I haven’t written today and there’s no reason to wait until tomorrow, time no longer exists. I have to strike while the intellectual iron is hot. I do surveys online for Ipsos and YouGov. Through one of them I was asked to participate in a virtual town hall with one of my Senators, Kirsten Gillibrand, and an upstate member of the house, John Katko. I thought it was a mistake as he’s not my representative, but I was told that as long as I lived in New York it was fine as Ms. Gillibrand is my senator. I’ve never participated in something like this. The audience submitted questions via text and the participants answer them. There was a third member of the panel, Dr. Robert Corona, the CEO of Upstate Medical University. I was way too amused that Dr. Corona was there to discuss COVID-19 the disease caused by novel corona virus. I’m sure he’s not appreciating the connection.
Mr. Katko is an upstate Republican, so I was not surprised to find that I disagreed with most of what he said. He called the administration of the emergency small business loans excellent. I had just read that at JPMorgan, nearly all of the 8,500 commercial and private banking clients, those with the most assets, who applied for a loan got one, while only 6% of the smaller retail clients did. I asked him if he thought that was doing an excellent job. They never got to that question. That’s not what I’m prompted me to write. That is dog bites man. What upset me was something that Ms. Gillibrand said.
The question was about treatments and cures for COVID-19. Sen. Gillibrand said that vaccines and cures have already been developed and that we are just waiting for them to go through testing. She said it twice, once that explicitly, and that’s what set me off. You’d think that with the most important issue facing the world today a medical one that someone who thought she should be president would have a basic understanding of how science is done, but that statement shows she doesn’t. She said that we already have the vaccine and cures as if that were a fact, and we are just waiting for the paperwork to be processed. The entire point of the testing for both efficacy and safety is that we don’t know we have a cure or an effective vaccine until they are tested. Testing is not a formality. We aren’t waiting 18 months for a vaccine because we have to follow some rule book. It’s because we don’t know we have a vaccine or a cure until after the testing is done. Some people are now going to be demanding that they be given the cure that the government is withholding because of red tape. It’s very much like Trump trumpeting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment based on anecdotal evidence. I was considering supporting Gillibrand early in the primary process when I was more concerned with Warren’s age. I’m happy now that she dropped out early. She’s been a fine senator, but I don’t want her making important decisions on her own.
I wonder if this argument will mean anything to most of you. I’m expecting some of my scientifically minded friends to think I was naïve for hoping that a senator would understand. I’m confident that Obama, Hillary, and Warren would. Biden has enough experience that he would least understand what he doesn’t understand and listen to the people that know more. Trump doesn’t think anyone knows more than him so of course he ignores experts. If Gillibrand got the nomination I’d hope that her staff would bring her up to speed and not let her say something so scientifically ignorant. This question should not have come out of the blue Gillibrand had to know it was likely to come up and prepared for it.
I’ll save the fun stuff until tomorrow. Tonight, I had to get that off my chest.
Wise Madness 