COVID-19: Denial, Mourning, George Floyd, and Healing Our Losses

The Coronavirus pandemic arrived while the American political establishment focused on the impeachment of President Trump. This impeachment made for dramatic news even though the results were a foregone conclusion of acquittal by the Senate. Some Republicans sought to use this preoccupation as an excuse for the reason the U.S. was so unprepared for the pandemic, in sharp contrast to countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Germany. Although the CDC in early January issued warning alerts about travel from China, and a coronavirus task force was created by the end of the month, the White House was focused on the President’s reelection based upon what it viewed as a very strong economy. Consequently, Trump declared the virus to be the Democrats’ “new hoax”

As fear began to envelop the nation, Trump continued to minimize the domestic risk to the U.S. from the virus and deflect criticism. He said that, “The virus ‘is very much under control,’” “Thirty-five thousand people die from the flu and we have lost nobody” (actually 59,000 during the flu season), “It’s [testing] totally unnecessary,” “The last administration left us nothing…. We started off with bad, broken tests and obsolete tests” (the Obama admin-

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istration left a pandemic playbook and there could be no tests for the new COVID-19 virus), etc., etc. A consistent refrain was that the stock market is “starting to look very good to me!” As a flag-waving nationalist, he called it “the Chinese virus” and declared on more than one occasion that “we’re doing better than anybody else in the world.”

As the disturbing news of the massive number of deaths in China and elsewhere became undeniable, the President was forced to pay more attention to the pandemic. In the face of enormous public and political pressure, he declared a national emergency on March 13^th, promising to increase testing capacity and warning against people without symptoms being tested, declaring that it is “totally unnecessary, this will pass” (Aaron Blake, “Trump’s confusing answers on coronavirus testing,” Washington Post, March 13, 2020). Within a few days, the President felt compelled to ask everyone to “work at home if possible,” postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings of no more than ten people. He also declared that he has “always known this is a real… pandemic,” and he “felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic” (Jon Greenberg, “Trump says he always felt coronavirus was a pandemic. He didn’t talk that way,” Politifact, March 18, 2020). This reflects Trump’s need to always feel he is in control and his virtually total lack of concern about self-contradiction.

With the nation focused on this life and death threat, the President stepped forth with a daily pandemic update, together with others and most especially Anthony Fauci. Dr. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, bent over backward to provide scientific information without contradicting the Commander-in-Chief too directly, who kept pushing for timelines for reopening the economy. Fauci called Trump’s opening statements “aspirational” and consistently declared that the timeline will be determined by the pandemic.

The news conferences became a daily event with the President (and therefore most others around him until later) never wearing a mask. In sharp contrast to the President’s approach was the very detailed daily briefings by Governor Cuomo of New York. On April 13^th, Trump claimed total authority over governors on when to open the economy. Shortly thereafter he had to acknowledge that the states played the central role, but he kept pressuring the states with deadly consequences in many areas, especially in the South in July. The contrast between the unsubstantiat-

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ed and often erroneous statements of Trump and the very measured factual statements based on science of Cuomo and Fauci was and is striking.

Eventually, the president’s advisors and pollsters were warning that he was being overexposed by being in front of the cameras every day, which was hurting his public support and therefore his prospects for reelection. The White House announced that there would no longer be daily briefings. However, Trump gave a pandemic briefing the next day and continued to speak and write in other venues.

Donald J. Trump had made his career as a celebrity; his need for attention, even negative attention, is insatiable. Eventually, he got around to advising the nation to wear masks, but he continued to not wear one himself. This is interesting because long before his days as President, Trump was known as a germophobe, but the need to look good trumped the issue of health. One of the President’s solutions to staying safe was the drug hydroxychloroquine, untested for this condition and considered potentially harmful. When its use was criticized, Trump fired the health expert in charge of overseeing developing a vaccine for the virus and four inspector generals, causing concern even among some Republican conservatives.

Trump’s consistent push to open the economy meant there was a mixed message to the frightened country and a pushback against CDC guidelines. In places this was led by Trump supporters, including those coming from his rallies. The President was facing negative feedback even from Fox News, his usual bastion of support, and was troubled by suggestions that he was cowardly in facing up to the virus and the scientists. What is said on Fox News inclines to be seen as reality to President Trump. The enormous number of the unemployed became a concern and, following the President’s lead, the media turned more to the enormous economic consequences of the pandemic.

To minimize the economic impact of the pandemic requires careful long-range planning involving social-distancing, protective gear, testing, contact tracing, and consistent leadership setting a clear example of behavior. Where these have been practiced, the deaths are low and the economies have been able to reopen safely. For example, when checked on July 24^th there were seven deaths in Taiwan, 298 deaths in South Korea, 9,201 deaths in Ger-

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many, and 148,490 in the U.S. The case of Germany is interesting because, with a population of 17 million greater than Britain, Germany had only 9,201 deaths compared to 45,677 in the UK. Britain, like the United States, responded slowly and inefficiently to the threat and is paying the price, including the prime minister, who suffered a severe case of COVID-19. In comparative terms per one million people, these statistics are even more striking with the death counts following the country name:U.S. 448, UK 673, South Korea six, and Taiwan .03 (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries).

With a coordinated national policy involving adequate protective gear, rapid reliable testing, social distancing, and contact tracing implemented, the economy could fairly safely open, but these are not in place, and there is great danger of a second wave. It has already been estimated that the failure to act promptly caused about 36,000 additional deaths in the U.S. (James Glanz and Campbell Robertson, “Lockdown Delays Cost at Least 36,000 Lives, Data Show,” New York Times, May 22, 2020); however, it is very hard to determine such projections due to the complexity of our society. President Trump, who has a very long history of spending other people’s money, supported the Democratic push for a massive infusion of cash ($2.2 trillion emergency spending bill) into the economy. The House Democrats fought hard for money to be sent to the average American rather than to large corporations, though in practice this approach was less successful than designed. Furthermore, larger businesses were in a good position to manipulate the overstrained bureaucracy and received the relief, although a few were embarrassed into returning funds meant to save small businesses and ordinary Americans. The President, who had initially said, “I’m in charge of dealing with the pandemic” and will decide when the economy reopens, was forced by the Constitution to defer to the governors. Trump resists providing the necessary funding governors desperately need.

Eventually, there was talk on Fox News and therefore the White House of firing Fauci, but that was deemed too politically damaging because of how trusted the doctor is nationally. By early July there was a major White House effort to discredit Fauci because a respected poll in mid-June showed that 76% of the public trusted Dr. Fauci to provide providing accurate pandemic information and only 26% trusted the President’s accuracy (Grace Panetta, “Trump is reportedly rattled by Dr. Fauci’s high approval rat-

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ings compared to his own poor polling on COVID-19,” Business Insider, July 13, 2020). Like Persian kings of ancient history, Trump’s impulse is to kill the messenger of news he does not want to hear (firing or discrediting is the modern equivalent to killing), but this has so far been too politically dangerous.

Healing the nation is not just about getting the economy back to normal and attaining full employment. It is about mourning our vulnerability as human beings, our lack of preparedness, and our over 140,000 dead as of July 20^th. The question becomes: “how good at mourning is our President and his rival for the White House?” Joe Biden is well-known for having given the eulogy for his first wife, who taught him to have greater empathy for minorities, for the racist Senator Strom Thurmond in 2003, for two assassinated New York City policemen (one Hispanic, the other Chinese American) in 2014, and for nine African-American worshippers killed in Charlestown in 2015. Biden is the go-to person for eulogies (Katie Glueck and Matt Flegenheimer, “Biden is No Stranger to Grief, or to Consolation,” New York Times, June 11, 2020, A1, A14-15). While vice-presidents are typically sent instead of the president to funerals, in Biden’s case the devastating sudden loss of his loved ones left him with great empathy for the grieving. Perhaps his early consideration of becoming a priest may be an influence as well.

In contrast, Donald John Trump is so narcissistically self-involved that he fails at providing empathy for a nation in mourning. Anger, blaming others, conspiracy theories, entitlement, grandiosity, grievance, and self-pity are his default positions. Even at his father’s funeral when other family members spoke lovingly about Fred Trump, Donald spoke at greater length about his own achievements (Gwenda Blair, The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate, 2000, 2015, 455). In his desire to revive the economy, often in opposition to his own CDC recommendations, the President has treated the threat to the nation as a short-term problem rather than as a marathon governed by medical science. His only niece thinks that these and other actions have resulted in “hundreds of thousands of American lives… having been sacrificed on the altar of Donald’s hubris and willful ignorance” (Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, 2020, 17). In psychoanalytic terms, he speaks for the pleasure principle (the id), seeking immediate gratification through the lifting of pandemic re-

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straints rather than the more cautious, sensible, and scientifically based ego. The consequence of his approach is encouraging ordinary people to ignore prudence and set back our progress toward herd immunity.

The protest against the coronavirus restrictions exploded at the end of May and beginning of June with the outrage over the asphyxiation of George Floyd. Much of the nation was horrified to see eight minutes and 46 seconds of a police officer choking the life out of a man who was repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe,” and calling out for his mother. This was occurring in the context of a nation that feared death through COVID-19, infected lungs, restriction in breathing through masks, feeling suffocated by stay-at-home orders, unemployment, and social distancing. Blacks, who suffer the largest number of deaths, were joined in their anti-police outrage by people of all races.

Clearly, as a psychohistorian, I cannot ignore the connection between the protests against police brutality and racism with the restrictions of the coronavirus. Donald Trump had been elected president for a variety of reasons, including a reaction against the political correctness symbolized by the election of a multi-racial president and the bringing of more African Americans into our public life and onto our television screens. Not many years ago, non-whites were definitely underrepresented on my screens while today in the New York metropolitan area, I see them as being overrepresented according to their percentages in the population in advertisements on my TV. I interpret this as a sign of Americans not only becoming more accepting and aware of the existence of our multiracial population, but our being drawn to look at the question of race. After gender, racial distinction is probably what people are most aware of. This is in part a reaction to the President’s racism.

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact, race, and police mistreatment of minorities are all topics ripe for psychohistorical interpretation. As an editor and scholar, I look forward to receiving these from our readers.

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