Tim Steller's opinion: A skeptic's effort to be positive about 2022

Arizona’s intensive care units are full, our voting rights are in danger, and Tucson just set a record for homicides.

So why am I feeling hopeful?

In part, it’s just a New Year’s resolution — try to focus more on the good while maintaining my natural skepticism. But also, I think optimism is justified, even now, even if it is a struggle to sustain it.

There’s a tendency in our culture these days not just to focus on the negative, but also to see catastrophe looming. That’s probably natural in a time of an ongoing pandemic that has killed more than 800,000 fellow Americans.

But it’s also common to see people catastrophizing about unlikely or even baseless threats. Or at least highlighting the bad and missing the good. This has perhaps been a tendency in my writing.

The catastrophizing is easier to see in people you disagree with. So, for me, I notice it especially among the political right wing, though it also exists elsewhere.

As the 2022 elections approach, Republican candidates are trying to outdo each other in their aggressive fear-mongering about the future of the country. Take, for example, the GOP’s U.S. Senate candidates vying to run against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in 2022.

“I think if you intentionally wanted to destroy this country, you’d govern the same way Joe Biden is governing,” said Blake Masters, the candidate from Tucson, in a recent interview. “If we retreat or hide away, the country really is over. My children, and yours, will grow up in a place we don’t recognize.”

Attorney General Mark Brnovich, also a GOP candidate, said on Fox News that Democrats like Kelly “are essentially far left and neo-Marxists. They really believe they want to redistribute wealth. ... They want to destroy the middle class of this country, and they’re going to do it by any means necessary.”

Asked in an interview what he sees as the greatest existential threat to the country, businessman Jim Lamon dove in: “Marxism being perpetuated, in my view, by the CCP, Communist Chinese Party, (and) many of the Americans that have basically, they are agents that have sold out. And that includes politicians, federal agencies, even media, etc.”

“The American way of life, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the freedoms that we’ve so enjoyed in this country for so long, over 200 years, and have proven to be some of the greatest abilities for humble people like myself to be able to live that dream, are being threatened.”

All of this is hogwash. There is no Marxist threat to the country. The country is not being destroyed, intentionally or accidentally.

All that’s happening is a ratcheting up of rhetoric as politicians compete for Republican primary votes, motivating their electorate by raising terrifying specters. It’s boring to say that you favor less social spending than the Democrats do, so candidates and commentators are going full Red Scare.

Pandemic hopes

While it’s easier for me to detect the catastrophizing on the right, and it is more present there now — as it was in the two years after President Barack Obama took office — I also catch it on the political left, the side I tend to inhabit. Lately, even with the COVID-19 pandemic resurging, I see cause for hope while many see a new reason to panic.

The bad news is, of course, that the omicron variant evades the existing immunity some people have, from vaccines or previous infections, meaning that there are many more cases of COVID-19. That also means that some severe cases, and even deaths, will continue to occur.

Will Humble, the former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services and current head of the Arizona Public Health Association, issued a dire warning on a Phoenix TV interview: “January of 2022, I think, is going to be the worst of the entire pandemic.”

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Maybe so, but the evidence isn’t clear so far. Even as COVID-19 cases have increased over the last couple of months, hospitalizations for COVID-19 have not followed that trend, according to state health department data.

Beds in intensive care units are almost full, but not primarily with COVID-19 patients. That’s different from the the previous peaks of COVID-19 hospitalization, in July 2020 and January 2021, when patients with COVID-19 made up 57% and 66%, respectively, of all those patients in Arizona ICUs. This week, that figure was at 37%, down from a recent high of 42%.

We should take precautions, for sure, including wearing high-quality masks indoors and getting vaccinated, even though many vaccinated people are testing positive. A recent preliminary study from Denmark concluded that people with vaccine boosters transmit the omicron variant of the virus less than those with two vaccine shots and, of course, less than unvaccinated people.

Additional help is on the way: A new medication is being distributed that, in studies, reduced the likelihood of hospitalization for COVID-19, among vulnerable people, by 89%. And U.S. Army researchers are entering the latter stages of evaluating a vaccine that works against all SARS viruses, including COVID-19.

In other words, this pandemic may be in a dangerous moment now, but it may not end up as bad as previous peaks, and promising developments suggest it could wind down in 2022. So I’m hopeful.

Murder record and democracy

A lot hinges on the course of the pandemic.

In Tucson, homicides hit a new record last year, topping 90 for the first time. A common theme was that verbal altercations turned physical, then into gunfire. People had short fuses — a common problem around the country in COVID-19 days.

There’s no clear reason to think that will improve this year, but I am hopeful that if the pandemic conditions moderate, it won’t be this bad again. Also, the Tucson Police Department has a new chief, Chad Kasmar, who seems to have buy-in from the public, the City Council, and the rank and file. Maybe he’ll help with prevention efforts.

The economy could also help. The job market remains tight, meaning workers have lots of opportunities and leverage for higher wages. Tax revenues are high. The economic resurgence in Tucson and elsewhere could be explosive in 2022 if the pandemic eases.

That could make housing less unaffordable for Tucson wage earners, who watched rents and home prices spiral out of reach in 2021.

All of this is promising, but there’s one problem we have that I can’t see optimistically from any angle: the assault on our democracy.

A small cabal of plotters, inspired by Donald Trump, have convinced most Republicans that the 2020 election was stolen from them. It clearly wasn’t — Trump simply was an unpopular candidate among the swing voters who decided the election.

But all their bluster and misinformation is leading the GOP majority in this state and others to make voting harder and even to try to give themselves power over election outcomes. State Rep. Shawnna Bolick proposed legislation last year that would have allowed a simple majority of legislators to overturn certified election results — a shocking idea.

Now she’s running to be Arizona’s elections head as secretary of state. If she or state Rep. Mark Finchem, the Oro Valley right-wing radical, were to win that office this year, the damage to our democracy could be severe. I wish I were optimistic about that, but it’s going to be a tough fight.

Now let’s move on to sunnier topics like climate change.

Just kidding.