As the coronavirus crisis becomes more ominous a phrase we increasingly hear is, “We are all in this together,” implying that all Americans are equally enduring the hardships of this disease. Nothing could be further from the truth, as every crisis this country has endured is a stark reminder of our gross economic, political and social inequality, and how this inequality negatively affects some people much more than others.

By the second year of the Civil War (1861-65), when the initial surge of patriotic enlistments was dramatically reduced, both sides resorted to conscripting men into the army — the United States in 1862 and the Confederate States a year later. Conscription laws in the North and South allowed men from affluent families who were drafted to “furnish” (buy) a substitute to take their place. The common refrain of a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” aptly captured the absurdity of, “We are all in this together.”

Of all the egregious coronavirus lies and inane talk (comparing the virus to “the regular flu” that “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear”) President Trump has mouthed over the past 10 weeks, perhaps the most disgusting was his March 6 pronouncement that “Anybody who wants a test can get a test.” As of March 20, when the disease was spreading rapidly, of the 331 million people in this country, only 170,000 had been tested for COVID-19 while in South Korea (population 51.3 million) over 300,000 people had been tested.

On March 11, when the Utah Jazz of the National Basketball Association traveled to Oklahoma to play the Oklahoma City Thunder, Jazz player Rudy Gobert became ill and was tested for the coronavirus. Within hours 58 members of the Utah team and local media traveling with the players were also tested, although no one else exhibited symptoms. (One other player tested positive.) The testing occurred even though Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt noted his state was “critically low on test kits.” (Business Insider reported Oklahoma used 60% of the state’s testing capacity on Utah Jazz players and their entourage.)

On the same day Gobert fell ill, a female paramedic hospitalized in Tulsa was unable to get a coronavirus test.

Athletes, politicians and celebrities receiving preferential health care (coronavirus tests and prompt results) is hardly surprising. Wendell Potter, a former communications director at Cigna insurance, stated the U.S. has a health care system that caters to the elite: “We have fabulous doctors and health-care facilities, but they are off-limits to a lot of people because of the cost.” Professor Arthur Kaplan, a medical ethics professor at New York University School of Medicine, stated that “Many hospitals will fast-track a wealthy donor. They are not going to sit in the ER waiting room or isolation room. They get to go quickly.”

The New York Post reported that “when it comes to getting tested for the coronavirus, money talks — and at least 100 affluent New Yorkers plunked down big bucks for the services of a medical concierge office in Manhattan.” While fat cats walk into high-priced “boutique” medical clinics for immediate testing and treatment, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates the average cost of COVID-19 treatment for a patient with no complications that has employer-based health insurance would be just over $9,700. For a patient with complications, the cost could be over $20,000, assuming treatment is available at increasingly overcrowded and overwhelmed hospitals.

The rapidly spreading coronavirus has brought about the best and worst in the country’s leaders. Regarding the latter, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), chairman of the House Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, stated that “Getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4% of our population … probably far less. We don’t shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways.”

Using the upper limit of 3.4% in a nation with 331 million people would result in the deaths of 11.3 million people, slightly less than the population of Ohio. That figure is seven times greater than the number of Americans killed in every war we have fought from the American Revolution through the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. A staunch abortion opponent, Johnson states that, “As a compassionate society we have an obligation to protect life.” Apparently this obligation does not apply to pandemic victims.

Christian conservative Andy Biggs (congressman — Arizona) who voted against the coronavirus stimulus bill, stated that he did so, in part, because it provided paid sick leave benefits for domestic partnerships, which would include same-sex couples. So much for Christian charity and “We’re all in this together.”

On March 24, Gov. Andrew Cuomo stated the almost 15,000 known cases of coronavirus in New York City were doubling every three days with the apex of infections projected to peak in about 14 to 21 days. On that same day President Donald Trump said he hoped churches across the country would be “packed” on Easter Sunday (April 12) and America would soon reopen for business.

Regarding Trump’s back-to-work remarks, Tom Inglesby, director of the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, stated that abandoning restrictions enacted to slow down the virus is “irresponsible and dangerous” as the disease would “spread widely, rapidly, terribly, and could kill potentially millions in the year ahead with a huge social and economic impact.” On March 27, a nurse at a Long Island hospital said that patients were streaming in “with non-stop coughing, sweaty, fevers” and “fear in their eyes.”

On March 30 Trump abandoned his shortly-back-to-work pitch and extended social distancing policies to April 30. Perhaps he was persuaded by Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Chenney, who stated, “There will be no normally functioning economy if our hospitals are overwhelmed and thousands of Americans of all ages, including our doctors and nurses, lay dying because we have failed to do what was necessary to stop the virus.” More likely it was Sen. Lindsey Graham’s message to the president, warning that if the economy is reopened prematurely, you “will own the deaths from the novel coronavirus.”

With the nation’s coronavirus epicenter in New York, Gov. Cuomo asked for more ventilators. Trump responded via Fox News: “You know, you go into major hospitals, sometimes they’ll have two ventilators, and now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?'” On March 29, Trump suggested that a number of states pleading for equipment were “stocked up” and some hospitals might be “hoarding” ventilators. The same day Trump made these accusations — and provided no evidence to substantiate them — the Washington Post reported that many states “have only a fraction of the medical equipment they need to deal with the pandemic.”

In a March 30 editorial, “A president unfit for a pandemic,” the Boston Globe stated that “it’s worth remembering the reach of the virus here is not attributable to an act of God or a foreign invasion, but a colossal failure of leadership.”

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was president, and through the challenging Great Depression and World War II years, Franklin D. Roosevelt led the nation. As the pandemic spreads and claims more lives, we have Donald Trump — arrogant, heartless, cruel, child-like and hopelessly ignorant. God help us.

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George J. Bryjak lives in Bloomingdale and is retired after 24 years of teaching sociology at the University of San Diego.

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