Russia Offers A Poison Apple... and Our President is Really, Really Hungry

Let me get this straight… Russia has announced that they have a vaccine for the Coronavirus and that they intend to begin vaccinating their first responders and health care professionals within a few weeks. There is very little that I can imagine more dangerous to America than this statement by the Russian government.

To a nation that is ripped apart by the competing pressures of economic devastation and an out of control pandemic, this is the mirage of clean water in a poisoned lake. The statement openly accepts that Russia has not tested its vaccine to anything close to responsible standards, and taunts America for being so cautious. It suggests that the salvation of our national crises is being withheld from our people because of some indecipherable governmental process.

It offers a desperate president a slender straw to grasp, knowing full well that he will not be able to resist. In his desperation to maintain his power, he has already demonstrated that he will compromise safety and common sense, that he will impulsively violate the dictates of his own agencies and professionals. It could only have been a better, more irresistible trap if they had claimed that the vaccine was Hydroxychloroquine.

It is critical to understand the reason for the extreme testing of drugs in our country, and indeed across most of the world. There is a long and painful history of damage done to broad populations by drugs that offered false promises, or worse caused symptoms as bad or worse than the illnesses that they addressed. The evolution of the process of qualifying a drug for mass distribution is not an arbitrary penalty to pharmaceutical companies, but rather is communal protection that has saved countless lives. To throw away those safeguards, to expose America in a matter of life and death, is to determine that political ambition is more important that a responsible exercise of authority.

It also won’t work.

The effectiveness of a vaccine is based on the adoption of that drug by the population. Even if it is effective, the impact that it will have on the spread of the virus — and accordingly, the timing of our return to some semblance of normality — is directly determined by the percentage of the population that takes it. Already, a third of the country has stated reservations or objections (in part, ironic response to Trump’s own proclivity for conspiracy theories); the premature release of a drug in the context of strenuous objections by the medical community will only increase that already dangerous percentage. The forced acceptance of a drug against individual will is conceptually possible, but would open the providing companies (and one assumes some level of authority) to ruinous lawsuits should there be some form of problem.

All of that is knowable. All of that is a simple process of deductive reasoning with available knowledge and understandings. All of that is easy.

Does anyone believe that will be enough to keep the President from overreacting and reaching for the poisoned apple? That this is Russia, and that Trump has such a bizarre and convoluted relationship with Putin, is there any reason to believe that we won’t see him argue for immediacy? When Russia announces that there have been no negative results without evidence to support it, and the world disbelieves Putin out of an abundance of experience, should we expect Trump to take the side of the scientists and our allies, or of the Russian leader?

We are not innocent anymore. We know this president, we see his panic and weakness, and we know that he will happily give up our lives for his political ambitions, never feeling a twinge. We know, and yet… let’s watch and see not only his first comments, often scripted and reviewed but his coming complaints about the slowness of the process and his desire for shortcuts.

Let’s watch and see what Putin has stirred up in Trump this time.