Joni Ernst, QAnon stooge

We will never know how many people have either contracted or died from COVID-19. People with no symptoms have suddenly died of strokes or heart attacks because of COVID. People with minor symptoms have died in self-isolation. And only those who have actually been diagnosed show up in the statistics. Generally, that means only those who have been hospitalized, since thanks to Mr. Trump's foot-dragging America lags far beyond the rest of the developed world in testing.

Officially, 182, 000 Americans have died of COVID. But public health experts believe that the actual number of deaths- and of cases- is probably at least twice as high as the official number.

The irony is that the fruitcakes at QAnon and other COVID-deniers have been promoting a silly conspiracy theory to the effect that cases and deaths have been overreported. It's a lie so transparent that nobody who has the slightest idea what they're talking about could take it seriously. But COVID-deniers by definition have no idea what they're talking about.

They complain, for example, that people who die of pneumonia are counted as having died of COVID. They seem not to realize that pneumonia is a symptom of COVID! It simply means that the lungs fill with fluid because of an infection. Any infection! And they object when a person with COVID has COVID listed as a contributing cause to their death, apparently not realizing that if, for example, a person has a heart attack brought about by COVID, COVID killed that person!

This is the way every disease is handled when it comes to death certificates and always has been. But the conspiracy theory claims that codes on death certificates have been changed to somehow make it appear that people with COVID who die are always listed as having died of COVID.

Well, they are recorded that way, because they did! That's the way it works! When a disease contributes to a death, even if the actual, primary cause of death is something else, that disease is noted on the death certificate as a contributing cause of death! And a symptom is not a separate "cause of death" from the disease or disorder that caused it! It has never been otherwise. Nothing has changed for COVID. And it's not exactly rocket science!

But the crazy right needs to have some way to explain away the fact that we're closing in on 200,000 Americans who have officially died of a virus they insist is no big deal. Hence the lame- and monumentally ignorant- conspiracy theory.

Not surprisingly, President Trump- who never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like- has embarrassed himself yet again by retweeting a tweet by a QAnon supporter advancing that silly and thoroughly discredited charge. After all, it's not as if he knew any better, despite having the entire resources of our national government at his disposal. Donald Trump, like most of his supporters, believes what he wants to believe, and the facts be damned.

He just makes up his own "facts." "Alternative facts," I believe Kelly Ann Conway called them once. Of course, Mr. Trump also once claimed that President Obama was born in Kenya, and personally advocates the use of and even says that he takes a drug proven to be ineffective in treating COVID and to actually make death from it more likely! 

That this particular president would sign on to a ridiculous, lame conspiracy theory should come as no surprise, especially when it helps him to justify his ongoing denial that the pandemic is a particularly big deal. What is a great deal more disturbing- and disappointing- is that my junior senator, Joni Ernst, has also gotten behind this silly theory. Any lingering reluctance I may have had to vote for her opponent, Theresa Greenfield, has just disappeared. Joni seems to have gone completely off the deep end in her desire to stay on Mr. Trump's good side.

When I made all those telephone calls for Joni and the Republican ticket back in 2014, I thought she was probably going to be our first woman president. She was smart, honest, seemingly courageous (she was the first female combat veteran ever to serve in Congress), right on the issues, and the object of my unstinting admiration. That, of course, was two years before Donald Trump came along and corrupted the Republican Party and so many who belonged to it. Little did I know on the night when I cheered her victory statement at her election night headquarters in the Des Moines suburbs that she would become one of the most consistent enablers of a crackpot president, siding with him on issue after issue, defending him from criticisms by perceptive constituents, and even voting first to prevent witnesses from being called at his impeachment trial and then to acquit him despite his guilt having been amply proven even without them.

My disappointment with Joni is all the greater because I once thought so highly of her. And now, this. Now she has stooped to associating herself with a transparently ridiculous QAnon fantasy that could even be taken seriously only by someone completely ignorant of how doctors have always filled out death certificates no matter what the disease.

For shame, Joni. For shame.

ADDENDUM: PolitiFact gives the QAnon/Trump/Ernst fantasy a rating of "Pants On Fire."