Science

My next column in The Everett Herald:

By now, Trump’s response to Covid-19 has gone viral: incomprehension of the science, contradicting the CDC, making up numbers, blaming President Obama, blaming Democrats, blaming the press, making it all about him, taking unwarranted credit: stopping flights from China, for example, which never fully stopped. His incoherence is revelatory, as is his greater concern for how it makes him look than for public health. There’s little to add. Happily, smarter people are still doing their jobs.  

So let’s talk more generally about viruses, which are actually pretty interesting; potentially able, someday, to save more lives than they take. To appreciate them, it helps to know basic genetics and to recognize that evolution is a thing; which doesn’t describe Mike Pence, Trump’s choice to wrangle America’s coronavirus response. But God chose Trump and Trump chose Pence, so let’s move on. 

Fact: in the way recipes are not food, viruses are not alive. Unlike bacteria, which are, they have no metabolism, can’t reproduce on their own, don’t, in fact, “do” anything. That’s because they’re nothing but protein-wrapped bits of DNA or RNA, the molecules responsible for speciation, reproduction, and evolution. There’s disagreement on how viruses came to be. Based on medical school facts and personal extrapolations, this is my concept:  

Those delicate, helical strands of genetic information are fragile. In the process of replication during cell division, sometimes pieces break off. And sometimes DNA mis-reproduces the strands they’re in the business of copying, causing mutations. 

Stuff happens. There are, in fact, areas of DNA in our chromosomes that don’t appear to do anything. Just stuck there after some mistake or other, doing neither harm nor creating an evolutionarily-impactful change. Since we have countless combinations of nucleotides (the “building blocks” of DNA), and since these events occur comparatively often, some broken-off chunks occasionally are the sort that can code the production of a protein. Which is what DNA and RNA are there to do: produce proteins. Useful ones, ideally. 

If, by happenstance, those broken-off bits contain codes for proteins that are inclined to enwrap them, you have genetic material wrapped in a protein shell: a virus. If the protein capsule is attachable to a living cell, human or otherwise, and if, in attaching, it’s able to be incorporated into the cell, wholly or just its DNA or RNA, you have a potential pathogen. Mathematically, highly unlikely. But, given billions of events, it’s enough.  

The acquired material might just sit there. Or – another improbable coincidence – the original breakup may have included preexisting coded instructions to the cell’s reproductive organelles, causing that cell to start replicating viral DNA/RNA rather than its own. It all depends on the nature of those detached pieces. Presumably, most of the time, nothing of that happens. Rarely, it creates advantageous mutations. (Most mutations happen to DNA randomly or from non-viral influences.) 

When it turns a cell’s machinery into a manufacturing plant gone wild, a gazillion virus copies burst out of the cell, invade and kill other specifically receptive cells. Without intention, you might say. Because they’re not alive. Nevertheless, until your immune system figures it out (sometimes antivirals help) you’re sick.  

Scientists (people like those Trump eliminated from government before Covid-19 showed up, and whom he’s been mostly ignoring and mischaracterizing since) are using viruses, the kind that attach to chromosomes and sit there, to treat genetic diseases: by attaching “good” genes to them and turning them loose to replace “bad” ones inside human cells. There’s potential for preventing some cancers, too. Science: a good thing. Including climate science. Who knew, right?  

In summary, viruses may result from the processes that led to the formation, behavior, and fragility of DNA and RNA, which then led to those molecules acquiring the ability to code and produce proteins, which led to combinations of proteins that have the ability to harness energy and reproduce: life. 

That the process is imperfect, making unexpected combinations randomly, is what leads to changes which, when of survival benefit, fuel evolution. If those random events are useless, nothing happens; or, as we’ve seen, sometimes they become what we know as viruses.  

Hopefully it won’t matter that Trump doesn’t understand and Pence doesn’t believe any of this, as long as some on his team, and governors like ours, do.  

One more thing, off topic but timely: Let’s hope Trump’s already-iffy Taliban peace deal holds. If so, good for him. Two words to keep in mind, though: North Korea. 

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Khruschev Was Right

My next column in The Everett Herald:

Notwithstanding Truthless Trump’s hypo-inspiring, politicized news conference, which left investors unconvinced, the fawning of HHS Secretary Azar, and Trump's previous firing of President Obama's pandemic response team, COVID-19 is less worrisome long-term (so far) than firing his Director of National Intelligence. So let’s talk about that, instead.  

In perhaps the most prescient prediction from any world leader, ever, Nikita Khrushchev famously said: “We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within.” If details were scant, Vladimir Putin has filled in the blanks, and it’s working beyond his most vodka-suffused dreams. That firing is the latest proof. 

Theories abound as to how he glommed onto Trump, whether he turned him or saw him as the proverbial useful idiot. Doesn’t really matter. Putin understands American politics better than most Americans. Trump, he realized, was Khrushchev’s perfect pathogen.  

Completing much of President Putin’s agenda, Trump removed sanctions imposed by President Barack Obama, has weakened NATO and the EU, handed the Middle East to him, gotten Japan and South Korea at each other’s throats, got rolled by Putin’s protégé Kim Jong Un. Climate change denial, too: oil is Russia’s main export, and Putin runs the company. 

But that’s just frosting on the borscht. Putin’s overarching intent is helping the US descend into political chaos, to distrust its own institutions, to see fellow citizens as enemies. To self-destruct. In Trump, he saw the means. Throughout his career, Donald has all but announced it; whether he’s consciously in on it is immaterial. 

A former KGB interrogator and, one assumes, a bolshoi judge of character, Comrade Putin recognized Trump’s weaknesses; narcissism, looseness with the truth, uninformed and incurious, his history so littered with illegal, incompetent, and mob-like behavior that Putin knew exactly what he’d get if he managed to help Trump through the door. Which, denials notwithstanding, he did. Three years into a “presidency,” he’s gotten his rubles’ worth.  

Trump hates the public knowing what President Putin was up to. Which is why he fired acting DNI Maguire for telling the truth about Russia’s help; truth being an unwelcome commodity in Trump’s reign. His replacement is someone wholly inexperienced in intelligence matters, but whose loyalty to Trump was confirmed by his prior nasty online presence, shady associations (which ought to disqualify him from security clearance), and pro-Trump trolling. 

The message is unmistakable: intelligence agencies work only for Trump. Those who disagree, who believe in protecting America and not just Trump are “deep state traitors.” (By contrast, when told of Russian intentions to push his candidacy – no mystery why -- Bernie Sanders denounced Putin, not the messenger.)  

We needn’t translate Cyrillic to know what’s in President Putin’s playbook: hoped-for Trump activities, beside which are checked boxes; in addition to the aforementioned, there’s attacking journalists as “enemies of the people,” saying Democrats “want to destroy you,” (he blamed Monday’s market crash on Tuesday’s Democratic debate), calling honorable public servants “scum,” undermining fair elections and, by appointing unqualified ideologues and attacking decent judges and jurors, destroying faith in our courts. 

As Trump’s supporters venerate his demagoguery and shout down anyone who disagrees, President Putin, grinning in the Kremlin, toasts his way through another round of blini and beluga.  

We’ve been this divided before. Back then, though, there were huge issues separating us: slavery, Vietnam. Now, it’s one person acting deliberately, fear-mongering, prevaricating, fomenting hate of “the other” and distrust in institutions, in order to use his office for vendettas and personal enrichment. 

We’ve never had a “president” who systematically attacked every governing principle that could protect us from him gaining unlimited power. We’ve never seen people working to protect democracy dismissed as unjustified haters. We’ve never had a “president” who so perfectly fulfills the wishes of enemies who seek our failure, and who squelches Americans pushing back and exposing it.  

Trump denies and hides Russia’s manipulations of our self-destruction. Trumpists do, too, obediently, despite the unanimity of our and international intelligence services, and digital footprints online and in voting machines. And now, aided by Mrs. Justice Thomas, Trump is undertaking a Soviet-style purge of people throughout our government deemed “disloyal,” by which is meant anyone who has or might speak up against him.  

If foreign interference in our elections is insignificant and hasn’t helped Trump and Republicans, why has that party become a serial killer of Democratic bills aimed at preventing it? And why is Trump firing those who are conscientiously warning us about it? Isn’t it obvious?    

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