I look forward to the day that I won’t have to spend time being enraged by Republican malevolence in my state and compelled to point it out to the world. Today is not that day.
Steve Holt is the Republican Iowa State Representative from the 18th District in Northeast Iowa.
Holt was elected in 2015 and is among the radical tea party Republican contingent who takes his marching orders and model bills from ALEC. As Chair of the Iowa House Judiciary Committee, he has taken great pride in the extreme bills he has introduced, including the anti-choice Fetal Heart Beat bill which was overturned as it was rightfully deemed unconstitutional. Now Republicans are working on a constitutional amendment that would explicitly state that no woman in Iowa has a fundamental right to an abortion under any circumstances in direct conflict with the “right to privacy” that is currently recognized in constitutional law as the basis for a woman’s right to choose. They are also working on a constitutional amendment that would make it harder to reduce gun violence in Iowa by passing evidence-based gun safety legislation.
Iowans need all the help we can get dear readers. If you would like to help Democrats take back control of the Iowa House, please, please donate to the Truman Fund. I just did.
But I digress, as the reason for my outrage against Holt this particular day relates to COVID-19 and it extends to one of our major newspapers in the state, The Gazette. They published a guest column written by Holt with the usual anti public health, fuzzy math based, right wing Republican talking points. You can tell where he’s going by the title.
Iowa's health care system is not overwhelmed. Why is our economy still closed? We are no longer flattening the curve; we are flattening our state and nation.
Here is the first example of bad faith arguments (bolding mine).
In response to the coronavirus, Americans were told by their federal and state governments to shut down their businesses, stop going to church, work, school or out to eat, travel only when necessary and hunker down at home. Originally, Americans were led to believe this was for a two- or three-week period, in order to flatten the curve and not overwhelm our health care system.
In truth, the incompetent Trump administration never made any such statements or policies regarding a national shut down (if only he had), and only some governors (Iowa’s not included) shut down their states. So, who was it that led Representative Holt to believe that 2-3 weeks would be enough to flatten the curve everywhere, especially when there wasn’t a nationwide response of any kind including a shutdown, there wasn’t a shutdown by all the states or all at the same time, and there was never sufficient testing to prevent flareups from sending the curve skyward again wherever shutdowns ended? (Hint — it was not public health experts.)
Then there’s this brilliant gem.
The initial models that pointed to staggering loss of life from the coronavirus have proved wildly inaccurate.
The initial models predicted what MIGHT happen if we DID NOT take aggressive action based on what was happening in other countries. So Holt’s argument is that we didn’t see that level of deaths, so the models were wrong. Or if you had a few operational brain cells, perhaps you might conclude that because at least some places DID take aggressive action in response to the terrifying predictions, it helped keep the death count down, as models Holt seems unaware of were able to predict.
Then there is the usual Republican failed attempt at empathy (bolding mine).
While all loss of life is deeply regrettable, these numbers cannot be considered in a vacuum.
So in other words, I will pretend to care about the deaths since it wasn’t anyone I know and love, and explain to you why I really don’t see these dead Iowans as a big deal as compared to getting those high risk populations back to work creating wealth for my big political donors.
For perspective, deaths from pneumonia in the U.S. during the same period were 64,382, with average yearly deaths from influenza in the same range.
This is clearly Republican math. According to the CDC, the number of deaths attributed to pneumonia in 2018 was 49,157 and for influenza was 6,515. Thus, according to Holt’s reasoning, 49,000 fatalities from pneumonia in 52 weeks is equivalent to 64,000 fatalities (and rising) from COVID-19 in less than 8 weeks. Similarly, 6,500 deaths from influenza in a year is in the same range as 64,000 cases of COVID-19 in a fraction of that time. Clearly orders of magnitude is a concept unfamiliar to Holt.
Also, there is a model Holt and our governor do like. As Holt explains:
A University of Washington study recently revised the projected number of deaths from the coronavirus in Iowa from 1,367 to a much lower estimate of 365 …
… It must be noted that 578 Iowans died from the flu and pneumonia in 2017, a greater number than are likely to pass away from the coronavirus.
Unfortunately, the model has a few problems. One problem is that the authors have already been required to nearly double the estimate from 365 to 743 COVID-related deaths by June 7th. But see if you can spot the real flaw in the model being touted by Holt and Governor Reynolds as an excuse to re-open the state. Here is the model:
That’s right ladies and gentlemen. To get that final low low number of 743 dead human beings (a perfectly acceptable number of deaths for Holt and Reynolds) would require deaths to already be dropping precipitously and to be down to ZERO daily deaths from COVID-19 in the state by early June.
So, according to this very convenient model, we can open up a state that may only now be reaching peak deaths while the state is mostly shut down, and unlike other states, opening it up will in no way cause any hot spots that will grow exponentially (i.e. go viral), particularly in rural areas where access to healthcare is limited. Moreover, according to our Republican leaders, opening up parts of the state without sufficient testing, tracking, and targeted quarantining will also in no way prevent Iowa’s death rate from going to zero by the first week in June. Heckuva model guys!
There are of course many more problems with the column, but I will let you enjoy finding those and finish with an email I sent to The Gazette Editorial Board. Not going to place any bets at this point on whether they will pay any attention.
Please forward to the editorial board:
You need to publish a column in direct response to Steve Holt’s recent one titled "Iowa's health care system is not overwhelmed. Why is our economy still closed?” And you need to give the author an equal word count, 1004 words, to respond. Representative Holt is yet one more politician who is woefully ignorant of public health and safety, including not understanding the basic concept of prevention. He includes in his Op Ed several willfully ignorant talking points, including that this virus mostly causes a mild disease. He appears more than willing to risk OTHER people’s lives as a sacrifice to short-term profits and return on investments. The ability to write a comment in response to these deadly arguments is wholly insufficient! (although I will put these arguments in the comments section). If you should choose not to publish my recent submission outlining the broader ways in which Republicans have been endangering the life and health of Iowans for a decade or more and continue to do so with the pandemic, please give me the option of writing a response to this. Alternatively, let me know you will publish it, and I can easily find public health colleagues who can craft a response. Finally, do you as an editorial board feel no moral or ethical responsibility to protect lives and promote health? How is it ethical to publish opinions that are right now proving in Georgia to be resulting in more infections? See this article about Governor Kemp in Georgia (https://www.theroot.com/georgia-gov-brian-kemp-i-totally-messed-up-reopening-1843292744) and consider you have just given a platform to an apologist for our governor who is making the exact same deadly mistake. It is a journalistic copout to say everyone is entitled to an opinion and to publish things that could quite literally get people killed. You do understand that dead Iowans with shattered families and friends will be the result of actions resulting from these opinions, right? Bottom line - opening up with insufficient testing, tracking, and means to quarantine means more infections, more infections means more suffering, more deaths, and more economic costs, not less. Holt's arguments are thoughtless and dangerous. You have provided him with a platform and so you must take at least some responsibility for dealing with the potential consequences of your action.
Thank you to those who read this far. Once more, if you would like to help Democrats take back control of the Iowa House, please donate to the Truman Fund.
Take heart, I believe we will bring this long national nightmare to an end.
Love and peace.