corona Diary (Take IV): The COVID Death Toll Crunch ("It Didn't Have To Be This Way")

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Alive or dead, Joseph Stalin surely ranks among the most horribly quotable leaders of all time. I reached that conclusion a couple weeks ago, after finally finishing a book that I'd been reading, off and on, for two years... The Court of The Red Tsar (2003), by Simon Sebag Montefiore. I picked it up for a buck from my local Dollartree, of all places, during the winter of 2018. 

As a paperback, it's massive, indeed, weighing in at 720 pages, but one that benefits from a trove of previously unseen archive material, plus numerous primary sources -- many well in their eighties or nineties, who labored far from the spotlight enjoyed by Stalin and his inner circle of "magnates," as the author labels them. 

Yet they shed invaluable light on the Soviet leader's numerous contradictions, as the Economist's review ("Blood On The Tracks," 7/14/03) notes: "His account does give one a start. It is much easier to read ghastly accounts of Beria's debauchery, or Stalin's paranoia, than anecdotes about children scampering happily through their parents' Kremlin offices, or of Stalin's punctilious habits in his personal correspondence, his bizarre flashes of kindness and decency or his extraordinary appetite for books."

Among the magnates, Stalin became equally renowned and feared for his ability to sum up an issue through statements that could wax caustic or chilling, depending on his mood -- and the situation -- of the moment. At various times, he could swing from simple observation ("If you want to know the people around you, find out what they read"), to the relentless, heartless calculus that always drove the cogs of his police state ("Death solves all problems -- no man, no problem"), to twilight year confessions of the weary business of clinging to power ("I'm finished. I trust no one, not even myself").

Seen in this light, it's not hard to understand how the man who presided over an estimated 20 to 27 million civilian and military casualties in World War II might say, "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" -- even as doubt persists about its origins, or if he said it at all. But there's little question that his knack for pithy observation served him well throughout his long and bloody reign as Soviet Russia's second dictator, from 1929 to 1953.

<"And On And On And On...?"
Take I: The Reckoner>

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Writing off great chunks of the populace is part of any dictator's playbook. Stalin is hardly unique in that respect. But the Trump regime seems to be governing along the same lines, like his rightist counterparts around the world -- notably, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, who refuses to institute any significant social distancing or testing measures, even as his nation's overall toll continues to climb (157,000 cases, 61,685 recoveries, 10,741 deaths). 

Of course, Brazil's body count pales against our own, where roughly 80,000 have already died. To put that figure in perspective, that's higher than the total number of GIs killed in Vietnam (58,220), or fatal crashes on American highways (36,550 for 2018, the latest year for which statistics are available). 

Yet those figures, grim as they undoubtedly read, may well be considered the good old days, according to the University of Washington,'s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which now projects a figure of 137,000 deaths by August 4. Not that Americans see better days coming any time soon. 

The latest figures I've seen show 89.5 million people have gotten their so-called stimulus check, for an average payout of $1,792. Forty-six percent of the 2,200 participants in an April 22 Money/Morning Consult survey have already spent their payout, or expect it to last less than four weeks. Seventy-percent of those surveyed didn't expect it to last beyond four weeks.

No matter. Gripped by only one consideration -- an additional four-year blank check to do whatever it sees fit -- the Trump regime is barreling to reopen the economy, against all advice to the contrary, as I noted in my last post ("Pandemic, Shmandemic"), a reflex surely aggravated by the lack of unified federal response. 

Or, as I tell people, it's the current game of, "Here a state, there a state, everywhere a state, state (sung to the tune of, 'Old McDonald Had A Farm')." Some leaders are trying to comfort themselves that they can have it both ways, as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp told MSN.com. For his state's grand reopening bonanza, Kemp promised MSN that he "will urge businesses to take precautions, such as screening for fevers, spacing workstations apart and having workers wear gloves and masks 'if appropriate.'"

"If appropriate?" Would you visit those particular barber shops, bowling alleys, massage parlors or tanning salons, to name four types of businesses that Georgia's deciding to reopen?

I thought not.

You can see almost see the gears grinding in the White House. Ah, it's just the poor and those sh#ithole country refugees getting thrown to the wolves. They wouldn't vote for us, anyway, so who cares? If they die, so be it. But we still need them at their multiple shit jobs, so let's just shove their asses back out there, however we can. We aren't done using them yet.

You can also find no lack of statistics to illustrate the humanitarian toll of the pandemic. A few that I've gleaned from Bernie Sanders' weekly email should suffice: 

"While 87 million Americans were uninsured or underinsured, the health care industry made $100 billion in profits."

"Last year, Oxfam reported that the richest one percent of the world’s population owned more than twice as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. Meanwhile, nearly half of the global population was trying to survive on less than $5.50 a day and 820 million were going hungry."

"Over the past six weeks, while over 30 million Americans lost their jobs and many small businesses have gone bankrupt, Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon and the wealthiest person in the world, increased his wealth by over $40 billion."

"While workers at Walmart continue to make poverty wages and are putting their lives at risk, the Walton family, the wealthiest family in America, has seen their wealth go up by more than $30 billion — just since March 12th."

"Before the pandemic, 18 million families in America were paying over half of their limited incomes on rent. Today, it has gotten worse. No American should be evicted from their home because they can’t afford to pay for housing. Nobody in the richest country in the world should be sleeping out on the streets.

"Before the pandemic, half of Americans aged 55 and older had no retirement savings. We have got to make sure that every senior citizen can retire with dignity and every person with a disability can live with the security they need."

"And On And On And On...?"
Take II: The Reckoner>

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Had enough yet? Feeling sufficiently depressed? I imagine so, if you don't have a heart of stone. But if we want any hope of changing the conversation, we need to keep these creepy little factoids front and center, as disturbing as they are. Too many social policies and laws suffer from of appearing created in some airless terrarium, where light and sound, along with the traffic of heartfelt convictions, and the grimy practicalities of implementation, are never allowed to intrude. 

Yet if we are to survive -- or God forbid, reach some measure of progress,  within our lifetimes -- it's imperative that we break off those habits, and shake loose the chains of the past that have imprisoned us for so long. That starts by taking a hard look at the way this unforgiving pandemic is affecting peoples' lives.  At least, that's how the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, earnestly summarized it recently for CNN:

"God knows how many family members whose lives have been upended, their dreams destroyed...going to bed at night staring at the ceiling wondering, my God, how am I going to get through this. What kind of future will we have?... And here's the tragedy, it didn't have to be this way."

"It didn't have to be this way." That's as good as an epitaph as you'll find for a crumbling, stumbling superpower, isn't it?

I'll leave you with one more snapshot, that I gleaned from a relative who works in state government. During our weekly phone chat, she mentioned that the current crisis will easily eclipse what happened in 2006, when roughly 12 million people filed disability claims with her agency.

"So how does it look this time around?" I ventured to ask.

"I'll put it this way: those 12 million claims kept us into overtime for a year and a half. As I look at this week's numbers..." She paused. "They're somewhere around 28 million, and most of them are over 55. Because you know what happened last time: many of them never got re-hired at their old jobs. And when they file, they file for everything. Including disability."

Let those numbers sink in, if only for a moment. Now imagine these people being left to their fates, even as our so-called leadership pats itself on the back, and declares, "Mission accomplished." Sound familiar? So should the ending of that particular photo-op. We all know that turned out.--The Reckoner

Links To Go (Don't Hurry,
Or They'll Shoo You Back To Work)
LA Times
Projections Show
California Cases And Deaths Rising:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-10/california-coronavirus-cases-deaths-rising-more-than-expected

MSN.com
States Rushing To Reopen
Are Likely Making A Deadly Error:
msn.com/en-us/news/world/states-rushing-to-reopen-are-likely-making-a-deadly-error-coronavirus-models-and-experts-warn/ar-BB133x6V

Quote Investigator
A SIngle Death Is A Tragedy...
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/