The Cure is Worse than the Disease. First, do no harm.
A Guest Post by Thad Guyer, in response to my earlier post:
“ Sacrificing Not Even Comfort
I am against the continued mandatory "stay at home" regime because I am against telling other people they cannot work and must go bankrupt while I drink smoothies all day and collect my groceries at the door after I put on some pants. The sooner "stay at home" becomes only voluntary, and the governors and Trump open the government and the economy back up the better. The GOP almost alone commands the message of "get America back to work, out of bankruptcy, eviction and foreclosure". Biden is irrelevant-- his political blood drained away long before Iowa. Covid-19 has ordained Trump the supreme leader. That's what happens when you declare martial law, aka "stay at home" upon penalty of jail or fines.
If your doctor told you to stay at home and not work for three to six months to avert a 3% chance of ending up in the hospital but a 95% chance that you won't die even if admitted, you would ask "how would I pay my bills?". If the doctor said you will get 100% of your income while staying at home you might say "well ok then!" But if the doctor instead answered you will go into bankruptcy or lose you home or both, and your kids will get no school nor have enough food, then you would say "all that devastation to avoid risks of what, a less than 3% chance of ANYTHING AT ALL happening to me, are you insane?"
Trump's message is that doctor is insane. Sooner or later, everyone is going to agree with Trump.
We the elite who collect our full salaries and retirement benefits at home choose this economic catastrophe for the 80% in the workforce below us, fewer than 97% of whom have any risk of even being hospitalized. See "Location Data Says It All: Staying at Home During Coronavirus Is a Luxury" (NYT, Apr 3, 2020 shorturl.at/fjwUZ). The increasingly absurd looking paradox, if not irony, is that "staying at home" in an overcrowded apartment in Queens is the disease, not the cure. It is all about zip codes, and that zip code is not yours.
We close down primary school education including school food programs for 30,000,000 children for whom the empirical findings are they face malnutrition. (Or was the school feeding program-- and our rage at ketchup being a vegetable-- just a lot of political bullshit?) A relief program? We have merely postponed mass evictions and foreclosures since the relief law only suspends legal actions for 60 days, they still owe all the payments and rents, and they are going to be repossessed, evicted and garnished when this is over.
Luxurious shelter in place for us is falling off the earth for them.
The NYT article "Who Should Be Saved First? Experts Offer Ethical Guidance" (Mar 29, 2020 shorturl.at/arRVZ) discusses hospital triage and allocation standards developed long before the virus. That is our micro-perspective. But we need a macro-perspective for triaging the society and the economy at large. The article explains why clinicians can't be the decision makers even in the hospitals, but rather people with policy authority must. So it must be with the societal costs of shutting down the economy-- that must be a political decision, and Trump is seizing it while we are paralyzed by moral dilemma. Should we shut down the economy to save 100,000, 80,000 or 25,000 virus victims? Those are the numbers of Americas who we let die in several pandemics in the past 20 years purportedly because we did not "shelter in place" to stop the contagion to over 60 million Americans. What is the acceptable mortality number, what is it balanced against? And do we throw that bottom 80% of the workforce into financial catastrophe every time, say every 4 or 5 years?
From what I have seen, only the GOP addresses this while Democrats talk a morbid political theology. Trump is going to act while we are debating that over Zoom and WhatsApp.”
7 comments:
The point of the sequestering is to stop the overcrowding at the hospitals, which would not be able to handle the onslaught of cases.
As one with the lung issues, diabetes, heart issues, etc, I would be a victim for sure. I still may be.
So, just a little longer, please. Oregon is doing very well with this. People are wearing masks in the stores. Our case loads are staying low.
Trump did in fact allow it to happen. Someone got to him about the seriousness of this pandemic.
We will soon be back to work.
Thad may be right in his political analysis. I might be right as well in my blog post this morning.
Thad and I will both be wrong if the virus spreads into places so that the rest of the country has the experience New York City is having. This may be unlikely. New York is untypical in its density, but it is not utterly unique. Possibly church gatherings in Tulsa and Memphis and Boise will send the virus and a message of fear into red state America. This virus story story isn’t over yet.
A 28 year old relative got the virus and survived, but had two very bad days. Two other relatives have compromised immune systems because of medicines they take. Happily, in our case, the first relative did not interact with the other two relatives. But it could have gone the other way. They might have met at church, then eaten a meal together.
All it takes is a relative or good friend becoming deathly ill to recalibrate the risks and rewards. The irony is that if suppressing the spread of the disease works, then it will seem excessive.
Peter Sage
Thad's argument would have more traction if we all had access to PPE, N95 masks in particular.
Of course, the laissez-faire free market business model we are on puts profits before people, so those items were sold to other countries months ago. It's just another aspect of what you have when a "businessman" is in charge of governance.
Having said this, the view from the top of the mountain, seems to suggest that the present "cure" may be as bad as the disease when you consider the secondary impacts of "stay-at-home" and the rescue packages. These range from extended unemployment, budget deficits and their impact on infrastructure, safety nets, increased dependence on China for consumer goods (particularly PPE), suicide, PTSD, etc. etc.
Down in the valley, if you or your loved one is one of the unlucky 3%, the impact is a little more immediate.
Andy Seles
My viewpoint is not dependent on whether the contagion meets or exceeds New York levels nationwide. My view is that the stay at home regime must be voluntary, whomever has a job they want to work, a restaurant they want to open or patronize, a church service they want to join, these should not be prohibited. The public, employers and public accommodations should be encouraged to follow best practices for social distancing and wearing PPE. Instead, my viewpoint is based on worst case scenario projections of 1.7 million deaths which assumes the stay at home regime is disregarded by a large portion of the population. At present the Covid-19 Task Force model projections have been downgraded to 240,000 assuming the stay at home regime is followed. I accept that the health care system will likely be overwhelmed, and restrictions at the state and local level can be imposed as can PPE requirements for workplaces and public accommodations. But I do not accept that economic and societal calamity dwarfing that of the Great Depression can be inflicted to avert the projected worst case scenario deaths of less than 0.5% of the population.
AS LONG AS IT IS NOT YOU
People will hang in as long as they are not hungry and then all bets are off. Testing could save the day. Never happen, too late. Feds blew it and now the old and infirm will pay the price. Cute to talk about only 3% will die. As long it is not you. Balance between Hunger and lost shelter, yep let Grandpa die, your Grandpa not mine.
Ralph
Thad, if you can think that clearly, why are you a Democrat?
What many don't realize is that the economy will not go on just because we let people get out when they want. As everyone gets sick, many won't work. 30% (number who could be infected) of 320 million is 96 million people. Of those 96 million 1.5% will die; that is a total of about 1.4 million people. While I am all for culling the herd of old people and the infirmed, I don't think many others are. This is also VERY concervative number, beause up to 70% could be infected before herd immunity steps in. The economy is ruined either way.
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