Part of the Series
Despair and Disparity: The Uneven Burdens of COVID-19
Rick Bright, the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), is testifying before Congress today, and it’s going to be 40 miles of bad road for Donald Trump. It is also going to be the hard, unvarnished truth the entire country needs to hear.
Earlier in the week, Trump had to suffer through the congressional testimony of his hostage, Anthony Fauci, who contradicted Trump’s lethal happy talk about reopening the country while the COVID pandemic still rages. Now Trump has Bright to contend with, and by all reports, Bright will reiterate Fauci’s warning with a side of ghost peppers and actual fire.
“Rick Bright is the former director of BARDA, a Health and Human Services sub-agency whose purview is ‘preparing the nation for influenza pandemics and coordinating production, acquisition and delivery of medical countermeasures during a pandemic response,’” I wrote a little over a week ago.
Bright was demoted from his position specifically because he refused to coddle Trump’s dangerous obsession with chloroquine, the “miracle cure” that was in fact untested and highly dangerous. Bright was also vocally appalled by the stark lack of preparation within the administration, and by White House resistance to moving quickly to address these deeply pressing concerns. Before the pandemic, Bright found himself on the administration’s bad side for refusing to play footsie with pharmaceutical companies tied to Jared Kushner.
So Trump knocked Bright out of the box for “disloyalty,” but now he’s back, and look out below. Bright’s prepared opening statement for his testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s health subcommittee today details the myriad ways the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) blew through warning after warning in their quest for good press and favorable polls, even as the body count spun upward like a Manhattan taxi meter.
“I spoke out then and I am testifying today,” reads the prepared statement, “because science — not politics or cronyism — must lead the way to combat this deadly virus.” Taken as a whole, Bright’s statement is a thunderclap warning to all of us, and a shot across the bow of the foundering USS Trump:
Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities. While it is terrifying to acknowledge the extent of the challenge that we currently confront, the undeniable fact is there will be a resurgence of the COVID19 this fall, greatly compounding the challenges of seasonal influenza and putting an unprecedented strain on our health care system. Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history.
In his statement, Bright makes it clear that the country needs conscientious leadership first and foremost: “[O]ur leaders must lead by modeling the behavior” necessary to keep the virus from spreading, which includes wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
Bright will underscore the mortal need for a comprehensive national strategy, and pause for a moment to encompass the unbelievable fact that we still lack such a plan after all these weeks and with more than 80,000 dead. Bright’s statement calls for “tests that are accurate, rapid, easy to use, low cost, and available to everyone who needs them.” For myself, I believe the tests should be free, but we can have that argument once we actually have the damn tests.
Trump has been frantically, and often incoherently, making the argument that COVID is on the wane, and the number of cases is dropping “all throughout the country.” Yet data compiled by his very own White House shows a 1,000 percent spike in rural areas of Tennessee and Kansas, and a 400 percent spike in cases in rural areas in Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
In Michigan, the right-wing gun-toting protesters who have been marching on the Capitol in Lansing and threatening the life of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are catching COVID and spreading it in the rural communities where they live. These are the people Trump has been egging on for weeks, and that behavior is going to get a whole lot of people sick and dead before the Fourth of July, if the COVID pattern holds. This thing doesn’t care what you think. It wants your lungs and your life.
It is far past time to bring this Monster’s Ball to an end. Trump has been publicly dismissive of Anthony Fauci, and will likely have some twisted tweets to offer regarding the testimony of Rick Bright. Bright will be the blue plate special for Sean Hannity and the other propagandists on Fox News. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Perhaps, however, people will hear Bright’s words and heed them, and stay home, and stay alive. It is the best we can hope for in this strange and bitter age we live in. His testimony begins at 10:00 am Eastern time. Pull up a chair, and watch or listen as science puts this president in his place.
Help us Prepare for Trump’s Day One
Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.
As journalists, we have a responsibility to look at hard realities and communicate them to you. We hope that you, like us, can use this information to prepare for what’s to come.
And if you feel uncertain about what to do in the face of a second Trump administration, we invite you to be an indispensable part of Truthout’s preparations.
In addition to covering the widespread onslaught of draconian policy, we’re shoring up our resources for what might come next for progressive media: bad-faith lawsuits from far-right ghouls, legislation that seeks to strip us of our ability to receive tax-deductible donations, and further throttling of our reach on social media platforms owned by Trump’s sycophants.
We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.
We urgently need your help to prepare. As you know, our December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we’ll be able to do in 2025. We’ve set two goals: to raise $100,000 in one-time donations and to add 1300 new monthly donors by midnight on December 31.
Today, we’re asking all of our readers to start a monthly donation or make a one-time donation – as a commitment to stand with us on day one of Trump’s presidency, and every day after that, as we produce journalism that combats authoritarianism, censorship, injustice, and misinformation. You’re an essential part of our future – please join the movement by making a tax-deductible donation today.
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With gratitude and resolve,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy