Today's JG rant: Abe Schwab is back. I think he needs a personal government minder.

Abe Schwab thinks he might have had the Chinese Virus way back in February, but who knows.  Schwab apparently is no longer sick.  He apparently no longer shows signs of having Wuhan Virus.  Yet Schwab still wants to get tested.   

Does he know that if he had the Wuhan Virus way back in February and has fully recovered, the test will prove nothing?  Yet the philosophy professor at small Midwestern university who pens an oped for a small Midwestern newspaper every other week wants to be tested.  

The reason, other than curiosity, isn’t clear.  For Schwab, his peace of mind is worth denying a test to a first responder or a Hoosier who is showing symptoms of the disease.  He will give the president’s team no credit for going from zero tests to over 3 million tests in less than 6 weeks.

By any standard, other Schwab’s whose standard is that he gets a test, that’s an incredible achievement. 

Schwab is the same Schawb who a bit back penned an oped complaining that the federal government had not given him sufficient orders as to how much toilet paper to stock for the bathroom or how many pizzas to stuff into his freezer. 

Now he is whining like a cut a dog because, “We don't know what we should do because we still don't know what we need to.”  I guess Schwab needs a government minder to move in with him and tell him to stay home as much as possible, wash his hands, cover his cough, avoid touching his face, practice social distancing and wear a face mask while out in public if you’re really paranoid. 

So we kind of do know what to do.

Lefty libs are now having a great deal cognitive dissonance right now.  They screeched like a bunch of howler monkeys because Trump wouldn’t act like a dictator and force governors of certain states to close down.  Now the lefty libs are again screeching like howler monkeys because Trump says he has total authority to open the country back up.

Lefty libs had no problem with federal overreach under the guise of the “commerce clause” when they used it, but are forced to grab the salts and head for the fainting couch when Trump uses it as authority for opening the county. 

I’m a total federalist on this.  The federal government can’t tell states to close down any more than it can tell them when to reopen.

    

Then there’s this bit of fantasy from Schwab, “unfortunately we live under an administration that provides little in the way of guidance.”  You cannot be serious.  

We’re about six weeks into Trump’s daily briefings that have included everyone from health and viral experts (CDC, Surgeon General, Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci) to the Secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense to leaders of industry.  Only the most obtuse or someone totally blinded by Trump hatred can claim that Trump has provided “little in the way of guidance.”  

We know Schwab is a partisan hack, but has he been too busy hiding under his bedsheets for fear of being infected to take note of any of the daily briefings?  

Does Schwab believe any of his own bologna?  If he believes it he’s totally unqualified to teach anyone anything. He should either resign immediately or begin each class with the following statement, “I’m a leftist loon. Everything I say or do is colored by my partisan politics.  If you don’t agree with my idiotic political point of view, keep it to yourself.  I don’t want to argue with you, because I’m a leftist and my point of view always falls apart under scrutiny.  I cannot defend any of it.”   

If he quits, I’m sure the likeminded JG would hire him for a daily column of his special brand of leftist nonsense.

As for reopening the country, will Schwab be content  remain under the bedsheets until he can get a Democrat "all clear" order, a daily test and a personal government minder to tell him what to buy, when and where he can travel and who he can associate with?

Friday, April 17, 2020 1:00 am

Accountability in short supply as virus rages

Abe Schwab

Someone recently asked me when I thought I'd be returning to work.

Even though I've been working even more hours over the past several weeks than I normally would, I knew what he meant. He wondered when I, like thousands of Hoosiers, would actually be returning to the office.

And of course, like many of you, I just don't know. We don't know whether Gov. Eric Holcomb will extend the stay-at-home order. We don't know, when he does lift the order, whether we should go back to the office. And we don't know all this because we don't know how many cases of COVID-19 there are in Indiana and Allen County. We don't know whether we're an asymptomatic carrier, or if we've already recovered, or if we have yet to catch it

We don't know what we should do because we still don't know what we need to.

To be fair, we know more than we did a month ago. We know that the number of cases across the United States has risen exponentially. In Indiana, at least, we know we haven't exceeded our available ICU beds or ventilators, and we know more about the distribution of known cases across age groups, genders, and races. But we don't know how widespread COVID-19 is, or how far we are into the spread of this disease across the entire population. And so we don't know what to do.

And you have to work pretty hard to avoid criticizing the response of the Trump administration.

On March 6, President Donald Trump said anybody who wants a test can get a test. And we know that wasn't true at the time, and six weeks later still isn't true. I want to be tested. I want to know about the severe illness I had in February that knocked me down like no illness I've had in the past decade. It took me a month to fully recover my ability to work out. Was it COVID-19? Seems unlikely, but who knows. And I certainly can't get tested.

We know the federal government has redirected personal protective equipment and other resources from states and hospitals that have ordered them. Why? Trump has made it clear states are on their own for supplies, but has also kept states from getting those supplies.

Finally, we know that Trump has claimed “total authority” in the response to the pandemic. That is the claim of someone who would be a dictator and not the leader of a representative democracy like the United States is supposed to be.

And we know that our federal representatives, Rep. Jim Banks and Sens. Todd Young and Mike Braun, have not shown any interest in holding the Trump administration to account for any of this. Banks has introduced legislation to hold the Kennedy Center accountable for its firing of musicians, but has not a critical word for the administration. Young is turning a critical eye to the World Health Organization's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, but has said he thinks Trump has shown “tremendous leadership.” And Braun joins Trump in wanting to reopen the economy, despite all that we don't know.

I'd like to know more about where we are and what we should do, but unfortunately we live under an administration that provides little in the way of guidance, provides a great deal in the way of misinformation, and has done more to empower itself than to help us. And our representatives in the House and Senate should hold this administration accountable.

Abe Schwab is professor of philosophy at Purdue Fort Wayne who specializes in applied ethics. His column appears every other week.