Sigov: Vote by mail could help rid us of coronavirus

It is in our power to protect our future by lobbying our state governors to emulate the practice adopted by California.

By Mike Sigov / The Blade
Sun, 24 May 2020 04:00:00 GMT

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin’s propagandists are gleefully suggesting that coronavirus may destroy Western societies and thus finish the job attempted by the Marxists.

“On Karl Marx’s 202nd birthday, #coronavirus shows us that there is an alternative,” gloated Sputnik, a leading Russian official media outlet, in a May 5 tweet — a reference to the failed Soviet quest to bring down Western societies and, most importantly the United States, their leader.

Appreciate the Kremlin’s modesty for not adding “in the Trump era.”

Indeed, Mr. Trump’s bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic has already cost the United States nearly 100,000 lives and an economic recession.

The pandemic, however, has distracted the public from Mr. Trump’s consistent attempts to undermine democratic institutions and government agencies.

It is worth reminding that U.S. intelligence agencies agree the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 election to help Mr. Trump get elected. He was later impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Still, subversion of a science-based response to the coronavirus pandemic by Mr. Trump and the resulting havoc wreaked on the public health and the economy take the Trump menace to the United States to a whole new level, as Mr. Putin so clearly appreciates. Mr. Trump pitting the states against each other by forcing them to compete for PPE and test kits attests to that.

Anyhow, the Sputnik tweet may also be applied to the effect the pandemic has on Russia under President Putin.

Mr. Putin’s and Mr. Trump’s responses mirrored each other from the early denial to lack of coordinated, effective response to the subsequent impatience opening up the societies.

In Russia’s case, however, coronavirus death count was rigged to under-report it by a factor of 10, according to independent expert estimates.

Economic impact was also by far more devastating in Russia, whose economy was stagnant at the time the coronavirus struck, as opposed to the U.S. economy, which was booming.

So, Mr. Putin is busy — as is Mr. Trump — to turn the situation to his political benefit.

And that’s the greatest threat to both societies.

Both presidents have prematurely pushed for relaxing anti-coronavirus measures — most important for cancellation of stay-at-home orders — at the time when coronavirus deaths and new cases were on the rise in Russia and in parts of the United States.

That’s despite their healthcare experts’ warnings that such measures would cause thousands of preventable deaths and their economic advisers’ predictions that a second wave of coronavirus pandemic would be even more devastating to the economy than the first one.

Both have ignored their health experts’ advice and even persecuted them.

In Russia, doctors who criticized the authorities for downplaying the threat of coronavirus and failing to provide necessary personal protective equipment and ventilators mysteriously fell out of hospital windows to their deaths.

In the United States, a leading scientist in vaccine development and a deputy assistant secretary with the Department of Health and Human Services was fired from his position as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for whistleblowing.

In their conflict with the experts, Messrs. Trump and Putin are driven by ulterior motives of political survival that not only threaten the lives and livelihoods of their constituents but also imperil the political order in their respective countries.

In Russia’s case, Mr. Putin is in a hurry to push through a nationwide vote on the constitutional amendments that would allow him to stay in power for life and thus keep his privileges and escape prosecution.

Similarly, in the U.S. case, Mr. Trump wants to make sure that come November, voters predominantly vote in person. His calculation is that reasonable precaution in the face of the pandemic will keep voters from coming to the polls in large numbers, increasing his chances of re-election.

We in the United States can’t do much to rid the Russians of Mr. Putin, at least unless we first rid ourselves of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

It is in our power, however, to protect our future by lobbying our state governors to emulate the practice adopted by California, where by the governor’s order the general election will be an all-mail election, with all registered voters to receive a vote-by-mail ballot in the mail prior to the election whether they requested it or not.

Mike Sigov, a former Russian journalist in Moscow, is a U.S. citizen and a staff writer at The Blade.

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