Welcome to GPPR’s COVID blog! Here, you’ll find our insights based on our experiences and policy interests. Enjoy, and submit your post here.
COVID-19 and Violence at Home, Lia Lumauig
The Communicative Failure of Our Government in Times of Crisis, Hannah Friedman
The Theology of Pandemics, Sam Ben-Meir
Trump’s Pandemic Failure: A Missed Opportunity, Alon Ben-Meir
By Lia Lumauig
Writing from Arlington, Va.
Social distancing policies and stay-at-home orders, while varying in degree, have been enforced across the country to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Recent cases show evidence of presymptomatic transmission of the virus, supporting claims that staying at home and preventing large public gatherings are key to successful containment efforts. But what does this mean for subsets of the population whose homes provide a different kind of danger?
Intimate partner violence
Seventy-seven percent of women that experience intimate partner violence (IPV) report having been harmed by the same offender. One unintended consequence of stay-at-home orders is increased time spent between abusers and victims who live together, with victims having remarkably less opportunities to leave their homes. Victims who previously relied on the workplace or school as safe havens from abusive partners now face remote work arrangements or virtual learning environments at home.
Police departments in the U.S. note that there are increases in domestic violence calls in the wake of stay-at-home orders. The Hartford Police Department reported a 17% increase in family violence calls from March 2019 to March 2020. Orange County reported 25% more calls related to domestic violence between a similar time span. In Kalamazoo County, a 75% increase.
Maintaining power and control over victims has long been identified at the core of abuse and IPV. In times like these, with job losses and other major disruptions to daily life, victims can be highly vulnerable at home when increased pressures, such as financial hardship, are felt by their abusers. Coupled by social distancing behaviors that keep trusted family members and friends away, victims face little to no respite from suffering.
Pandemics and natural disasters: a comparative look
While natural disasters do not present exactly the same challenges in the wake of COVID-19 – displacement, for example, was an immediate impact after severe hurricanes that IPV victims do not inherently face today – it is worth noting that the same three phenomena occurred after disasters and in the current state of COVID-19: an uptick in domestic violence reports, a decrease in victims’ economic independence, and considerable damage to support organizations such as shelters.
One study found that IPV increased for both male and female victims after Hurricane Katrina, and hurricane-related stressors “were associated with increased risk.” Reports of higher instances of violence are common after disasters.
The economic impact of disasters is also comparable to what we are seeing today with COVID-19. The U.S. is facing Great Depression-era unemployment levels, a reminder of a similar phenomenon across New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Loss of jobs may result in survivors of abuse having a heightened dependence towards abusers, especially when abusers exert control over shared finances.
Lastly, organizations that provide support to IPV victims bear significant damage. Post-disaster infrastructure and personal loss decrease available resources to those in need. After Hurricane Harvey, shelters not only dealt with rebuilding property, but also a drop in staffing as workers were affected by damage to their own homes.
Policy options
The federal government should address today’s concerns by ensuring that funding streams to both individual survivors and support organizations are properly allocated and distributed. Similar to supplemental funds through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that reached individuals in need during Hurricane Sandy, programs that help boost an individual’s economic stability may help decrease the financial control that abusers wield over survivors. With a decrease in demand for travel and hospitality services, the government may also consider partnerships with hotels and motels in addressing victims’ need for safe alternative housing options.
The passage of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act implemented additional funding to support relevant programs by $45 million, but does not bolster funding for Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) programs. VAWA funds critical programs across the country, such as transitional housing, legal assistance, and rape crisis centers. As we continue to observe a surge in domestic violence reports, enhancing these resources may be warranted to protect survivors. Cuts to operational funding in domestic violence programs before the 2016 Louisiana floods limited organizations’ ability to provide resources after the disaster hit.
Today, while the home is the safest place for most people, this may not be the case for those that face abuse and violence on a regular basis. Future stimulus packages should ensure that essential resources continue to be available and accessible to survivors.
THE COMMUNICATIVE FAILURE OF OUR GOVERNMENT IN TIMES OF CRISIS
Writing from Newton, Mass.
I think we can all agree that this is an incredibly stressful time to live in. Not only is there a global pandemic, but it has led to serious repercussions for the economy, indicating that we will perhaps feel its effects for quite some time. Governments around the world are taking action in an attempt to mitigate these effects through various economic relief programs. In the United States, the rollout has been especially confusing.
Over the last few days, I have seen so much conflicting information about the $1200 relief check promised by the government. It’s unclear exactly who will get the check, when we’ll get the check or how we’ll get the check. A few additional questions come to mind: is there a catch? What will this mean for tax payments next year? Are we making up for this short-term relief in some other way in the long run? It seems that to get the answers to some of these questions, you have to do fairly extensive research and read the relevant provisions yourself. One of my close friends is a tax accountant and he didn’t fully understand the provisions himself when I asked him. He had to clarify a few points with one of the partners of his firm and even now, it’s unclear what will happen with some people’s checks.
The American people deserve better. The inconsistent guidance we have received from our leaders, particularly the current presidential administration has only added to our concerns regarding the future. The only silver lining I can think of is that this pandemic has unequivocally revealed inherent systemic flaws in the very fabric of our society (flaws which some experts have pointed to for quite some time in the face of willful ignorance). Maybe this will give us the push we need to finally introduce some transformative policy change.
By Sam Ben-Meir
Writing from Upstate NY
Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film “The Seventh Seal,” is set in medieval Sweden, as the bubonic plague ravages the countryside. In one famous scene, a procession of zombielike flagellants, enters a village and interrupts a comic stage-show. The townspeople are present to hear the procession’s leader, a bombastic preacher who proclaims that death is coming for them all: they are full of sin – lustful and gluttonous – and the plague is God’s punishment for their wicked ways. That scene is not without historical merit: the flagellants were indeed a very real phenomenon, and with the plague, the movement grew and spread throughout Europe.
For most of us, public self-mutilation and penance is a particularly extreme and repulsive form of religious fanaticism. But in the West, we still have ways of lashing ourselves, and each other, in the face of plague, pestilence and the terror they sow; and pandemics still invariably prompt a religious explanation. During the AIDS epidemic, we were told that God was punishing homosexuals and illicit drug users. In 1992, 36% of Americans admitted that AIDS might be God’s punishment for sexual immorality.
The interesting question is: What is the temptation to view a catastrophe like the plague as divine punishment as opposed to a brute fact of nature? Surely at least one reason we are tempted to do so is because, if it is heavenly retribution, then the hardship still has some meaning; we still live in a world with an underlying moral structure. Indeed, to many, the idea that such a great calamity is nothing more than a brute act of nature is far more painful to contemplate than an account by which God cares enough about us to punish us.
In case you think the coronavirus is any different, it is not. On March 8, 2020, the Times of Israel reported that Rabbi Meir Mazuz “claimed the spread of the deadly coronavirus in Israel and around the world is divine retribution for gay pride parades.” By some ironic twist, the rabbi is basically in agreement with Rick Wiles, a Florida pastor who said the spread of coronavirus in synagogues is a punishment of the Jewish people. The Jerusalem Post quotes Wiles as saying, “It’s spreading in Israel through the synagogues. God is spreading it in your synagogues! You are under judgment because you oppose his son, Jesus Christ. That is why you have a plague in your synagogues. Repent and believe on the name of Jesus Christ, and the plague will stop.”
The temptation to view catastrophes as divine punishment is nothing to scoff or smirk at: it is entirely legitimate to want to construct a narrative out of what has occurred – to find a pattern, to derive some meaning that redeems the suffering, hardship and death. What is unfortunate is the tendency to point to some perceived wickedness of which others are purportedly guilty as the justification for God’s wrath. Both the rabbi and the pastor are the same: both talk like Job’s notorious companions, those so-called friends of the unfortunate and innocent Job, who insist that he must be guilty, that he must have sinned for God to assail him with such fury. Of course, at the end of the poem, God tells the companions that they were wrong: Job was right – his suffering was not punishment for any sin he had committed. Indeed, the Bible teaches that God often sees fit to test precisely those that are good and righteous. Sadly, the pastor and rabbi entirely disregard that biblical lesson.
If a pandemic is divine punishment, then in a sense we can be at peace – inasmuch as we have provided the scourge with a theodicy, that is, a justification of God’s ways to man. Whenever we are faced with human tragedy, we cannot but question how an omnibenevolent and omnipotent deity would permit so much suffering to occur. A plague sharpens the concerns that lie at the heart of the theological problem of evil – the problem of reconciling a loving God with the reality and ubiquity of human and animal suffering. Thankfully, most religious leaders are unwilling to cast the burden of guilt on any particular group of which they may disapprove. Instead, they take a page from Job and underscore the impenetrable mystery of suffering – taking their inspiration perhaps from God’s speech to Job from out of the whirlwind, where He begins with one of the famous queries of the Bible: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?” And He continues with withering sarcasm, “Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!” In short, do not attempt to sound the depths of God’s inscrutable purpose.
For every pandemic there is a theology; by their nature, they call forth notions of guilt, sin and responsibility. It is almost as if we cannot but view them through theological categories. Each pandemic begins with a kind of “fall,” or original sin, which we attempt to retrace with our search for “patient zero,” the individual representing the source of the calamity, the one who kicked us out of paradise as it were. The writers of the 2011 film “Contagion” clearly had as much in mind when they decided that their story’s patient zero (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) should also be an adulteress.
A pandemic also highlights an inescapable function of all significant human action – namely, that our actions always outrun our intentions. Everything we do has consequences that we never anticipated, wanted or even imagined. We like to think that we are not responsible for everything our actions may cause – but the reality is that we cannot dodge or entirely relinquish our responsibility even for those things we never intended. Perhaps like nothing else, a pandemic reveals the burden of human action, our infinite liability; indeed, our indeclinable responsibility.
There is a theology accompanying every plague because there is a very human need to make sense of such colossal suffering. That theology may take the form of a conspiracy theory, but it is a theology all the same. One example is the persistent speculation that the coronavirus originated in some kind of bioweapons laboratory in Wuhan, China. This explanation, regardless of its lack of evidentiary merit, is a temptation because it offers us a story, which is but a secularized version of the fall. The essential features are there: to say that human beings deliberately created the virus is to say that this pandemic is the result of human transgression; that human hubris introduced this uncontrollable element that upset the order of things.
The current pandemic has left fear and death, loneliness and stagnation in its wake. We must start asking ourselves what it has all been for. Eventually this great tide of suffering will ebb, life will resume, the economy will reopen and pick up steam, and the coronavirus will slowly fade from our immediate view – at that point, when we think of all those many tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands who died, alone, what will we be able to point to as their legacy? What did they die for? Undoubtedly many will say only that their deaths were unfortunate – all we can do to honor their sacrifice is return to life as it was, prosper and grow the economy at two percent annually. If we allow that to happen, then we will have failed, completely and utterly.
If we do not seize this crisis as a moment for transformation, then we will have lost the war. If doing so requires reviving notions of collective guilt and responsibility – including the admittedly uncomfortable view that every one of us is infinitely responsible, then so be it; as long we do not morally cop out by blaming some group as the true bearers of sin, guilt, and God’s heavy judgment. A pandemic clarifies the nature of action: that with our every act we answer to each other. In that light, we have a duty to seize this public crisis as an opportunity to reframe our mutual responsibility to one another and the world.
TRUMP’S PANDEMIC FAILURE: A MISSED OPPORTUNITY
For a man who is a self-absorbed, power hungry narcissist who wants to be recognized as one of the greatest presidents of the United States while desperately trying to be reelected, Trump failed miserably to rise to the occasion precipitated by the unfortunate advent and spread of the coronavirus. Instead of minimizing the ominous danger of the virus and ignoring the warning of top scientists about the prospective disastrous consequences it could unleash, he could have mobilized from the onset of this pandemic every national resource to tackle the virus head on. This includes the military, the National Guards, and thousands of companies and medical institutions to produce critical equipment and testing on a national scale, as well as creating an aggressive national program to fight this virus as a war on all fronts.
Had he done that, he could have realized just about everything he wanted. In fact, he would have been able to emerge from this tragic outbreak as a hero. The public would have forgiven him for his incessant lies, deliberate misleading statements, idiosyncrasies, and corruption. I also believe that Trump would have been able to handedly beat any prospective Democratic nominee, including Joe Biden, come November.
The question is, why didn’t Trump pursue this logical course of action? There are a number of reasons that explain his bizarre behavior, albeit none should have obscured the gravity of the situation—if he only wasn’t so immersed with himself. From his vantage point, everything starts first and foremost with what can serve his personal interests.
From the onset, Trump sought to disassociate himself from the outbreak of the virus by denying that he failed to prepare the country for such an epidemic, when in fact he greatly contributed to the country’s unpreparedness. In the spring of 2018, he dismantled the team in charge of responding to pandemics, including the departure of its head, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer. In addition, he cut funding for the CDC and continues to push for reducing U.S. funding of the World Health Organization. Moreover, he seems to be unwilling to embrace testing on a national scale because he does not want to show that the number of those infected is exponentially increasing, leaving the country more vulnerable than it has ever been.
Trump’s concern with the economy was first and foremost in his mind. As he sees it, the continuing economic boom was central to his reelection campaign, and he rebuffed anything that could adversely impact the health of the economy. Thus, he had to minimize the dire implications of the coronavirus, even though he knew about the virus early in January and dismissed the scientific evidence suggesting that the impact of the virus would be catastrophic if the country was not fully mobilized to deal with the epidemic.
As customary for Trump, he never takes responsibility for anything that turns sour, but he rushes in and relishes taking credit for anything good, perceived or real, like the record-breaking stock market or the lowest unemployment rate in a generation which, in fact, was largely precipitated by Obama’s economic recovery plans. In this case, he put blame for the lack of essential medical supplies squarely on the Obama administration, and various governors who were told that they are on their own: not only because it was convenient, but because it would also distinguish himself from the “failings” of his predecessor whom he intensely disliked.
Being totally consumed by his reelection campaign is an understatement. For Trump, nothing else matters. He was determined to treat COVID-19 as a side distraction and not allow the rapid spread of the virus to interfere in his reelection efforts. Having finally realized the severity of the pandemic, as the number of deaths and those infected rose exponentially, Trump was quick to capitalize on it by conducting a daily press conference, which has become a replacement for his campaign rallies.
Finally, Trump was quick to take full credit for the passage of the largest economic stimulus bill, to the tune of $2.2 trillion. For him, the bill is essential in order to keep unemployment—which has exploded in recent weeks—as low as possible and allow the stock market to regain some of its substantial losses. To be sure, Trump wants to present himself as the savior of the economy, knowing that short of a significantly improved economic outlook in the immediate future, his reelection prospects will be dim at best.
While Trump was focusing on what serves his personal interests, COVID-19 was claiming the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and infecting hundreds of thousands more (14,696 deaths and 427,460 cases at the time of writing). Much of this tragic infliction could have been prevented had his administration been better prepared, and had Trump himself acted in good faith. Instead, he sought to push unproven and undertested pharmaceuticals in the hopes that they would prove beneficial, so that he could present it to the nation as another sign of his great success in handling the pandemic.
The problem with Trump though is his obsession with himself, which blinds him from seeing the larger picture. Trump’s ignorance prevented him from realizing that one can engender a breakthrough from a breakdown. Had he been honest with himself and with the American public, he could have simply admitted that the country was unprepared and that he will fight this deadly virus with all of America’s might. He could have also offered assistance to other countries in need, restoring some of America’s global leadership.
Indeed, assuming responsibility and rising to the occasion to right the wrongs would have put Trump in a completely different light. He could have emerged from this historic pandemic a truly decisive, strong, and visionary leader—attributes that have only eluded him when they were at his very grasp.
Established in 1995, the Georgetown Public Policy Review is the McCourt School of Public Policy’s nonpartisan, graduate student-run publication. Our mission is to provide an outlet for innovative new thinkers and established policymakers to offer perspectives on the politics and policies that shape our nation and our world.