democracynow--2020-08-11--How the Pandemic Defeated America: Ed Yong on How COVID-19 Humiliated Planet's Most Powerful Nation

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
The world has passed a grim milestone : 20 million coronavirus cases .
Over 5 million of the confirmed infections are here in the United States .
Although the U.S. has just 5 % of the world ’ s population , it has more than a quarter , more than 25 % , of all the coronavirus infections and deaths , with a death toll of over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s largest .
The United States has recorded more than half a million new cases so far in August .
That ’ s more cases than any European country has recorded since the pandemic began .
This comes as millions of parents are now deciding whether it ’ s safe to send their kids back to school .
A new report by the American Academy of Pediatrics found nearly 100,000 children contracted COVID-19 in just the last two weeks of July alone .
Meanwhile , the Centers for Disease Control reports children of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kids are eight times more likely to be hospitalized than white children .
Black children are five times as likely .
Latinx and Black children also make up nearly three-quarters of the cases of the rare but deadly multisystem inflammatory syndrome , which has been associated with COVID-19 .
We ’ re joined now by Ed Yong , science reporter at The Atlantic , his new article , “ How the Pandemic Defeated America.
” It ’ s the cover story of the new issue of The Atlantic .
Ed Yong begins his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to this ?
A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet ’ s most powerful nation .
America has failed to protect its people , leaving them with illness and financial ruin .
It has lost its status as a global leader .
It has careened between inaction and ineptitude .
The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult , in the moment , to truly fathom.
” Ed Yong , welcome back to Democracy Now !
It ’ s great to have you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it happen ?
And how can it be fixed ?
ED YONG : [ inaudible ] I wrote 8,000 words about it , but to try and summarize , I think there ’ s two main things we need to talk about .
One is the devastatingly inept response to the pandemic over this year .
The Trump administration has utterly failed the American people .
It has failed to take the lead .
It has failed to listen to experts .
It has failed to roll out a workable plan to get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country , to ensure protective supplies are rolled out .
It has failed in almost every conceivable way to deal with a pandemic that many other nations have brought to heel within a similar amount of time .
And more importantly , I think it has failed to honor the sacrifices that Americans have made in spring , when everyone obeyed social restrictions , when they stayed at home , when they uprooted their lives at significant financial and emotional cost .
That time was meant to be used to prepare the nation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was squandered .
So , that ’ s one aspect of it .
But I think the other that we really do need to grapple with is that the coronavirus exploited vulnerabilities that have been existing in American society for decades and centuries , well before the Trump administration .
So , the underfunding of public health , the overpacked prisons , the understaffed nursing homes , the health inequalities that have been brewing for all of America ’ s history due to its legacy of colonialism and racism , all of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are , the statistics that you read out at the start of this segment .
And all of those vulnerabilities need to be addressed going forward , if we are going to be better able to deal with the pandemics of the future .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : I wanted to ask you — the Trump administration is clearly betting a lot on being able to have a vaccine as soon as possible .
The president has actually talked about the possibility of November for a vaccine .
But the reality is that even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Moderna trial , has only registered 5,000 of 30,000 volunteers that it needs to enroll in this clinical trial .
This emphasis on the vaccine as the key solution , I ’ m wondering your thoughts on that .
ED YONG : Yeah .
Even if everything goes right in the vaccine development process — and there ’ s no guarantee that will happen — even if we do get a vaccine ahead of schedule , then there are all kinds of problems left .
There are logistical problems .
How do you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arms ?
Could we trust a government that has utterly failed to provide things like protective equipment or to roll out a workable national plan to handle the logistics of getting millions of vaccine doses to an adult population who is typically not the group that is usually vaccinated ?
Are we confident that a program called Operation Warp Speed , which has trumpeted speed more than anything else , will do all the necessary steps required to make people comfortable about the efficacy and safety of a vaccine ?
That public trust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is really important .
And I think that ’ s going to be a problem that people who are banking on the vaccine are not really fully grappling with .
And finally , I think you ’ re hinting at something really important , that we always — and by “ we , ” I mean society , in general , and , I think , the Trump administration , in particular , is banking on a biomedical silver bullets , things that are just going to — you know , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fix everything .
And I don ’ t think it ’ s going to be that simple .
Even when a vaccine comes out , as I said , it ’ s going to take a long time for it to actually get to people .
And there are things we can do now , right now , that will make a difference .
Testing is still so important .
Social interventions , like giving people paid sick leave or ensuring wider healthcare coverage , all of those things can make a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the moment , without having to wait for the biomedical enterprise to save us .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And this whole issue of such a simple public health measure , like testing and tracking of those with positive results , why has there been such a colossal failure on the part of the U.S. government in dealing with the issue of testing ?
ED YONG : It ’ s truly astonishing .
I think , you know , at the start , some of the problems have been well documented .
The CDC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It didn ’ t really work .
Private labs tried to jump in and help out , but were strangled by FDA bureaucracy .
And these problems rolled on and exacerbated , because the — because the U.S. fell behind in those early days , it then competed with basically the rest of the world for reagents and for swabs and all the equipment that you needed to test .
Why we are continuing to fail at testing is just utterly baffling .
Many people have called for rapid diagnostic tests , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deliver results very , very quickly .
That is incredibly important , because at the moment tests are taking weeks , you know , a week-plus , to return results , which is completely useless from the perspective of actually controlling the virus , working out where the pandemic is continuing to cause problems .
We need a really coordinated testing plan .
I think the real answer to your question , why this is still plaguing the country , is that there just has been no leadership .
The logistical expertise to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country has not been marshaled .
And that ’ s to the detriment of all of us .
AMY GOODMAN : On Monday , President Trump was questioned about his support for reopening in-person schools during the pandemic .
This is what he said .
AMY GOODMAN : So , I want to ask you a multipart question on this , about misinformation and whether you think journalists should refuse to go to these daily coronavirus press briefings , unless President Trump has scientists at his side .
Number two , this issue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of color — Latinx kids eight times more likely to be hospitalized , Black children five times more likely , and 75 % more chance of getting this multisystem disorder that can kill — how little these disparities are talked about , and do you think they weigh in to President Trump just disregarding them ?
By the way , his own kid won ’ t be going back in person to school , because their school is closed .
ED YONG : OK .
So , to the first point , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be airing these briefings live .
I think they are among the most potent sources of misinformation and disinformation to the public right now .
And , you know , maybe clips of them , along with the actual contextualizing information people need to make sense of it , but don ’ t ever , live .
That just — yeah .
I think that in terms of your other question , the racial disparities , The Atlantic 's Adam Serwer wrote a piece that Trump took the virus seriously , until he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
We see from reports from Katherine Eban from Vanity Fair that testing plans were — plans to control the pandemic were shelved when it became clear that it was disproportionately targeting blue states and minorities .
You know , I think one should always stick to Hanlon 's razor , assuming incompetence instead of malice , but there is increasing evidence that malice was part of this .
And I think that is deeply worrying for what ’ s to come .
And you ’ ve read out statistics about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lower relative risk of infection or death .
That ’ s important , sure , but we need to remember that this is a pandemic which is still raging wildly throughout America .
And the problem is that if you have an uncontrolled pandemic , not only do you have like massive community spread , which is a problem if you open schools in those communities , but rare events then become hugely problematic .
If you have millions of people being infected , something that only happens to 1 % of them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the population .
So the fact that something is relatively rare doesn ’ t make it safe in the context of a pandemic that is raging out of control , which is exactly what we are still seeing .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Ed Yong , I wanted to ask you — in your article for The Atlantic , “ How the Pandemic Defeated America , ” you also look into the role of social media platforms in spreading disinformation or misinformation to the American public .
And you write , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that sowed partisanship and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and the 2016 U.S. election became vectors for conspiracy theories during the 2020 pandemic.
” Could you expound on that ?
ED YONG : Yeah .
We know that platforms like Facebook , Twitter , YouTube spread misinformation more quickly than they do information .
And that ’ s because they are governed by algorithms that are designed to keep users engaged , to keep their attention on the site .
And they do that by feeding them content that veers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polarized and that stokes heavy emotion , regardless of whether that content is true and whether it is dangerous or not .
And these problems have been well recognized .
This is the core theme of my Atlantic piece , that all of our problems in this pandemic were predictable and preventable .
People were talking about social media platforms acting as radicalization engines .
And that is exactly what we ’ re seeing now .
They spread misinformation , and they contribute to this vortex of fear and uncertainty in which people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all worried .
We are all concerned for our families , our friends .
And we fill that , we sate that worry , by looking for more information .
But we are looking for that information on channels that feed us falsehoods , that feed us polarizing information .
And so that just worsens the feelings of fear and anxiety , which cause us to seek out even more information , which worsens the problem .
And it just — it spirals .
That is exactly what we are seeing now in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contributing to the problems that we ’ re experiencing .
AMY GOODMAN : When you talk about a nontechnical fix — I mean , in terms of , for example , a vaccine , that we have to focus on now what many countries have gotten under control , the coronavirus pandemic , through masks , through testing , in both cases , something — it ’ s not just that the president has not invoked the Defense Production Act to the level of just ensuring everyone has it .
In many places @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But I wanted to go to the issue of Medicare for All , Ed .
We ’ re moving into the Democratic National Convention next week .
And the executive committee , writing the platform — Joe Biden has made it very clear he ’ s against Medicare for All — amazingly , in the latest vote on the platform , against Medicare for All .
How significant do you think — and do you think this pandemic and its disparate effects on the population of this country , especially communities of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for All would make an enormous difference , and how it ’ s possible that the opposing party is saying “ absolutely not ” at this point , when many polls show it is the most popular answer to the health crisis we have in this country ?
ED YONG : Yeah .
America ’ s system of employer-tied insurance , which is unique in the world , is undoubtedly contributing to the disparities that we are seeing .
It disadvantages poor communities .
It disadvantages communities of color , Black and Latinx @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by this virus .
And we know that those disparities and this system of healthcare inequity is a legacy of the racism that America has always struggled with .
Since the end of the Civil War , throughout the Jim Crow era , healthcare access was pushed away from Black communities and other communities of color .
And that goes right up to the opposition to the expansion of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act .
And that has led to continuing gulfs in people being able to access healthcare , that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus has taken upon communities of color .
Even before the pandemic started , America was rated by some global indices as being the most prepared nation in the world .
That seems a bit ludicrous in hindsight .
But even then , in terms of healthcare access , America was rated as 175th out of 195 different countries .
This was always known to be a massive vulnerability that would cost the country dearly during a crisis of this kind .
And , sure enough , it has , in a very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this has to be addressed .
If this can ’ t — if we can ’ t use the lessons from this pandemic to realize that universal healthcare is a thing we have to fight for , I don ’ t know whether — I don ’ t know whether we ’ re going to do any better , not just for the future phases of this pandemic , but for future pandemics to come and all the other health problems that we still need to deal with .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ask you about the Trump administration ’ s continued isolationism in terms of , for instance , the attempts to demonize China as the source of the pandemic , and constantly criticizing and attacking the World Health Organization .
Yet China , even though the virus started there , has been able to contain it dramatically .
What has the Chinese government done right , compared to what the U.S. government has done ?
ED YONG : So , you know , China clearly made missteps earlier on .
There were problems with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problems early on .
These were issues that have been problems since the original SARS in 2003 .
But China did take steps to control the pandemic .
I think what we really need to remember now is that the pandemic shows how quickly diseases can spread around the world and that no country can stand alone .
No country can wall itself off from the rest of the globe and expect to be fine .
The world needs to work together to deal with threats like this .
You know , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Greek pan and demos , “ all citizens , ” “ all people.
” And that is what is required to deal with these problems .
The United States now , in seeking this isolationist stance , in pulling back from the WHO and other international alliances , is really shooting itself in the foot .
You could argue that China made missteps early on and that we need new international norms to stop those lack of transparency from manifesting again , but it ’ s the international community that ’ s going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ norms that will ensure that the entire world is better prepared for the next crisis .
And if America withdraws , it is losing its seat at the table .
It is losing positions of influence .
And it is allowing those norms to be drawn without it .
Now , maybe some people think that America doesn ’ t need the rest of the world .
But they ’ re wrong .
And by forfeiting that standing , that position of diplomatic power , it really is , I think , taking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future .
AMY GOODMAN : Finally , we just have 10 seconds , but I wanted to ask you about the highest-level U.S. delegation , led by Alex Azar , the head of Health and Human Services , to Taiwan .
Clearly , Trump wants to stick a finger in the eye of China .
But what would be very important here is if the U.S. learned the lesson of Taiwan in how it dealt with the pandemic , immediately going to testing , national responses to testing and protective gear and masks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States to learn .
ED YONG : Yeah , I think humility would be an amazing lesson to learn .
Other countries have dealt with this pandemic well .
And if America can actually shed this sense of exceptionalism and look to what other nations have done well , maybe we can learn lessons that will protect people in the future .
AMY GOODMAN : Ed Yong , we want to thank you so much for being with us , science writer at The Atlantic who ’ s been covering the pandemic extensively @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we will link to , is titled “ How the Pandemic Defeated America.
” Next , we go to San Quentin prison .
We go inside , where 25 prisoners and a guard have died from COVID-19 , the nation ’ s largest coronavirus outbreak .
We ’ ll hear from two prisoners who contracted the disease .
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
The world has passed a grim milestone: 20 million coronavirus cases. Over 5 million of the confirmed infections are here in the United States. Although the U.S. has just 5% of the world’s population, it has more than a quarter, more than 25%, of all the coronavirus infections and deaths, with a death toll of over 163,000, by far the world’s largest. The United States has recorded more than half a million new cases so far in August. That’s more cases than any European country has recorded since the pandemic began.
This comes as millions of parents are now deciding whether it’s safe to send their kids back to school. A new report by the American Academy of Pediatrics found nearly 100,000 children contracted COVID-19 in just the last two weeks of July alone. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control reports children of color are disproportionately being hospitalized. Latinx kids are eight times more likely to be hospitalized than white children. Black children are five times as likely. Latinx and Black children also make up nearly three-quarters of the cases of the rare but deadly multisystem inflammatory syndrome, which has been associated with COVID-19.
We’re joined now by Ed Yong, science reporter at The Atlantic, his new article, “How the Pandemic Defeated America.” It’s the cover story of the new issue of The Atlantic.
Ed Yong begins his piece, “How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom.”
Ed Yong, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. OK, how did it happen? And how can it be fixed?
ED YONG: [inaudible] I wrote 8,000 words about it, but to try and summarize, I think there’s two main things we need to talk about. One is the devastatingly inept response to the pandemic over this year. The Trump administration has utterly failed the American people. It has failed to take the lead. It has failed to listen to experts. It has failed to roll out a workable plan to get testing in place, to steel the country, to ensure protective supplies are rolled out. It has failed in almost every conceivable way to deal with a pandemic that many other nations have brought to heel within a similar amount of time. And more importantly, I think it has failed to honor the sacrifices that Americans have made in spring, when everyone obeyed social restrictions, when they stayed at home, when they uprooted their lives at significant financial and emotional cost. That time was meant to be used to prepare the nation for what was to come, and it was squandered. So, that’s one aspect of it.
But I think the other that we really do need to grapple with is that the coronavirus exploited vulnerabilities that have been existing in American society for decades and centuries, well before the Trump administration. So, the underfunding of public health, the overpacked prisons, the understaffed nursing homes, the health inequalities that have been brewing for all of America’s history due to its legacy of colonialism and racism, all of those things contributed to how bad things are, the statistics that you read out at the start of this segment. And all of those vulnerabilities need to be addressed going forward, if we are going to be better able to deal with the pandemics of the future.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you — the Trump administration is clearly betting a lot on being able to have a vaccine as soon as possible. The president has actually talked about the possibility of November for a vaccine. But the reality is that even the clinical trial now underway, the Moderna trial, has only registered 5,000 of 30,000 volunteers that it needs to enroll in this clinical trial. This emphasis on the vaccine as the key solution, I’m wondering your thoughts on that.
ED YONG: Yeah. Even if everything goes right in the vaccine development process — and there’s no guarantee that will happen — even if we do get a vaccine ahead of schedule, then there are all kinds of problems left. There are logistical problems. How do you deliver that vaccine into people’s arms? Could we trust a government that has utterly failed to provide things like protective equipment or to roll out a workable national plan to handle the logistics of getting millions of vaccine doses to an adult population who is typically not the group that is usually vaccinated? Are we confident that a program called Operation Warp Speed, which has trumpeted speed more than anything else, will do all the necessary steps required to make people comfortable about the efficacy and safety of a vaccine? That public trust, which is so diminished right now, is really important. And I think that’s going to be a problem that people who are banking on the vaccine are not really fully grappling with.
And finally, I think you’re hinting at something really important, that we always — and by “we,” I mean society, in general, and, I think, the Trump administration, in particular, is banking on a biomedical silver bullets, things that are just going to — you know, a shot in the arm that is going to fix everything. And I don’t think it’s going to be that simple. Even when a vaccine comes out, as I said, it’s going to take a long time for it to actually get to people. And there are things we can do now, right now, that will make a difference. Testing is still so important. Social interventions, like giving people paid sick leave or ensuring wider healthcare coverage, all of those things can make a difference to people’s health in the moment, without having to wait for the biomedical enterprise to save us.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole issue of such a simple public health measure, like testing and tracking of those with positive results, why has there been such a colossal failure on the part of the U.S. government in dealing with the issue of testing?
ED YONG: It’s truly astonishing. I think, you know, at the start, some of the problems have been well documented. The CDC tried to roll out a test. It didn’t really work. Private labs tried to jump in and help out, but were strangled by FDA bureaucracy. And these problems rolled on and exacerbated, because the — because the U.S. fell behind in those early days, it then competed with basically the rest of the world for reagents and for swabs and all the equipment that you needed to test.
Why we are continuing to fail at testing is just utterly baffling. Many people have called for rapid diagnostic tests, that are a little less sensitive but can deliver results very, very quickly. That is incredibly important, because at the moment tests are taking weeks, you know, a week-plus, to return results, which is completely useless from the perspective of actually controlling the virus, working out where the pandemic is continuing to cause problems. We need a really coordinated testing plan. I think the real answer to your question, why this is still plaguing the country, is that there just has been no leadership. The logistical expertise to create a functioning testing plan across the country has not been marshaled. And that’s to the detriment of all of us.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, President Trump was questioned about his support for reopening in-person schools during the pandemic. This is what he said.
REPORTER: Ninety-seven thousand children tested positive for coronavirus in the last two weeks in July, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Does that give you any pause about —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No.
REPORTER: — schools reopening for in-person learning?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, because they may have, as you would call it, a case. It may be a case, but it’s also a case where there’s a tiny — it’s a tiny fraction of death. Tiny fraction. And they get better very quickly. Yeah, they have — they may have it for a short period of time, but, as you know, the — the seriousness of it, in terms of what it leads to, is — is extraordinarily small, very, very much less than 1%.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to ask you a multipart question on this, about misinformation and whether you think journalists should refuse to go to these daily coronavirus press briefings, unless President Trump has scientists at his side. Number two, this issue of the children, and particularly kids of color — Latinx kids eight times more likely to be hospitalized, Black children five times more likely, and 75% more chance of getting this multisystem disorder that can kill — how little these disparities are talked about, and do you think they weigh in to President Trump just disregarding them? By the way, his own kid won’t be going back in person to school, because their school is closed.
ED YONG: OK. So, to the first point, I don’t think that journalists should be airing these briefings live. I think they are among the most potent sources of misinformation and disinformation to the public right now. And, you know, maybe clips of them, along with the actual contextualizing information people need to make sense of it, but don’t ever, live. That just — yeah.
I think that in terms of your other question, the racial disparities, The Atlantic's Adam Serwer wrote a piece that Trump took the virus seriously, until he worked out who was actually dying from it. We see from reports from Katherine Eban from Vanity Fair that testing plans were — plans to control the pandemic were shelved when it became clear that it was disproportionately targeting blue states and minorities. You know, I think one should always stick to Hanlon's razor, assuming incompetence instead of malice, but there is increasing evidence that malice was part of this. And I think that is deeply worrying for what’s to come.
And you’ve read out statistics about the way the virus infects children, the lower relative risk of infection or death. That’s important, sure, but we need to remember that this is a pandemic which is still raging wildly throughout America. And the problem is that if you have an uncontrolled pandemic, not only do you have like massive community spread, which is a problem if you open schools in those communities, but rare events then become hugely problematic. If you have millions of people being infected, something that only happens to 1% of them is still going to affect huge swaths of the population. So the fact that something is relatively rare doesn’t make it safe in the context of a pandemic that is raging out of control, which is exactly what we are still seeing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ed Yong, I wanted to ask you — in your article for The Atlantic, “How the Pandemic Defeated America,” you also look into the role of social media platforms in spreading disinformation or misinformation to the American public. And you write, quote, “The same social-media platforms that sowed partisanship and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and the 2016 U.S. election became vectors for conspiracy theories during the 2020 pandemic.” Could you expound on that?
ED YONG: Yeah. We know that platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube spread misinformation more quickly than they do information. And that’s because they are governed by algorithms that are designed to keep users engaged, to keep their attention on the site. And they do that by feeding them content that veers towards extreme, veers towards being very polarized and that stokes heavy emotion, regardless of whether that content is true and whether it is dangerous or not. And these problems have been well recognized.
This is the core theme of my Atlantic piece, that all of our problems in this pandemic were predictable and preventable. People were talking about social media platforms acting as radicalization engines. And that is exactly what we’re seeing now. They spread misinformation, and they contribute to this vortex of fear and uncertainty in which people are trapped. So, we are all worried. We are all concerned for our families, our friends. And we fill that, we sate that worry, by looking for more information. But we are looking for that information on channels that feed us falsehoods, that feed us polarizing information. And so that just worsens the feelings of fear and anxiety, which cause us to seek out even more information, which worsens the problem. And it just — it spirals. That is exactly what we are seeing now in this pandemic, and it’s contributing to the problems that we’re experiencing.
AMY GOODMAN: When you talk about a nontechnical fix — I mean, in terms of, for example, a vaccine, that we have to focus on now what many countries have gotten under control, the coronavirus pandemic, through masks, through testing, in both cases, something — it’s not just that the president has not invoked the Defense Production Act to the level of just ensuring everyone has it. In many places, it’s getting far worse. But I wanted to go to the issue of Medicare for All, Ed. We’re moving into the Democratic National Convention next week. And the executive committee, writing the platform — Joe Biden has made it very clear he’s against Medicare for All — amazingly, in the latest vote on the platform, against Medicare for All. How significant do you think — and do you think this pandemic and its disparate effects on the population of this country, especially communities of color — do you think that Medicare for All would make an enormous difference, and how it’s possible that the opposing party is saying “absolutely not” at this point, when many polls show it is the most popular answer to the health crisis we have in this country?
ED YONG: Yeah. America’s system of employer-tied insurance, which is unique in the world, is undoubtedly contributing to the disparities that we are seeing. It disadvantages poor communities. It disadvantages communities of color, Black and Latinx communities, that have been disproportionately hit by this virus. And we know that those disparities and this system of healthcare inequity is a legacy of the racism that America has always struggled with. Since the end of the Civil War, throughout the Jim Crow era, healthcare access was pushed away from Black communities and other communities of color. And that goes right up to the opposition to the expansion of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. And that has led to continuing gulfs in people being able to access healthcare, that is contributing to the disproportionate toll that this virus has taken upon communities of color.
Even before the pandemic started, America was rated by some global indices as being the most prepared nation in the world. That seems a bit ludicrous in hindsight. But even then, in terms of healthcare access, America was rated as 175th out of 195 different countries. This was always known to be a massive vulnerability that would cost the country dearly during a crisis of this kind. And, sure enough, it has, in a very preventable, very tragic way. And this has to be addressed. If this can’t — if we can’t use the lessons from this pandemic to realize that universal healthcare is a thing we have to fight for, I don’t know whether — I don’t know whether we’re going to do any better, not just for the future phases of this pandemic, but for future pandemics to come and all the other health problems that we still need to deal with.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ed Yong, I wanted to ask you about the Trump administration’s continued isolationism in terms of, for instance, the attempts to demonize China as the source of the pandemic, and constantly criticizing and attacking the World Health Organization. Yet China, even though the virus started there, has been able to contain it dramatically. What has the Chinese government done right, compared to what the U.S. government has done?
ED YONG: So, you know, China clearly made missteps earlier on. There were problems with transparency, of alerting the world to problems early on. These were issues that have been problems since the original SARS in 2003. But China did take steps to control the pandemic.
I think what we really need to remember now is that the pandemic shows how quickly diseases can spread around the world and that no country can stand alone. No country can wall itself off from the rest of the globe and expect to be fine. The world needs to work together to deal with threats like this. You know, the word “pandemic” comes from the Greek pan and demos, “all citizens,” “all people.” And that is what is required to deal with these problems.
The United States now, in seeking this isolationist stance, in pulling back from the WHO and other international alliances, is really shooting itself in the foot. You could argue that China made missteps early on and that we need new international norms to stop those lack of transparency from manifesting again, but it’s the international community that’s going to create the legal structures and the norms that will ensure that the entire world is better prepared for the next crisis. And if America withdraws, it is losing its seat at the table. It is losing positions of influence. And it is allowing those norms to be drawn without it. Now, maybe some people think that America doesn’t need the rest of the world. But they’re wrong. And by forfeiting that standing, that position of diplomatic power, it really is, I think, taking steps that will cost it in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, we just have 10 seconds, but I wanted to ask you about the highest-level U.S. delegation, led by Alex Azar, the head of Health and Human Services, to Taiwan. Clearly, Trump wants to stick a finger in the eye of China. But what would be very important here is if the U.S. learned the lesson of Taiwan in how it dealt with the pandemic, immediately going to testing, national responses to testing and protective gear and masks — a true lesson for the United States to learn.
ED YONG: Yeah, I think humility would be an amazing lesson to learn. Other countries have dealt with this pandemic well. And if America can actually shed this sense of exceptionalism and look to what other nations have done well, maybe we can learn lessons that will protect people in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: Ed Yong, we want to thank you so much for being with us, science writer at The Atlantic who’s been covering the pandemic extensively since March. His cover story, we will link to, is titled “How the Pandemic Defeated America.”
Next, we go to San Quentin prison. We go inside, where 25 prisoners and a guard have died from COVID-19, the nation’s largest coronavirus outbreak. We’ll hear from two prisoners who contracted the disease. Stay with us.


democracynow--2020-08-11--Lebanon's Gov't Resigns Amid Public Rage over Beirut Blast, But Protesters Demand Structural Change

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : We begin in Lebanon , where the government resigned Monday , following days of protest after more than 200 people were killed and thousands injured in a devastating blast at Beirut ’ s port .
Dozens of people are still missing , many of them foreign workers .
Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced his resignation in a televised address .
AMY GOODMAN : The Lebanese president , Michel Aoun , accepted Diab ’ s resignation but asked him to stay on in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is formed .
Last week ’ s explosion was triggered by 2,700 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate left unattended in a warehouse at the port for over six years .
The port blast came at a time when Lebanon ’ s already facing political , economic and public health crises .
Ziad Abu-Rish joins us now from Beirut , Lebanon , a historian and research fellow at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies and co-director of Bard College ’ s Master of Arts program in human rights and the arts .
Welcome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great to have you with us , Ziad Abu-Rish .
Can you start off by talking about the significance of the fall of the Lebanese government , but the fact that the government remains as a caretaker government , this as protesters continue to take to the streets in the midst of the aftermath of this horrific explosion ?
ZIAD ABU-RISH : Absolutely , Amy .
And thank you for having me and shedding light on this important topic .
The fall of the Diab government was a demand of protesters and critics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who participated in the October 2019 revolution in Lebanon and had opposed the formation of this Cabinet .
However , I think it ’ s also important to recognize that the fall of this government is also the product of internal conflicts between the various political parties that make up Lebanon ’ s political class .
You mentioned the issue of remaining in power as a caretaker government .
This is actually a very normal state of affairs after governments submit their resignation .
And in fact , the fall of cabinets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elections are not necessarily signs that fundamental transformation is underway in Lebanon .
For now at least , this is politics as usual .
And the big question for people is : What is going to come in place of this Cabinet that has just resigned in the wake of the very deadly and devastating explosion , and a Cabinet that has failed to stem the tide of various financial , economic , health and infrastructural crises ?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Ziad Abu-Rish , what about the president himself , Michel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Parliament ?
Are the protesters calling for a much more wholesale change in the government ?
And if so , what kind of structural changes do you think are needed in Lebanon today ?
ZIAD ABU-RISH : Well , you know , I think it ’ s important to recognize that protesters are not necessarily unified in their demands .
However , I think they share a wholesale rejection of the status quo , in which all major political parties in Lebanon are implicated .
Whether it ’ s President Michel Aoun or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether it ’ s Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri , all members of Parliament currently or former parliaments , this Cabinet or former cabinets , they have collectively failed to deliver on any of the aspirations and needs of the majority of the people who live in Lebanon , including citizens , refugees , migrant workers and other people .
I think what we want to look for as we move forward , as an indication if there ’ s going to be structural change or not , is who is going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Is this cabinet going to be an independent cabinet ?
Is it going to be comprised of competent persons ?
And is it going to be empowered to legislate the necessary laws that are required to begin the transformation of the political system in Lebanon and pave the way to some meaningful accountability and transparency ?
For example , the electoral law in Lebanon is constantly voted on and passed before each election cycle .
Electoral laws , as you know , determine districting , the distribution of seats and the threshold for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ largely allowed for this political class to reproduce itself every time elections are held .
And if the electoral law is not fundamentally changed , then there ’ s no reason to suspect that new elections will result in an entirely new composition of this Parliament .
Of course , there are other reforms that we can think of that protesters have demanded for a long time , including judicial reform for the creation of a truly independent judiciary , an addressment of the economic crisis , which has only continued to worsen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to understand what happened and who is responsible .
There have been no stopgap measures taken to prevent the continuous downward spiral .
And , of course , now , in the wake of the explosion , any new cabinet is going to have to establish a meaningful investigation of the causes of the explosion and holding those people responsible .
None of these things have happened , not in the Diab Cabinet and not in other cabinets before them .
And this is the fundamental issue here in Lebanon , if anyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that most protesters are calling for .
AMY GOODMAN : Can you respond to the French president , Macron , coming to Lebanon ?
The opening sentence of an AP report on his trip begins , “ It was almost as if Emmanuel Macron forgot that Lebanon is no longer a French protectorate.
” He was in the streets before Lebanon ’ s prime minister was .
If you can talk about that relationship and also the $ 300 million that have been conferenced , a donors ’ conference set up , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ABU-RISH : Absolutely .
Well , the fact that Macron was in the streets before the prime minister or any other major official in Lebanon was is more a reflection of the unaccountability of the Lebanese political class to the population of Lebanon than it is the goodwill intentions of the president of France .
I think Macron was trying to seize the initiative for France and the European Union to get ahead of the United States in paving a way for some type of exit of the political and multiple crises in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trying to reposition France in relation to Lebanon and the broader Middle East .
That being said , I think it ’ s important to note that France , the United States , the European Union , the International Monetary Fund , the World Bank , as well as other powers , like Iran , Russia , Saudi Arabia , are all complicit in helping create , maintain and sustain the political system in Lebanon that most protesters are calling for the downfall of .
So , this is either an 11th-hour about-face @ @ @ @ @ @ @ France more generally , or it ’ s a cynical attempt to reestablish relationships .
And as you mentioned yourself with that AP report , France was responsible for creating the state of Lebanon in the aftermath of World War II and was a colonial power from 1918 to 1946 , when it withdrew .
Most of the structural and institutional arrangements that are with us today in Lebanon were introduced and facilitated through French governance practices during the colonial period .
And I think if France wants to really change its relationship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the people of Lebanon , it should at least begin with a public apology and taking responsibility for its role , past and present , from the establishment of Lebanon through the civil war and afterwards , in contributing to the situation , even though , as I always say , the primary responsibility for the status quo in Lebanon is first and foremost amongst the political parties that make up the political class here in Lebanon .
That being said , outside powers have continuously aided and abetted them through financial aid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ JUAN GONZÁLEZ : I ’ m wondering if you could talk about the role of Hezbollah in the current situation .
Clearly , the Lebanese government is trying to get financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund , yet Hezbollah was very closely tied to the Diab government .
Could you talk about that relationship and how this affects the standing of Hezbollah within the multiparty situation that has existed in Lebanon for so many years ?
ZIAD ABU-RISH : Absolutely .
Well , I think we should start by making clear that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system and the political class in Lebanon .
It has participated in various parliaments .
It has participated in various governments .
And Hezbollah is perhaps the most powerful political party here in Lebanon .
It has used this power to buttress the political system in Lebanon , and it has used that power to oppose and confront protesters in Lebanon .
So I think that ’ s very important to make clear , and that any fundamental transformation , as protesters are demanding — kilon yani kilon , all of them means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rethinking of the role of Hezbollah in local politics here .
That being said , I think a focus on Hezbollah as the panacea for the problems of Lebanon misses the broader constellation of political forces and parties that have helped create , maintain and benefit from the system in place .
I think we need to distinguish between legitimate criticisms and opposition to Hezbollah as a part of the broader political and economic system in Lebanon and what I would call illegitimate criticisms of Hezbollah , those that simply seek to reshuffle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the balance of power in Lebanon , in the favor of other members of the political class at the exclusion of Hezbollah .
If we think that any solution to the fundamental problems of Lebanon can be achieved by simply eliminating Hezbollah from the equation , then we are misreading the situation on the ground .
It is part and parcel of the problem , but as is all major politicians and all major political parties , especially those that have been backed by the United States , Saudi Arabia , France and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOODMAN : Ziad , we just have 10 seconds , but do you expect the protests on the ground in this ravaged capital of Beirut to intensify ?
ZIAD ABU-RISH : I do suspect that they will intensify .
But as is always the case , that challenge is : Can they translate their presence on the ground into meaningful pressure for institutional and structural change in Lebanon ?
I wish them the best .
I [ admire and am ] in awe of their bravery and courage despite repeated crises and traumas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wait and see what happens .
AMY GOODMAN : Ziad Abu-Rish , I want to thank you for being with us , research fellow at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies in Beirut , co-director of the master ’ s program in human rights and the arts at Bard College .
When we come back , we speak to The Atlantic 's Ed Yong about how the coronavirus has humbled and humiliated the planet 's most powerful nation .
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin in Lebanon, where the government resigned Monday, following days of protest after more than 200 people were killed and thousands injured in a devastating blast at Beirut’s port. Dozens of people are still missing, many of them foreign workers. Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced his resignation in a televised address.
PRIME MINISTER HASSAN DIAB: [translated] We follow the will of the people to hold accountable those responsible for this disaster, that has been in hiding for seven years, and their desire for real change, from the corrupt, destructive state, state of brokerages and theft, to the state of law and justice and transparency, to a country that respects its people. In the face of this reality, we take a step back to stand with the people to undergo this battle of change with them. We want to open the door toward national salvation that the Lebanese people are taking part in, and thus I am announcing today the resignation of this government.
AMY GOODMAN: The Lebanese president, Michel Aoun, accepted Diab’s resignation but asked him to stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new cabinet is formed. Last week’s explosion was triggered by 2,700 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate left unattended in a warehouse at the port for over six years. The port blast came at a time when Lebanon’s already facing political, economic and public health crises.
Ziad Abu-Rish joins us now from Beirut, Lebanon, a historian and research fellow at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies and co-director of Bard College’s Master of Arts program in human rights and the arts.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Ziad Abu-Rish. Can you start off by talking about the significance of the fall of the Lebanese government, but the fact that the government remains as a caretaker government, this as protesters continue to take to the streets in the midst of the aftermath of this horrific explosion?
ZIAD ABU-RISH: Absolutely, Amy. And thank you for having me and shedding light on this important topic.
The fall of the Diab government was a demand of protesters and critics of the government, as well as people who participated in the October 2019 revolution in Lebanon and had opposed the formation of this Cabinet. However, I think it’s also important to recognize that the fall of this government is also the product of internal conflicts between the various political parties that make up Lebanon’s political class.
You mentioned the issue of remaining in power as a caretaker government. This is actually a very normal state of affairs after governments submit their resignation. And in fact, the fall of cabinets and even the holding of early parliamentary elections are not necessarily signs that fundamental transformation is underway in Lebanon. For now at least, this is politics as usual. And the big question for people is: What is going to come in place of this Cabinet that has just resigned in the wake of the very deadly and devastating explosion, and a Cabinet that has failed to stem the tide of various financial, economic, health and infrastructural crises?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ziad Abu-Rish, what about the president himself, Michel Aoun, and the other members of Parliament? Are the protesters calling for a much more wholesale change in the government? And if so, what kind of structural changes do you think are needed in Lebanon today?
ZIAD ABU-RISH: Well, you know, I think it’s important to recognize that protesters are not necessarily unified in their demands. However, I think they share a wholesale rejection of the status quo, in which all major political parties in Lebanon are implicated. Whether it’s President Michel Aoun or presidents that have come before him, whether it’s Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, all members of Parliament currently or former parliaments, this Cabinet or former cabinets, they have collectively failed to deliver on any of the aspirations and needs of the majority of the people who live in Lebanon, including citizens, refugees, migrant workers and other people.
I think what we want to look for as we move forward, as an indication if there’s going to be structural change or not, is who is going to be appointed to the next cabinet. Is this cabinet going to be an independent cabinet? Is it going to be comprised of competent persons? And is it going to be empowered to legislate the necessary laws that are required to begin the transformation of the political system in Lebanon and pave the way to some meaningful accountability and transparency?
For example, the electoral law in Lebanon is constantly voted on and passed before each election cycle. Electoral laws, as you know, determine districting, the distribution of seats and the threshold for making it into office. This has largely allowed for this political class to reproduce itself every time elections are held. And if the electoral law is not fundamentally changed, then there’s no reason to suspect that new elections will result in an entirely new composition of this Parliament.
Of course, there are other reforms that we can think of that protesters have demanded for a long time, including judicial reform for the creation of a truly independent judiciary, an addressment of the economic crisis, which has only continued to worsen. There has been no forensic audit to understand what happened and who is responsible. There have been no stopgap measures taken to prevent the continuous downward spiral. And, of course, now, in the wake of the explosion, any new cabinet is going to have to establish a meaningful investigation of the causes of the explosion and holding those people responsible. None of these things have happened, not in the Diab Cabinet and not in other cabinets before them. And this is the fundamental issue here in Lebanon, if anyone hopes to see the kind of transformation that most protesters are calling for.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to the French president, Macron, coming to Lebanon? The opening sentence of an AP report on his trip begins, “It was almost as if Emmanuel Macron forgot that Lebanon is no longer a French protectorate.” He was in the streets before Lebanon’s prime minister was. If you can talk about that relationship and also the $300 million that have been conferenced, a donors’ conference set up, and where that money would go?
ZIAD ABU-RISH: Absolutely. Well, the fact that Macron was in the streets before the prime minister or any other major official in Lebanon was is more a reflection of the unaccountability of the Lebanese political class to the population of Lebanon than it is the goodwill intentions of the president of France.
I think Macron was trying to seize the initiative for France and the European Union to get ahead of the United States in paving a way for some type of exit of the political and multiple crises in Lebanon. And he is perhaps even trying to reposition France in relation to Lebanon and the broader Middle East.
That being said, I think it’s important to note that France, the United States, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, as well as other powers, like Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, are all complicit in helping create, maintain and sustain the political system in Lebanon that most protesters are calling for the downfall of. So, this is either an 11th-hour about-face turn by the Macron government, and France more generally, or it’s a cynical attempt to reestablish relationships.
And as you mentioned yourself with that AP report, France was responsible for creating the state of Lebanon in the aftermath of World War II and was a colonial power from 1918 to 1946, when it withdrew. Most of the structural and institutional arrangements that are with us today in Lebanon were introduced and facilitated through French governance practices during the colonial period. And I think if France wants to really change its relationship with Lebanon or champion the aspirations of the people of Lebanon, it should at least begin with a public apology and taking responsibility for its role, past and present, from the establishment of Lebanon through the civil war and afterwards, in contributing to the situation, even though, as I always say, the primary responsibility for the status quo in Lebanon is first and foremost amongst the political parties that make up the political class here in Lebanon. That being said, outside powers have continuously aided and abetted them through financial aid, diplomatic support and other means.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’m wondering if you could talk about the role of Hezbollah in the current situation. Clearly, the Lebanese government is trying to get financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund, yet Hezbollah was very closely tied to the Diab government. Could you talk about that relationship and how this affects the standing of Hezbollah within the multiparty situation that has existed in Lebanon for so many years?
ZIAD ABU-RISH: Absolutely. Well, I think we should start by making clear that Hezbollah is a part of the political system and the political class in Lebanon. It has participated in various parliaments. It has participated in various governments. And Hezbollah is perhaps the most powerful political party here in Lebanon. It has used this power to buttress the political system in Lebanon, and it has used that power to oppose and confront protesters in Lebanon. So I think that’s very important to make clear, and that any fundamental transformation, as protesters are demanding — kilon yani kilon, all of them means all of them — includes a fundamental rethinking of the role of Hezbollah in local politics here.
That being said, I think a focus on Hezbollah as the panacea for the problems of Lebanon misses the broader constellation of political forces and parties that have helped create, maintain and benefit from the system in place. I think we need to distinguish between legitimate criticisms and opposition to Hezbollah as a part of the broader political and economic system in Lebanon and what I would call illegitimate criticisms of Hezbollah, those that simply seek to reshuffle the chairs in Lebanon, to restructure the balance of power in Lebanon, in the favor of other members of the political class at the exclusion of Hezbollah. If we think that any solution to the fundamental problems of Lebanon can be achieved by simply eliminating Hezbollah from the equation, then we are misreading the situation on the ground. It is part and parcel of the problem, but as is all major politicians and all major political parties, especially those that have been backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia, France and others in the Western world.
AMY GOODMAN: Ziad, we just have 10 seconds, but do you expect the protests on the ground in this ravaged capital of Beirut to intensify?
ZIAD ABU-RISH: I do suspect that they will intensify. But as is always the case, that challenge is: Can they translate their presence on the ground into meaningful pressure for institutional and structural change in Lebanon? I wish them the best. I [admire and am] in awe of their bravery and courage despite repeated crises and traumas. And we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
AMY GOODMAN: Ziad Abu-Rish, I want to thank you for being with us, research fellow at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies in Beirut, co-director of the master’s program in human rights and the arts at Bard College.
When we come back, we speak to The Atlantic's Ed Yong about how the coronavirus has humbled and humiliated the planet's most powerful nation. Stay with us.


democracynow--2020-08-11--Headlines for August 11, 2020

Headlines for August 11, 2020

The Trump administration is considering blocking American citizens and permanent residents from reentering the U.S. if they are suspected of having COVID-19 .
Critics say the proposed rule is part of Trump ’ s ongoing effort to seal the U.S. ’ s southern border with Mexico .
Meanwhile , as discussions over a new coronavirus bill continue to stall in Capitol Hill , governors across the country expressed frustration Monday with President Trump ’ s order for states to cover 25 % of the cost of enhanced unemployment benefits , as states are already reeling from shortages in revenue due @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emerging of a rise in infections among children .
A new report found that pediatric cases are up 90 % from last month .
President Trump dismissed recent reports yesterday , insisting again that it is safe to open schools because children are much less affected by the virus .
President Donald Trump : “ They don ’ t get very sick .
And according to the people that I ’ ve spoken to , they don ’ t transport it or transfer it to other people , or certainly not very easily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schools have to open .
We want to get our economy going.
” During Trump ’ s press conference Monday night , he was briefly interrupted and evacuated after the Secret Service shot a suspect outside the White House .
The Secret Service said the White House was not breached and the man was sent to a hospital .
In other education news , over 500 people from a Georgia school district have been placed in quarantine due to COVID-19 since school started last week .
Last week , the Bureau of Indian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Interior Department , announced that it would reopen 53 in-person schools across 10 states on September 16 .

The Trump administration is considering blocking American citizens and permanent residents from reentering the U.S. if they are suspected of having COVID-19. Critics say the proposed rule is part of Trump’s ongoing effort to seal the U.S.’s southern border with Mexico.
Meanwhile, as discussions over a new coronavirus bill continue to stall in Capitol Hill, governors across the country expressed frustration Monday with President Trump’s order for states to cover 25% of the cost of enhanced unemployment benefits, as states are already reeling from shortages in revenue due to the pandemic.
More evidence is emerging of a rise in infections among children. A new report found that pediatric cases are up 90% from last month. President Trump dismissed recent reports yesterday, insisting again that it is safe to open schools because children are much less affected by the virus.
President Donald Trump: “They don’t get very sick. And according to the people that I’ve spoken to, they don’t transport it or transfer it to other people, or certainly not very easily. So, yeah, I think schools have to open. We want to get our economy going.”
During Trump’s press conference Monday night, he was briefly interrupted and evacuated after the Secret Service shot a suspect outside the White House. The Secret Service said the White House was not breached and the man was sent to a hospital.
In other education news, over 500 people from a Georgia school district have been placed in quarantine due to COVID-19 since school started last week. Last week, the Bureau of Indian Education, which is part of the Interior Department, announced that it would reopen 53 in-person schools across 10 states on September 16.


democracynow--2020-08-12--What the Nazis Learned from Jim Crow: Author Isabel Wilkerson on the U.S. Racial Caste System

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman in New York .
Juan González is with us from New Jersey .
And we ’ re spending the rest of the hour with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson , whose new book actually grows out of her widely acclaimed book , The Warmth of Other Suns , which tells the history of the Great Migration , when waves of African Americans moved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , only to face it again in the North .
Well , in her new book , Caste : The Origins of Our Discontents , Wilkerson argues that based on her extensive research , America ’ s racial hierarchy should be thought of as a caste system , similar to what she calls “ the world ’ s most recognized caste system ” in India .
She also looks at how Nazi Germany borrowed from Jim Crow laws of the United States .
They were Hitler ’ s model .
Wilkerson writes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all three hierarchies and poring over a wealth of studies on caste across many disciplines , I began to compile the parallels in a more systematic way and identified the essential shared characteristics of these hierarchies , what I call the eight pillars of caste , traits disturbingly present in all of them.
” Isabel Wilkerson , welcome back to Democracy Now !
It ’ s great to have you with us .
But I want to start by asking you about what just happened here in this country .
You know , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Martin Luther King ’ s month-long visit to India , when he visited with high school students whose families had been so-called untouchables , and how he was then called one .
And that relates directly to Joe Biden ’ s choice as his vice-presidential candidate , his running mate , Senator Kamala Harris .
She becomes now the first woman of color to be nominated for national office by a major political party .
She is the daughter of immigrants .
She is African American , her father from Jamaica , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s the first Indian American to be nominated , as well as African American .
If you can comment on the significance of this ?
ISABEL WILKERSON : Well , the significance of this is that so many long [ inaudible ] have been overcome or have been crossed [ inaudible ] moment to have someone who is the first woman of color , the first woman of African descent , the first woman of Indian descent , to be nominated for a [ inaudible ] major party [ inaudible ] phenomenal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many barriers had to be crossed , this is — it ’ s taken 244 years to get to this day .
AMY GOODMAN : We ’ re going to go right now to the visit that you write about in Caste , that visit that Martin Luther King made to the state of Kerala in India .
He was there in India for a month .
He visited with high school students whose families had been “ untouchables.
” Well , in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his visit and the introduction that was given of him by the principal .
AMY GOODMAN : That is Dr. Martin Luther King speaking in 1965 about his 1959 visit to India .
Isabel Wilkerson , you write magnificently about this journey and how you came to look at this country like others look at India , talking about the centrality of caste .
Tell us more about Dr. King ’ s visit to India .
ISABEL WILKERSON : Well , he had arrived in 1959 , obviously inspired by the country and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who had inspired his nonviolent approach to freeing African Americans from the grip of what he ultimately would identify as a caste system in his own country , in the United States .
And so , he arrived to visit this school , and as we so eloquently heard his reciting , recalling that experience , at first , when he was identified or he was introduced to the children , to the students there , as an “ untouchable , ” the word landed a little oddly for him , because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in that way .
And as he considered and scrolled back into his memories and experiences and recognition of all of the things that had been restricted for both him and the 20 million other African Americans that he was fighting for , he , himself , Dr. King , recognized that America had beneath its infrastructure a caste system , that was not as different from India as we might like to believe .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Isabel Wilkerson , first of all , I want to congratulate you on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as your first , your earlier book , was so marvelously written .
And I wanted to ask you about a particular section of it , where you write , “ Caste is the bones , race the skin .
… Caste is fixed and rigid .
Race is fluid and superficial , subject to periodic redefinition to meet the needs of the dominant caste in what is now the United States.
” If you could expound , for those of our viewers who haven ’ t read your book yet — JUAN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ try to delve into between caste and race ?
ISABEL WILKERSON : Well , first , I want to say that I came to the concept of race through the first book that I wrote , The Warmth of Other Suns , in which I was writing about the flight of 6 million African Americans who were escaping the Jim Crow South , and in writing about what they had endured , writing about what the Jim Crow South was actually like .
A lot of Americans have not really gotten a true @ @ @ @ @ @ @ live in that world , where everything that you could do or could not do was based upon what you look like , that it was actually against the law for a Black person and a white person to play checkers together .
So , I was recreating that world .
And in recreating that world , I did not use the word “ racism , ” because it did not seem sufficient to capture the totality and the comprehensive nature of the control , restrictions and boundaries .
So I came to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that calls upon us to think about : Well , what does caste mean ?
What is caste ?
So , caste system essentially is an arbitrary grading , an artificial graded ranking of human value in a society .
And it ’ s one in which there ’ s a fixed infrastructure that , in our country , predates anyone who ’ s alive today .
It goes all the way back to colonial times , when the country was being formed .
And a caste system essentially determines one ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the benefit of the doubt , access to resources or the deprivation of access to those resources , even such things as assumptions of competence and beauty .
So , this is the hierarchy that we have all inherited , that no one alive created , but we have inherited it , and we live under the shadow of that system .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : You also write about what you call the middle caste of Asians , Latinos , Indigenous people and new immigrants of African descent , who , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a bipolar hierarchy .
I ’ m wondering if you could explain that and also why you chose to include Indigenous people in the middle caste , when some would argue that certainly in the United States and certainly in Latin America there has been a long-existing caste system toward the Native peoples , whether it ’ s in Peru , Bolivia , Ecuador , Mexico and of course in the United States — why you felt that the Indigenous peoples should be included among this middle caste .
ISABEL WILKERSON : Well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system , as I ’ m describing it , we have to go back to where it began .
It began with the creation of a country in which the people who were the colonists , who were British , placed themselves , obviously , at the top of the hierarchy and then imported , brought people in , from Africa to be the enslaved people , who would automatically , by definition , be at the very bottom of the caste system , having no rights whatsoever , not even rights over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there also were , of course , the Indigenous people , who were the First Nations of this land , who then were in some ways exiled from the caste system that was being created , as in a bipolar caste system .
So , in many respects — and I also say that they are , in some ways , outside — forced to be outside of the caste system in the ways that the colonists devised it , by forcing them off of their land .
The bipolar caste system meant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that were the foundation that the country created .
And then , anyone entering this bipolar caste system then had to figure out where did they fit in , had to somehow navigate what had been created as a two-tiered system .
And the infrastructure that had been created had to also decide — you know , actually assigned people to roles on the basis primarily of what they looked like and what their lineage might have been , what part of the world did they come from .
So , when people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they were not — from outside of northern Europe , they were not necessarily thinking of themselves as white .
The white was not a label that had been applied , or needed to be applied , I should say , to someone who was living in 16th century of what would now be Ireland or Hungary or Poland .
In other words , people who were arriving to the United States in the early decades and even century of history in the United States were not arriving as white people , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Irish or Polish or Hungarian .
Upon arrival , though , they were assigned to the category , essentially a new category — the idea of race is a fairly new one , going back only about 500 years , race as we currently know it .
So , they had to then navigate and readjust their identity in order to meet the expectations of this caste system that they were entering .
And so did other people who were coming from other parts of the world .
The United States in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ century went to a great deal of trouble to curate its population , particularly those who were not coming from northern Europe .
And so , anyone coming from outside of northern Europe then had to be fit into this caste system , and that meant that there was a tremendous amount of disillusion and a tremendous amount of restlessness about trying to figure out who would fit .
So , there were a lot of legal challenges of people coming from Asia , people coming from other parts of the world , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , petition ultimately for the recognition of being able to fit into what was the category of the dominant caste , which would have been white or Caucasian at that time .
And so , this is a work in progress .
It ’ s always been a work in progress .
And so , anyone coming in from outside of what these poles that were [ inaudible ] random designations of human beings ended up having to find a way to navigate .
And it created this stressor , these stressors and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ figure out how to survive in an often forbidding bipolar structure .
AMY GOODMAN : And you bring in Nazi Germany , Isabel Wilkerson .
If you can explain how it was the United States and the Jim Crow laws that inspired the Nazis ?
Explain how that all fits together with caste .
ISABEL WILKERSON : Well , I have to say that I — my main focus in the beginning was to look for the parallels or the intersections , the point of Intersections , that would help us understand our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States , but to help us understand our own country through what we might learn from how other countries have managed their hierarchies .
And what brought me to Germany was actually Charlottesville , and it was there in the protests against the potential removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee that the rallyers himself displayed the symbols of the Confederacy and the Nazi Party , the Nazis , in this one space .
We saw the pageantry of the symbols coming together over the issues of memory of the Civil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of American history in general .
And so , the rallyers there are the ones that put these two together , these two symbols together , these two cultures together .
And that was the reason why I decided to look more closely at Germany .
I was looking primarily to find out how had they managed to understand , reeducate themselves and the society , atone for what had happened during World War II .
How had they remembered what had happened ?
And so , the deeper I looked , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I never would have imagined , one of them having to do with the fact that Germany eugenicists were in contact with , in continuing dialogue with American eugenicists in the years and decades leading up to the Third Reich , that American eugenicists wrote books that were big sellers in Germany in the years leading up to the Third Reich .
Now , but the Nazis needed no one to teach them how to hate .
They absolutely needed no inspiration for how to hate or how to enact that hate .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ researchers to the United States to study the Jim Crow laws here in the United States , to study and to research how the United States had managed to subordinate and subjugate its African American population .
They sent people to research the anti-miscegenation laws .
They sent them to understand and to study the segregation laws .
And then they went back , and they debated the American laws in the run-up to creating what would ultimately become the Nuremberg Laws .
These were just stunning and wrenching things to discover in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOODMAN : We only have 30 seconds left , Isabel Wilkerson , but you relate this story of talking to Gwen Ifill at a party , being deeply concerned — this is before the presidency of Donald Trump — that he would win .
And you cited 2042 .
Why ?
ISABEL WILKERSON : I mention 2042 because that is the year that was projected in 2008 by the census as to be the year that the demographics of the United States will change to a configuration that no one in the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , had ever imagined .
And that would be where the historic white majority would no longer be the majority , and that , in fact , the configuration that we ’ ve known for all of American history would be changing .
And that has an impact on everyone in the hierarchy , everyone in the country , everyone in society , to try to figure out how do we work toward a space in which everyone can feel seen and feel that they are recognized as citizens in this country .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we ’ re going to do Part 2 of this interview , of this incredible book , Caste : The Origins of Our Discontents .
Isabel Wilkerson , Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and winner of the National Humanities Medal .
Part 2 coming up at democracynow.org .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
Stay safe .
Wear a mask .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York. Juan González is with us from New Jersey. And we’re spending the rest of the hour with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson, whose new book actually grows out of her widely acclaimed book, The Warmth of Other Suns, which tells the history of the Great Migration, when waves of African Americans moved out of the South to escape racism, only to face it again in the North.
Well, in her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Wilkerson argues that based on her extensive research, America’s racial hierarchy should be thought of as a caste system, similar to what she calls “the world’s most recognized caste system” in India. She also looks at how Nazi Germany borrowed from Jim Crow laws of the United States. They were Hitler’s model.
Wilkerson writes, quote, “Searching the histories of all three hierarchies and poring over a wealth of studies on caste across many disciplines, I began to compile the parallels in a more systematic way and identified the essential shared characteristics of these hierarchies, what I call the eight pillars of caste, traits disturbingly present in all of them.”
Isabel Wilkerson, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. But I want to start by asking you about what just happened here in this country. You know, you write in your book about Dr. Martin Luther King’s month-long visit to India, when he visited with high school students whose families had been so-called untouchables, and how he was then called one. And that relates directly to Joe Biden’s choice as his vice-presidential candidate, his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris. She becomes now the first woman of color to be nominated for national office by a major political party. She is the daughter of immigrants. She is African American, her father from Jamaica, and her mother from India, so she’s the first Indian American to be nominated, as well as African American. If you can comment on the significance of this?
ISABEL WILKERSON: Well, the significance of this is that so many long [inaudible] have been overcome or have been crossed [inaudible] moment to have someone who is the first woman of color, the first woman of African descent, the first woman of Indian descent, to be nominated for a [inaudible] major party [inaudible] phenomenal moment. And to think about how many barriers had to be crossed, this is — it’s taken 244 years to get to this day.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go right now to the visit that you write about in Caste, that visit that Martin Luther King made to the state of Kerala in India. He was there in India for a month. He visited with high school students whose families had been “untouchables.” Well, in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in February of 1965, Dr. King describes his visit and the introduction that was given of him by the principal.
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: As he came to the end of his introduction, he said, “I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America.” And for the moment, I was peeved, I was shocked, that I would be introduced as an untouchable. But pretty soon, my mind ran back across to America, and I started thinking about the fact that there were so many places that I couldn’t go because of the color of my skin. I started thinking about the fact that my 20 million brothers and sisters in the Negro community of America are still at the bottom of the economic ladder, deprived of adequate housing conditions, unable to live in numerous neighborhoods because of the color of their skin. I started thinking about the fact that my little children were still judged on the basis of the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. And I had to say to myself, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States is an untouchable.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Dr. Martin Luther King speaking in 1965 about his 1959 visit to India. Isabel Wilkerson, you write magnificently about this journey and how you came to look at this country like others look at India, talking about the centrality of caste. Tell us more about Dr. King’s visit to India.
ISABEL WILKERSON: Well, he had arrived in 1959, obviously inspired by the country and by the leadership of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who had inspired his nonviolent approach to freeing African Americans from the grip of what he ultimately would identify as a caste system in his own country, in the United States. And so, he arrived to visit this school, and as we so eloquently heard his reciting, recalling that experience, at first, when he was identified or he was introduced to the children, to the students there, as an “untouchable,” the word landed a little oddly for him, because he hadn’t thought of himself in that way. And as he considered and scrolled back into his memories and experiences and recognition of all of the things that had been restricted for both him and the 20 million other African Americans that he was fighting for, he, himself, Dr. King, recognized that America had beneath its infrastructure a caste system, that was not as different from India as we might like to believe.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Isabel Wilkerson, first of all, I want to congratulate you on such a marvelously written book, just as your first, your earlier book, was so marvelously written. And I wanted to ask you about a particular section of it, where you write, “Caste is the bones, race the skin. … Caste is fixed and rigid. Race is fluid and superficial, subject to periodic redefinition to meet the needs of the dominant caste in what is now the United States.” If you could expound, for those of our viewers who haven’t read your book yet —
ISABEL WILKERSON: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — this relationship that you try to delve into between caste and race?
ISABEL WILKERSON: Well, first, I want to say that I came to the concept of race through the first book that I wrote, The Warmth of Other Suns, in which I was writing about the flight of 6 million African Americans who were escaping the Jim Crow South, and in writing about what they had endured, writing about what the Jim Crow South was actually like. A lot of Americans have not really gotten a true exposure to what it was like to live in that world, where everything that you could do or could not do was based upon what you look like, that it was actually against the law for a Black person and a white person to play checkers together. So, I was recreating that world. And in recreating that world, I did not use the word “racism,” because it did not seem sufficient to capture the totality and the comprehensive nature of the control, restrictions and boundaries. So I came to the [inaudible].
So, that calls upon us to think about: Well, what does caste mean? What is caste? So, caste system essentially is an arbitrary grading, an artificial graded ranking of human value in a society. And it’s one in which there’s a fixed infrastructure that, in our country, predates anyone who’s alive today. It goes all the way back to colonial times, when the country was being formed. And a caste system essentially determines one’s standing, the respect accorded a person, the benefit of the doubt, access to resources or the deprivation of access to those resources, even such things as assumptions of competence and beauty. So, this is the hierarchy that we have all inherited, that no one alive created, but we have inherited it, and we live under the shadow of that system.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You also write about what you call the middle caste of Asians, Latinos, Indigenous people and new immigrants of African descent, who, you say, navigate within what began as a bipolar hierarchy. I’m wondering if you could explain that and also why you chose to include Indigenous people in the middle caste, when some would argue that certainly in the United States and certainly in Latin America there has been a long-existing caste system toward the Native peoples, whether it’s in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico and of course in the United States — why you felt that the Indigenous peoples should be included among this middle caste.
ISABEL WILKERSON: Well, first of all, the caste system, as I’m describing it, we have to go back to where it began. It began with the creation of a country in which the people who were the colonists, who were British, placed themselves, obviously, at the top of the hierarchy and then imported, brought people in, from Africa to be the enslaved people, who would automatically, by definition, be at the very bottom of the caste system, having no rights whatsoever, not even rights over their own bodies.
And so, there also were, of course, the Indigenous people, who were the First Nations of this land, who then were in some ways exiled from the caste system that was being created, as in a bipolar caste system. So, in many respects — and I also say that they are, in some ways, outside — forced to be outside of the caste system in the ways that the colonists devised it, by forcing them off of their land.
The bipolar caste system meant that there were basically two main groups that were the foundation that the country created. And then, anyone entering this bipolar caste system then had to figure out where did they fit in, had to somehow navigate what had been created as a two-tiered system. And the infrastructure that had been created had to also decide — you know, actually assigned people to roles on the basis primarily of what they looked like and what their lineage might have been, what part of the world did they come from.
So, when people were arriving, say, from Europe, they were not — from outside of northern Europe, they were not necessarily thinking of themselves as white. The white was not a label that had been applied, or needed to be applied, I should say, to someone who was living in 16th century of what would now be Ireland or Hungary or Poland. In other words, people who were arriving to the United States in the early decades and even century of history in the United States were not arriving as white people, in their minds. They were arriving as Irish or Polish or Hungarian. Upon arrival, though, they were assigned to the category, essentially a new category — the idea of race is a fairly new one, going back only about 500 years, race as we currently know it. So, they had to then navigate and readjust their identity in order to meet the expectations of this caste system that they were entering. And so did other people who were coming from other parts of the world.
The United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century went to a great deal of trouble to curate its population, particularly those who were not coming from northern Europe. And so, anyone coming from outside of northern Europe then had to be fit into this caste system, and that meant that there was a tremendous amount of disillusion and a tremendous amount of restlessness about trying to figure out who would fit. So, there were a lot of legal challenges of people coming from Asia, people coming from other parts of the world, to petition for the recognition of citizenship, petition ultimately for the recognition of being able to fit into what was the category of the dominant caste, which would have been white or Caucasian at that time.
And so, this is a work in progress. It’s always been a work in progress. And so, anyone coming in from outside of what these poles that were [inaudible] random designations of human beings ended up having to find a way to navigate. And it created this stressor, these stressors and tensions between groups as they tried to figure out how to survive in an often forbidding bipolar structure.
AMY GOODMAN: And you bring in Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson. If you can explain how it was the United States and the Jim Crow laws that inspired the Nazis? Explain how that all fits together with caste.
ISABEL WILKERSON: Well, I have to say that I — my main focus in the beginning was to look for the parallels or the intersections, the point of Intersections, that would help us understand our own countries, primarily focused on the United States, but to help us understand our own country through what we might learn from how other countries have managed their hierarchies.
And what brought me to Germany was actually Charlottesville, and it was there in the protests against the potential removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee that the rallyers himself displayed the symbols of the Confederacy and the Nazi Party, the Nazis, in this one space. We saw the pageantry of the symbols coming together over the issues of memory of the Civil War, memory of slavery, memory of American history in general. And so, the rallyers there are the ones that put these two together, these two symbols together, these two cultures together. And that was the reason why I decided to look more closely at Germany.
I was looking primarily to find out how had they managed to understand, reeducate themselves and the society, atone for what had happened during World War II. How had they remembered what had happened? And so, the deeper I looked, it turned out that I discovered things that I never would have imagined, one of them having to do with the fact that Germany eugenicists were in contact with, in continuing dialogue with American eugenicists in the years and decades leading up to the Third Reich, that American eugenicists wrote books that were big sellers in Germany in the years leading up to the Third Reich.
Now, but the Nazis needed no one to teach them how to hate. They absolutely needed no inspiration for how to hate or how to enact that hate. But what they did was they sent researchers to the United States to study the Jim Crow laws here in the United States, to study and to research how the United States had managed to subordinate and subjugate its African American population. They sent people to research the anti-miscegenation laws. They sent them to understand and to study the segregation laws. And then they went back, and they debated the American laws in the run-up to creating what would ultimately become the Nuremberg Laws. These were just stunning and wrenching things to discover in the process of this work.
AMY GOODMAN: We only have 30 seconds left, Isabel Wilkerson, but you relate this story of talking to Gwen Ifill at a party, being deeply concerned — this is before the presidency of Donald Trump — that he would win. And you cited 2042. Why?
ISABEL WILKERSON: I mention 2042 because that is the year that was projected in 2008 by the census as to be the year that the demographics of the United States will change to a configuration that no one in the country, of any — in any space, had ever imagined. And that would be where the historic white majority would no longer be the majority, and that, in fact, the configuration that we’ve known for all of American history would be changing. And that has an impact on everyone in the hierarchy, everyone in the country, everyone in society, to try to figure out how do we work toward a space in which everyone can feel seen and feel that they are recognized as citizens in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Isabel Wilkerson, we’re going to do Part 2 of this interview, of this incredible book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and winner of the National Humanities Medal. Part 2 coming up at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Stay safe. Wear a mask.