Nation in a Petri Dish; Partisan Fanaticism and Obstruction, Gratuitous Self-promotion in Congress Impede Early Response to the Covid-19 Outbreak in the United States

Nation in a Petri Dish

Partisan Fanaticism and Obstruction; Gratuitous Self-promotion in Congress Impede Early Response to the Covid-19 Outbreak in the United States

Jean-Marc LeBouquin

Copyright © October 16, 2020 Jean-Marc LeBouquin.

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Table of Contents

Nation in a Petri Dish

Chapter 1 – Ignoring the Obvious…

Chapter 2 – Pretended Ignorance of the Flagrantly Well-known

Chapter 3 – Maximum Allowable Response – The Perfectionists' Excuse

Chapter 4 – The Top Presidential Debate Advisor's Tale

Chapter 5 – Closing to Munich Zero Hour

Chapter 6 – Century Super Spread Event

– Chapter 1 –

Ignoring the Obvious…

THE LOUD WAILINGS of protestors; spearheaded by energized German civilian youths and seasoned middle age activists, themselves respectful of the guidance offered by those irrepressible seniors who – naturally never wanting to miss out on healthy outdoor activity spent in good company – insisted on putting in a strong presence despite the chilly winter weather;

That harmonious menagerie of all ages agitators had gathered outside the Hotel Bayerischer Hof venue housing the auspicious 2020 Munich Security Conference – being held on Bayerischer Hof premises throughout the weekend and on that bracing Samstag morning of 15 February 2020 – to express indignation over exactly what the German and English language placards they carried announced had brought about enough outrage to summon good people from their warming hearths onto the unforgiving cobblestones or more modern paving of the cold streets;

The malcontents were dismissively ignored by button-downs hidden from view inside the Palaishalle safe confines where United States Representative Susan Brooks of Indiana – microphone in hand – would speak to an assemblage of nestled international luminaries attending the Security Conference sponsored, exclusive "Townhall on the Coronavirus Outbreak event; a Town Hall" to which were invited only dignitaries recognized as hieß führende Persönlichkeiten aus Politik, Wissenschaft und Zivilgesellschaft.

THE TOWN-HALL EVENT MODERATOR had chivalrously introduced to the elite audience this guest so far from home as:

We're joined here by congresswoman Susan Brooks from Indiana who is a leader in congress on these matters of health security…if you could say a few words for us Susan, Please…*;

* https://securityconference.org/mediathek/asset/townhall-on-the-coronavirus-outbreak-20200215-1000/

And Ms. Brooks obliged this first-name basis introduction with a practiced charming and very throaty:

"Hell-low everyone…;"

…And then haltingly continued with:

(57:27) I represent the State of Indiana, but I've been honored to be a member of the CIS Commission on Global Health;

And I wanna uh let uh the world know and let China know that we want to and must continue to cooperate – the CDC has been uh cooperating, has been uh providing and extending their hand of cooperation

We look forward to CDC being an active participant with you in curbing and ending this uh epidemic;

Uhm But first and foremost uhm, our hearts go out to the Chinese People. This is a humanitarian crisis uh in China and we must continue to work together and I must thank a… particularly all of the medical professionals, the scientists, the researchers, for the work that um everyone is putting um to this, uh-hem to the supply chain uh folks,

And so thank you for giving us because I think that is of great concern about the medical supply chain and resilience of our supply chain;

And we must continue to uahh to work together (smiling – hand motion) um, as ah countries, as world leaders we must continue to work together;

And so ah with that uh I, I thank you, I um continue to learn uhm we have very serious concerns particularly about the people who are on the cruise ship – um – and how we continue to … because my understanding is that the virus is spreading very intensely for those two cruise ships with a number of patients;

We must work cooperatively and together many of us have citizens, there are many citizens from around the world uh on those cruise ships right now, and we must uh continue to find ways and with CDC's leadership and cooperation eh-ah um, we must, gonna find our way forward and continue to extend that outreach and work forward our scientists and epidemiologists uh working with the Chinese authorities in China to help in this matter. (59:57)

Ignominious for a member of the House of Representatives to, in the first place, be there parading oneself as representing a whole State when really it's just a question of a mere electoral district within a State that one is authorized to speak for;

And then, if she were truly a "leader in congress on these matters of health security" she should have known, as everyone else in the room did know; the Chinese Government had famously declined to allow United States Center for Disease Control personnel entry into China at this very trying time.

So no thank you no, impertinent Mr. or Ms. American tattle-tale nattering Government Agent relentlessly seeking to pry apart and infiltrate some small non-existent cultural fissure you imagine could possibly exist in our rock hardened by millennia, customarily enforced, impenetrability. You won't find it you know; – it simply isn't there.

And anyway, truly it is you – cunning foreign sponsors of surreptitious cruise ship spying operations – who will be most in need of our help. So prepare yourself and be ready to soon come crawling; begging to be invaded in your turn by intelligence gathering do-gooders from our own great nation.

THAT FRUSTRATING Chinese rejection of our national attentions aside, and back to the Security Conference – it is well known that an overawing presumption of indispensability may at the proper moment wholly overtake our ennobled members of the United States Congress on such occasion as they may chance to find themselves surrounded suddenly in the company of politely jostling cosmopolitan and multilingual hieß führende Persönlichkeiten aus Politik members of the globe-trotting international elite.

When thrown in amongst a crowd like that – our erstwhile demure district representatives have been known to develop abrupt notions. In this case Congresswoman Brooks took it into her head to speak up about how her own little Indiana district was going to convince the rest of the United States to convince the rest of the world that it fell once again to our manifest destiny lot to manage all accounts and dictate all trends worldwide; – although to be fair, and as the reader has already noted, she didn't put it quite like that.

Unquestionably an elegant act or effort at enlightened self-promotion; but regardless if whether she may have been the lone voice in the wilderness attending, and speaking up and out for the entire nation just at that particular town-hall meeting moment, Ms. Brooks was not the only member of Congress in Munich over the weekend. Two large guided tour congressional compliments were there as well to spend three days gabbing about the town, or attending a sprinkling of the fascinating lectures in between the touring and sparkling meal meetings time-tables.

After that well spent sojourn in colorful foreign Munich; it had been anticipated that naturally no one in Congress would have the heart to immediately be getting back to work in drab old contentious Washington, D.C. on Monday. So both populations of the Senate and the House of Representatives had taken the fortuitous advance precaution of issuing themselves a unanimously approved ten-day vacation right in the middle of the month when the last chance of containing the Covid-19 outbreak in the United States was rapidly slipping away in large part due to an utter unwillingness on the part of Congress to acknowledge the danger and attend to the matter as required.

Brooks, like everyone else in Congress, was already well informed by repeatedly unheeded World Health Organization daily issued warnings concerning the seriousness of the Covid-19 coronavirus international outbreak pinpointed as originally stemming from Wuhan, China sometime probably in November. And she was there at the town hall meeting to let everyone know the Congress was entirely aware of the situation and deeply consumed by the issue and her being there letting everyone know of that important fact was the prima facie concrete evidence that proved this to be seemingly so.

THE FIRST United States Covid-19 case had been diagnosed on January 21st, 2020 in Seattle, Washington.

The World Health Organization declared the international Novel Coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (a PHEIC) on the 30th of January. On the very next day immediately following the declaration, President Trump imposed limited restrictions on leisure travel to and from China. A Public Health Emergency of International Concern is defined under the International Health Regulations (IHR – an internationally agreed upon standard which the WHO works off of) as:

International Health Regulations (2005)

Article 1 Definitions

"public health emergency of international concern" means an extraordinary event which is determined, as provided in these Regulations:

(i) to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease

and

(ii) to potentially require a coordinated international response;

The International Health Regulations may be found at:

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/246107/9789241580496-eng.pdf;jsessionid=1366CC9EA78EDFA4A0FF89E25CB9DA9F?sequence=1

As suggested by the above definition; the PHEIC designation is the official, actionable declaration that the outbreak and spread of a pathogen is both global – (hence pandemic, as opposed to a local epidemic outbreak) – and of serious concern. As previously mentioned, the Covid-19 outbreak was designated by the World Health Organization as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020. Accompanying its issuance of the declaration in this case; the WHO called upon States to undertake various protocols.

The word pandemic is not found under Article I – Definitions as it is a generic, non-specific term. To simply call something a pandemic might mean different things. There are yearly multiple global infections – common colds for example – which do not present an overarching danger to public health but are nevertheless pandemics.

In the article, "The classical definition of a pandemic is not elusive," published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Volume 89, Number 7, July 2011, 469-544; author Heath Kelly observes:

A pandemic is defined as an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people. The classical definition includes nothing about population immunity, virology or disease severity. By this definition, pandemics can be said to occur annually in each of the temperate southern and northern hemispheres, given that seasonal epidemics cross international boundaries and affect a large number of people. However, seasonal epidemics are not considered pandemics.

A true influenza pandemic occurs when almost simultaneous transmission takes place worldwide.

Pdf version may be downloaded from:

https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815.pdf?ua=1

Kelly writes, in the above, of a connotation for the word pandemic in the context of a pandemic spread of an influenza.

The World Health Organization PHEIC declaration was clear as to its well-defined meaning. The World Health Organization had admonished in its 30 January 2020 declaration officially designating the Covid-19 contagion outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC); that:

The Committee believes that it is still possible to interrupt virus spread, provided that countries put in place strong measures to detect disease early, isolate and treat cases, trace contacts, and promote social distancing measures commensurate with the risk. It is important to note that as the situation continues to evolve, so will the strategic goals and measures to prevent and reduce spread of the infection…

This should have served as a warning to members of Congress that a possible U.S. outbreak of Covid-19 was an impending emergency of a grand order, response for which would need special funding from Congress;

For even the presidential candidate for the 2020 White House, Joe Biden, had broadcast over the "Twitter" medium on the day after Trump imposed those travel restrictions; that he was aware of the existence of a global health emergency. Biden affirmed:

We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science – not Donald Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.

[To find it one can simply google the text. The internet address for the tweet is: https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1223727977361338370?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1223727977361338370&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fpolitics%2F2020%2F04%2F03%2Fjoe-biden-now-supports-trumps-china-travel-ban-he-said-was-hysterical-xenophobia%2F ]

In one breath, good ole fiber eatin' Joe Biden was on board acknowledging that "a global health emergency," as he put it, existed; while at the same time marketing the notion that Trump was an hysterical over-reacting fear-mongerer; possibly over-reacting by suddenly imposing limited restrictions on non-essential travel to and from China – or just overreacting in general as was his hysterical, xenophobic wont. Whatever Joe might exactly have meant by that provocative comment, or however it was intended to apply, or whatever should the public logically consider inferring from it; that question, that conundrum enigma would become a decoy distraction stirring national debate in some rarefied circles of the national debate circuit at some point in the not too distant future.

Aside from Joe's unambiguously disapproving take on the matter of a presiding Donald Trump distastefully hunched over the Presidential Podium;

The Congress on its part had responded to the multiple warnings and advisories issued throughout January and February 2020 by avoiding public discussion of the issue through the first couple of weeks of February; while some members availed themselves of this specified quiet time before the storm to tend to their own private financial concerns associated with particular individual private stock portfolio holdings which might be considerably exposed should this rumored oncoming scourge turn out to be something really big after all.

From the 24th of January through the first weeks of February there were some closed congressional meetings held regarding the issue – to which public access was naturally denied; but again, as mentioned, the membership was so intent on avoiding open discussion of the matter on the floor of Congress (where such discussion would be immediately recorded into the Congressional Record); and open discussion of the implications of a U.S. outbreak and discussion of what needed funding, and what the partisans in Congress were willing to fund; that both Houses agreed to avoid the issue and simply adjourn away from Washington for ten days of that critical shortest month of February. This was one fact which, unlike the secret meetings, could not avoid being recorded on the Congressional Record.

* * * * *

AS HINTED AT; there had been some discussion over what exactly good old fiber eating Joe Biden; originally shooed out from Scranton, Pennsylvania: was trying to say in that famous February 1st, 2020 broadcast tweet displayed above.

Certainly at that point he was aware that there was an ongoing global health emergency of some sort which could pose a threat to the United States – he had clearly stated it to be the case. As well; Biden seems (in that denunciation) to be of the strong opinion that Donald Trump is an hysterical fear-mongering racist. It also seems as if Joe Biden doesn't feel confident that Trump will be able to handle this problem – which the then contender for nomination as the Democratic Party candidate for the 2020 White House definitely thinks is going to be really big; too big for Trump to handle – as I said.

But Trump was President