"COVID-19 - More Thoughts"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“COVID-19 – More Thoughts”

March 29, 2020

“A person is a person through other persons;

you can’t be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships.”

                                                                                                Desmond Tutu (1931-)

                                                                                                South African Anglican Cleric

                                                                                                Winner Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

While COVID-19 has consumed the oxygen in the room, there are other, critical issues facing us as a nation and a people. Globally, China is jousting to become the hegemonic influence, in Asia, Africa, Europe and South America. Russia is determined to make Europe dependent on her for their energy. In Europe, as Muslim influence waxes, tolerance for Israel wanes. The Middle East remains an unstable cauldron of bitter enemies. Venezuela, once the most prosperous nation in Latin America, is a failed state. Domestically, infrastructure is crumbling. College costs have soared, causing the middle class to incur mountains of debt. Our nation’s debt load is an accident waiting to happen. Diversity of opinion is denied. Collective victimhood has replaced individual achievement. In the media and entertainment worlds, pessimism has defeated optimism. And, oh yes, there is an election on the horizon.

COVID-19 remains at the top of everyone’s list, not just because of the health scare it has created, but because of what it is doing to our economy – surging unemployment, collapsing businesses, bankruptcies and the isolation of the people, especially the elderly.

Sensationalism sells; it has been used by the press since time immemorial. Its offspring, panic, is used by unscrupulous politicians as an excuse to assume more power. The press is quick to lay blame but slow to accept accountability. Where were they on January 29 when the President formed the Coronavirus Task Force? Where were they on January 31 when he banned flights from China? We know where they were –clamoring for the President’s impeachment. Check the headlines for February 1. It wasn’t until February 5 that Congress first formed a committee to look into what is now a pandemic.

A couple of weeks ago, British Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson presented different models that displayed different scenarios of the spread of coronavirus. The most draconian of the models, based on an assumption the country would do nothing, predicted up to 500,000 coronavirus deaths in Britain and 2.2 million in the U.S. The press ran with the most severe of his predictions, and because they publicized only the most extreme outcome, they helped sow panic among the public, which justified a lock-down of the economy.

With the virus believed to be a faster moving organism than previously thought and with people self-isolating, social-distancing, wearing protective gloves and masks and practicing common sense hygiene, Dr. Ferguson now expects deaths in Britain, assuming current measures work as expected, to be “20,000 or less,” four percent of his worst-case scenario. Models, keep in mind, are only as good as the data inputted. “Models,” as Dr. Birx reminded us, “are models.” As well, the math can be subjective. When looking at deaths as a percent of inflicted, the numerator is not always accurate, and the denominator can vary. The numerator is affected by which deaths are counted as caused by coronavirus. In dying coronavirus patients, who also have other, terminal maladies, the cause of death is not always clear. In terms of the denominator, the number is generally based on known infections and does not include those who are asymptomatic, mildly symptomatic or who have had the disease and recovered. An increase in testing will help clarify the situation but excluding them inflates the death rate. On the other hand, if one includes in the denominator those who do not and never had the disease, the death rate may be understated.

In the meantime, the President must continue to address the pandemic. He reports to the people every weekday evening in his inimitable way. To which, much of the mainstream media responds in their inimical fashion, complaining he is doing too little or too much and that he ignores his medical experts, despite having both Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci by his side most days. The President must balance the reality of the virus where it is most virulent and how long it is expected to last, with its effect on people, the economy and its challenge to our healthcare system. He must coordinate public-private partnerships and invoke the Defense Production Act when necessary, to ensure the flow of needed medical supplies. He must assess the damage a prolonged lock-down has on jobs and the economy. It is too simplistic to say he must first address the pandemic then focus on jobs. He must do both. Like any President in a crisis situation, he must be forthright about what is happening, but he must be optimistic. Confidence is critical is situations like this. We all know politics plays a role – a relatively quick recovery aids the incumbent; a deep or prolonged recession helps the opposition. And we know mainstream media despises the President who disrupted a complacent and supercilious Washington bureaucracy.

This past week the Federal Reserve added new facilities to aid hard-hit businesses, and the President signed the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act). While the CARES Act included unnecessary pork, both were important in restoring some measure of confidence to equity markets. Thursday’s unemployment claims, which the previous week had been reported at 282,000, soared to 3.28 million, by far the highest on record. To lose over three million jobs, out of a workforce of 157 million, in one week is unprecedented. And that number will rise in the weeks ahead and markets are likely to remain jittery. The effect on the middle class, as well as the devastation for Blacks and Hispanics who had, until the last couple of weeks, enjoyed record employment numbers and wage increases, has been especially difficult. It is easy for pundits in comfortable offices and homes to dismiss the economic consequences as secondary to the health scare. It is not so easy for those laid off and without savings. The Administration will preserve as much of the economy as they can, but to heal the economy people will have to go back to work. The President’s optimism is critical to help restore the assurance we need to get us through this crisis.

The data suggests that the pandemic will worsen before it gets better. But scaremongers serve no purpose other than to alarm the people and make matters worse. Estimates suggest that death from COVID-19 occurs, on average, nineteen days after infestation. The Europe and UK travel bands were imposed on March 13 and 16 respectively. Stay-at-home edicts were broadly disseminated on March 20. If we can assume that stay-at-home mandates, social distancing and hygienic behavior have had a positive effect, then we might see a positive bend to the curve of instances and deaths around Passover, or at least in places that contacted the virus early; though no one knows what the future holds. The virus has attacked different parts of the country at different times and at different rates, so peaks in infections and deaths will vary, but it is possible that Easter may prove auspicious.

No one can dismiss the severity of COVID-19, but no one should underestimate the damage to the economy. As critical as it is to find a cure, it is equally important to begin to get people back to work. Both are critical. The United States needs to solve the COVID-19 crisis. But it cannot survive without millions of people working, generating the trillions of dollars needed to keep our country functioning. As well, as Bishop Tutu wrote, people cannot survive without human contact. We need one another.