"It's Not My Fault!"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“It’s Not My Fault!”

December 11, 2021

 

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process

never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”

                                                                                                                                Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

                                                                                                                                You learn by Living, 1960

 

Being accountable for one’s actions and taking responsibility are fading qualities in our “woke” age. In the mid 1960s, on a snowy street in New Hampshire after a day’s skiing, my father, driving home, knocked a woman down, sending her to the hospital. The police told him it was not his fault. Nevertheless, he assumed responsibility, visiting her regularly until she recovered and was released. Such chivalry no longer exists. Like merit, hard work and objective truth, gallantry and graciousness are now, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in the December issue of The Spectator, “manifestations of heredity and ‘whiteness,’” – therefore to be condemned. 

 

“Victory has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan,” is an old quote used by President Kennedy. Today’s politicians no longer take blame for policies gone wrong. Instead, they follow advice Napoleon is alleged to have given: “Never retreat, never retract, never admit a mistake.” When the January 6 march on the Capitol turned disastrous, Donald Trump never admitted that his words that afternoon helped provoke it. But neither has Hillary Clinton accepted blame for the Steel dossier, which was at the heart of the $40 million (taxpayer money) discredited Mueller investigation. Governor Andrew Cuomo placed COVID-19 infected patients in nursing homes, leading to a plethora of unnecessary deaths. Has he expressed remorse or assumed responsibility? No. Has he expressed sorrow for abusing women who worked in his office? No. “Oh yes, the past can hurt,” says the shaman Rafiki in The Lion King, “but you can either run from it or learn from it.” Politicians choose to run from their past, not learn from it.

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci belittles those who disagree with him by claiming an attack on him is an attack on science. Yet the science about COVID-19 has changed as more has been learned. But his arrogance forbids any display of humility, or admission of personal responsibility regarding helping to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (Dr. Fauci’s denial gained two Pinocchio’s from left-leaning The Washington Post.) The recent rise in energy prices, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren, is due to oil and gas producers “putting their massive profits, share prices and dividends…ahead of Americans.” Apparently higher prices have nothing to do with restrictions on drilling and cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline extension, policies which the Massachusetts Senator supports. In a recent article in The Epoch Times, Victor Davis Hanson wrote, regarding the disastrous flight from Afghanistan: “Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility – much less resigned – for the worst military fiasco in the past half century.”  

 

“It’s not my fault; the dog ate my homework!” has become a common response. Running away from personal responsibility has infested society. “Failure is not an option,” is a phrase one associates with NASA; but was taken literally by Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos who never apologized for misleading investors, instead placing blame on her Svengali-like partner. There have been no mea culpas from journalists following four years of filling airtime and front pages of newspapers regarding the discredited Russian collusion story? Teachers are not held responsible for the failure of their students in international testing. Global warming is the fault of selfish consumers, not the elitists who pompously pontificate when stepping off private jets. The surge in crime during the “summer of Love,” when billions in dollars in property was destroyed and twenty-five people were killed, was not the fault of the perpetrators. It was the ‘system’ and white supremacists who made them do it. The Biden Administration places blame for the increase in crime on COVID-19 – “…the virus is a root cause in a lot of communities,” is the way White House press secretary Jen Psaki put it last week. In a June 18, 2020, New York Times article, Professor Robin D. G. Kelley of UCLA, wrote: “Given that we are in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, looting should not surprise anyone...stealing commodities isn’t senseless” Really? And that makes it okay? Mightn’t the surge in crime have something to with disparaging and defunding the police? 

 

Alec Baldwin – certainly inadvertently – shot and killed cinemaphotographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust, a film of which he is one of the producers. Has he taken responsibility? No. In fact, he claims he didn’t pull the trigger. Nevertheless, Ms. Hutchins was killed by a bullet discharged from the firearm he was holding. Still, Mr. Baldwin says the killing was not his fault. Has Jussie Smollett expressed remorse for concocting a crime meant to increase his ratings? This nationwide attitude of denying personal responsibility suggests a “woke” and nihilistic culture that permeates our society and threatens our nation.

 

Mahatma Gandhi is quoted in his posthumously published The Essential Writings: “It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one’s acts.” The United States has survived for almost 250 years because its people are free to succeed or fail, to act in their own interest, within the law. In the same book quoted in the rubric, You Learn by Living, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” Being free means being accountable. The words, “It’s not my fault,” have become too pervasive and suggest we are moving in the wrong direction. Errors are the fault of those making them. There may be understandable excuses, but faults should be acknowledged and corrected.

"Truth or Consequences"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Truth or Consequences?”

June 1, 2020

“Who ya gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”

                                                                                    Chico Marx (1887-1961)

                                                                                    “Duck Soup,” 1933

Truth or Consequences was a long-running American game show, originally hosted by Ralph Edwards. If the contestant could not complete the “truth” portion there would be “consequences,” generally an embarrassing stunt. In 1950, Ralph Edwards announced he would host a show from the first town that changed its name to Truth and Consequences. On April Fool’s Day 1950, the town of Hot Spring, New Mexico voted to become Truth and Consequences.

“Quid est veritas?”, asked Pilate of Jesus. To Christians, truth is the word of God, for whom His son Jesus bore witness. For Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the “central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,” while the “central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

The United States is a multi-racial and multi-ethnic country. We are White, Black, Native American, Asian, Hispanic and Pacific Islanders. According to the U.S. Census, 350 languages are spoken in the U.S. We identify as Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and multiple other religions. We come (or came) from most every country in the world. Yet, despite those differences in heritage, as Americans we have fundamental interests in common. We live under a Constitution that consumes only forty-one pages, at least in my copy – a Constitution that restrains rather than enables government. We live in a country where liberty is prized above all else; where fundamental rights are guaranteed. under the rule of law. We have a government comprised of three co-equal branches, and a military to safeguard us from foreign enemies. We have police forces to carry out our state and local laws. And we have a judicial system to assure laws are adjudicated fairly and equitably, and to protect us from those in government, be they politicians, bureaucrats or police who use power for their own purposes.

It is a fundamental right that permits people to demonstrate. Protestors and rioters have responded to the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. Videos of the arrest are difficult to watch and show excessive force by the police. The four officers involved were fired, and Derek Chauvin was arrested for murder. But we live in a nation of laws, not of men or mobs. Dozens of buildings in Minneapolis were destroyed. Riots broke out across the United States, calling for an end to police brutality. People have been killed. Stores have been vandalized. Police vehicles have been burned. This has happened before, usually with the help of imported professionals:  In 2012, George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, a young black man in Sanford, Florida. Two and a half years later Eric Garner died in a chokehold by a New York policeman. A month later Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old Black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri was killed by a White police officer, Darren Wilson. One year later, in Baltimore, Freddie Gray, a young black man, died of back injuries while being transported in a police van, accompanied by six police officers. Destructive riots ensued. Hundreds of small businesses were looted and destroyed, many of them minority owned. It is understandable why members of the Black community are outraged and feel the system is rigged against them. Yet, with all its flaws, our system of justice, over time, generally reveals truth.  Burning one’s neighbor’s place of business or employment will not bring back Mr. Floyd, but justice, when properly applied, can help right wrongs.

Police brutality exists; that is reality and needs to be corrected when and where it exists. Yet it is also true that without laws and their enforcement no society can survive. How many members of the press would willingly swap jobs with an inner-city policeman or policewoman? Inequality will never disappear. There will always be wealth and privilege, and there will also always be an underclass. The important thing, in a liberal society, is social and economic mobility – an up-escalator that carries the aspirant, those dedicated to education and work. On the down-escalator are the dependent and morally corrupt, with no sense of self-worth or appreciation of the dignity a job provides.

Truths about COVID-19 are evasive. In part, because it is a novel virus, which means it is new and little about it is known, and in part because facts and science change. Yet the mantra has been: “Follow the science,” accompanied by a knowing smirk. Fatality rates are debated, as are practices like wearing masks. Of the latter, the highly praised Dr. Anthony Fauci has been ambivalent. On May 26, in an interview with America Magazine, he said they “absolutely” should be worn in church. Two days later, in an interview on CNN, he referred to masks as a symbolic gesture.

The shut-down of the economy was based on imperfect knowledge – an absence of truth – yet with severe consequences: unemployment at Depression-era levels; bankruptcies that have included oil drillers, retail outlets, restaurants, theater chains, hospitals, meatpackers, dairy farms, gyms, airlines and tens of thousands of small businesses, with more to come. Despair and loneliness have increased, as have suicides and drug usage. Despite knowing the truth of who was most vulnerable (the elderly and those with comorbidity issues), politicians in a few states like New York allowed the hospital-released, COVID-19 infected into nursing homes, where a third of all deaths have occurred. Politicians in all states shuttered schools, affecting 56 million school age children who were at little risk. Doing so has hurt their educational prospects and endangered those who rely on school meals. And everything done was “approved” by so-called experts. Absent a vaccine, COVID-19 will not be eradicated and it cannot be contained; it must be managed.

In the midst of riots and a pandemic, we should not forget how far we have come as a nation and a people. To most, a hundred years is a long time, but in the life span of mankind it is a short period. The discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming was the beginning of the antibiotic revolution. It was in 1953 that Dr. Jonas Salk produced a vaccine against polio, a year after 3,000 children died from the disease. The U.S. Armed Forces were segregated during World War II. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. My generation was the first to raise children without fear of diseases like smallpox, tuberculosis and polio. My generation was the first to serve in an integrated Armed Forces. Real GDP per capita has increased three-fold over the past seventy years, while life expectancy has risen by ten years. While we are not perfect and there are those who are evil, we are a compassionate people. As a percent of GDP, Americans give four times what Europeans do to charities.  As a nation, the success we have had is due to the government our Founding Father’s bequeathed us, the capitalist system which promoted the innovation that enriched us, and a culture of self-reliance, liberty, respect for personal property and the rule of law and an intolerance for racism. We owe it to ourselves and to one another to encourage a culture that is gender and colorblind as regards justice, but also one that promotes respect, decency and civility. Vincit omnia veritas.

In last weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins wrote: “The vision of a people marching in the same direction, the same song in their hearts, is a fascist vision. It’s the societal ideal of North Korea.” That is not America. The American people can accept truth, and they can take the consequences when dealt with honestly, whether the subject is police brutality or a pandemic.

"Lockdown v. COVID-19"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Lockdown v. COVID-19”

April 15, 2020

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

                                                                                    Hanlon’s Razor

Murphy’s Law Book Two, 1980

                                                                                    Attributed to Robert J. Hanlon

                                                                                    Scranton, Pennsylvania

                                                           

The world has seen other pandemics, but the response to COVID-19 has been unlike anything the world has ever experienced. It is said we should not put a price on a life. Yet, that happens every day. Emergency rooms constantly make life and death decisions. When a hospital suspends a cancer treatment in favor of a COVID-19 patient, a life and death decision has been made. The closing of a food processing plant in Iowa or the downsizing of a shipping facility in Newark, both for fear of spreading COVID-19 are decisions that will likely cause starvation in underdeveloped countries. Every action has a consequence.

Experts in the field of epidemiology scare us through words. On Monday evening, listening to the president of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, Dr. David Reich, I grew fearful. He spoke of pathogens and their mutability, and of molecular biology and infections. He lost me in his vocabulary. A friend sent a blog written by Dr. Erin Bromage who teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Dr. Bromage wrote of how a single cough releases 3,000 droplets that travel across a room at 50 mph, while a sneeze releases 30,000 droplets that travel across the same room at up to 200 mph. If an infected person coughs or sneezes, 200,000,000 virus particles could be released. It’s enough to scare the bejesus out of the most fearless – that is until one realizes that any expert, in using unfamiliar words, can frighten someone less knowledgeable. As well, we ignore the fact that in our lifetimes, we have been exposed to trillions of virus particles. Perspective and common sense are needed. For example, each cubic meter of air contains ten trillion molecules, and each human is host to about 300 parasitic worms and 70 species of protozoa, many of which are employed in fighting infections. We are complicated beings who through millions of years of evolution have developed sophisticated immune systems. There is much we know, but more we don’t.

As accurate as what Dr. Reich said and what Dr. Bromage wrote, they do not change the fact that politicians unleashed an even deadlier response. We count those who die from COVID-19, but we ignore those who suffer and die from despair, depression and loneliness. It is balance we should seek. John Kass, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune recently wrote: “All I see is the imposition of extremes. Those of us who want to get the country back to work are portrayed as selfish fools who Just Want People to Die. And those who never want the lockdown to end are dismissed as fearful Coronavirus ‘Karens,’ peering through their windows, calling the police if they see someone walking on the street without a mask.”

The actor Matthew McConaughey, in a recent interview, spoke of the need for unity to fight COVOD-19, as Americans unified during World War II to fight Nazism and Japanese Imperialism. But his analogy is false. World War II was fought to combat assaults on freedom and western culture. Today we fight a virus. As well, the economic differences between then and now are enormous. Unemployment in the U.S. in 1940 was 14.7 percent. By 1943 it had declined to 1.9 percent. That crisis put people to work. Unemployment in December 2019 was 3.5 percent. Today it has risen to 14.7 percent. This crisis has seen unemployment soar. Last weekend, the editors of the Wall Street Journal wrote, “…this is the fastest jobs collapse in modern history.” COVID-19 is a virus that attacks, most aggressively, specific segments of our population – the elderly and the health-impaired. That is not to say other segments are immune. They are not. But we should be unified in our intent to protect the most vulnerable; we should be unified in our efforts to get the economy back on track, and we should be unified in our desire to protect the fundamental rights of all Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to avoid what Alexis de Tocqueville warned as the “soft despotism” of unnecessary rules and regulations.

The economic consequences have been devastating. On April 14, CNBC estimated 7.5 million small businesses, 25% of all small businesses in the U.S., were at risk of closing. On the day earlier, MarketWatch, a website providing financial information, put the number at 43 percent. The valuation of all U.S. public equities has declined $6.5 trillion, negatively affecting 160 million Americans who have investments in retirement plans. A study released on May 4, 2020 by the nonprofit research institute JustFacts concluded: “…the total loss of life from all societal responses [world-wide] to this disease is likely to be more than ninety times greater than that prevented by the lockdowns.” They are referring, in particular, to food shortages in developing nations, a consequence of food processing plant shutdowns and disruptions to food deliveries. Consider borrowings. Three trillion dollars have already been appropriated by Congress. The House wants an additional three trillion dollars, a third of which would be earmarked for states to help bailout over-extended pension obligations. To put those dollars in perspective: during three and a half years of World War II, the U.S. spent $350 billion – $5 trillion in today’s dollars. We will spend more to fight this virus than we spent to conduct World War II.

The what of what happened is well known; it is the why that should focus our attention, and not only the why of the virus. Why shut the world down? Why take such draconian measures? Why did we listen to Cassandras using models with false inputs? We are told we must obey the science. But whose? Yours or mine? Are COVID-19 deaths undercounted or overcounted? Should we pay attention to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s flip or his flop? In the UK, according to the Office of National Statistics, all deaths in 2019 amounted to 0.0074% of the population; thus far this year (annualized through May3), they account for 0.0075% of the population. No politician likes to be called a Luddite, yet science is always a work in progress. Science has no horizon; it exists on an infinite continuum, limited only by curiosity, experimentation and risk. We have not reached the end of science, any more than we reached the end of history in 1991. Doctors agree that COVID-19 can be slowed but not contained. As Holman Jenkins wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “…pandemics in the past have ended not with the virus going away – the 1918, 1957 and 1968 strains are still with us.” We adapt to a virus’s existence.

COVID -19 is particularly toxic for the elderly and those with life-threatening diseases. Protecting the vulnerable should have been our first order. Instead, perverse incentives were offered to nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients, thereby threatening existing patients. Hospitals were incentivized to place COVID-19 patients on ventilators, while the same hospitals were directed to suspend elective surgeries and care for cancer and heart patients, the two largest causes of death in the United States. Schools and colleges, filled with the young who are less susceptible to the ravages of the disease, were closed, as were open-air parks and beaches. A commonsensical approach was never employed. Instead, models with phony input data were used to justify oppressive measures. Jobs are determined to be either “essential” or “non-essential,” when every job is essential to him or her who is employed. As Heather MacDonald wrote in City Journal last month: “It is not the role of a state bureaucrat to decide how essential an enterprise is. That is a judgement for consumers to make. To its employees, every business is essential.” People’s rights to assemble in prayer were denied. To satisfy media and political scolds, the public good was sacrificed.

"Viva the Protesters"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Viva the Protesters!”

April 28, 2020

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens

can change the world, Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

                                                                                    Attributed to Margaret Mead (1901-1978)

                                                                                    Anthropologist, Author

Protests have been around for centuries. The Protestant Reformation in northern Europe in the early 16^th Century was a protest against the universality of the Catholic Church. Americans protested England, beginning with the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and ending at Yorktown in 1781; the French stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789. The Russian Revolution of 1917 toppled the Tsars. Mao Zedong’s Communist revolution in China in 1949 forever changed that country, killing an estimated 20 to 40 million people. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 followed protests. In our country, in the past half century, we have seen marches for civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights. We have had anti-war protests. More recently we had the Tea Party movement, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the Woman’s March and March for Life. How productive they have been is a matter of debate. Writing last year in “Perspective Magazine,” Chaya Benyamin wrote: “Protest rhetoric is more about preaching to the choir than it is about changing hearts and minds.” A Harvard study of the Tea Party movement, three years ago, had similar nebulous conclusions. But, as an observer, it seems that all these protests resulted in change, some revolutionary.

A reader in Louisiana, a retired lawyer, e-mailed a week ago: “President Trump’s having essentially accepted the epidemiologists’ over-reaction to an admittedly dangerous virus will be historically judged to be by far his greatest first-person policy error.” I tend to agree. Never before, in the history of this Country, was a decision made to intentionally shut down the nation’s economy. In an essay titled “Innovation versus the Coronavirus,” Bill Gates referred to the current pandemic as “the first modern pandemic.” But is it? The 1957-1958 H2N2 virus was called a pandemic, as were the 1968 H3N2 virus and the 2009 H1N1 pdm09 virus.  Those three pandemics killed 2.25 million people worldwide, including 230,000 in the U.S.

The President was put in an untenable position. In early January, when China knew of how contagious and deadly the virus could be, scientists and medical experts around the world, including the WHO, CDC, FDA and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIAID downplayed its malignancy, as did politicians from both Parties. It wasn’t until February that models, many using erroneous data inputs, began showing horrific projections. So personal and political fears, as well as the dread of litigation, obviated a calculated, rational response. Politicians did U-turns, with the media, which had been largely silent in January, jumping aboard. Lockdowns were imposed. Executive Orders were issued and, if not obeyed, offenders could be arrested. In truth, the virus was worse than Pollyanna’s first claimed, but not as bad as Cassandra’s later suggested.

Nevertheless, a cataclysm was unleashed. The consequences have been grim: the biggest increase in unemployment in the nation’s history; the bankruptcy of thousands of small and big businesses; the biggest deficit spending plan in the nation’s history; the possible default of states, counties and cities, and a reckless printing of money by the Federal Reserve. President Trump’s, and others’, calls for negative interest rates will only add fuel to a future inflationary cycle. The decline in incomes will negatively affect future tax receipts, propelling higher deficits of federal, state and local governments. Should shutdowns persist, the result will be a surge in suicides and deaths from opioids and other drugs associated with depression.

We have entered an economic sinkhole from which extrication will be difficult. Politicians will be watching their backsides. Businesses, without some form of limit on liability, will be worried about class action lawsuits, and consumers have been so frightened by the effects of the virus that a return to “normal” will take months, if not years. And any reopening must include protection for those most vulnerable to the savages of COVID-19 – the elderly, the obese; those with preexisting health conditions. People and businesses must respond by being personally and socially responsible – health consciousness, social distancing and commonsensical behavior will become the new norm.

Across the country, protests have begun over the lockdowns, and a few states have begun to lift restrictions. Twenty-six million people have lost their jobs in the past five weeks. Many of these people live paycheck-to-paycheck and for whom the dignity of work is important. Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, wrote in an op-ed in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, “Reopening the U.S. Economy:” “Reopening the economy is not merely about livelihoods, but also about lives.” Andrew McCarthy, in the National Review on the same day, noted that “…governments have a compelling interest in public safety…It is, nevertheless, the foundational conceit of the American republic that governments are created to secure fundamental rights of a nation’s citizens – our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Moreover, the legitimacy of government is dependent on the consent of the governed.”

The media has pilloried protesters, characterizing them as “right wing,” exemplifying “white privilege” and that behind them stand “the quiet hand of conservatives.” Politico had a recent article about how a tea party-linked group planned to “turbo charge lockdown protests.” Katherine Shaver, writing in the Washington Post on Saturday, quoted George Rutherford, an epidemiology professor at the University of California in San Francisco” Letting people decide for themselves because they’re bored is not a good way to do it.” Perhaps Professor Rutherford should familiarize himself with the Constitution, and, no, they are not protesting because they are bored but because they need jobs to pay for rent and food. As well, protesters provide cover for governors skittish about re-opening their economies. Blame for subsequent increased hospitalizations and deaths can be put on those who lobbied for a reopening. Early on, President Trump endorsed the protesters. He has since backed off but has encouraged re-openings when done safely.  

Despite myriad groups working on vaccines and therapeutics, there is little doubt that the virus will linger, and deaths will persist. But the nation cannot afford many more weeks of hibernation. We need a vaccine and we need more tests, which will give assurance to consumers and employers and that will provide officials with a more thorough picture of the spread of the virus. We need government officials to be honest with the people, as to the cause and facts related to morbidity. We need a press that dispenses factual information, rather than sensationalizing personal stories of tragedy. We need more detailed reporting of those who have died: age, gender, preconditions that played a role in death, geographic locations and workplace. Such information will offer perspective and should instill confidence in those least likely to be subject to the most harmful effects of the virus.

Confidence needs restoring, not just so consumers can return to their role of generating 70% of the nation’s GDP, but so businesses will not be censured by politicians, condemned by reporters, or harassed by trial lawyers. Examples of countries like Sweden and of states that did not impose draconian lockdown laws (or have since lifted them) should give inspiration to an economic resurgence. The protesters have played the role of a citizen’s revolt. Viva the protesters! As the song goes, “The people has risen, we’re free again.”[1]

                                                                       

---

[1] “Risen,” by Shawna Edwards

"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.