“COVID-19 – Perspective is Needed” Sydney Williams
Among the many comments I received on my essay of four days ago – “COVID-19 Pandemic – Random Thoughts” – was one from a woman in Australia that gave me a start. She referred to my last sentence: “We cannot and should not let fear and panic catapult us into a recession or worse – where Constitutional rights are abrogated.” She wrote that she fears this is where we are headed and “that something about this doesn’t add up.” She’s right; the response to the pandemic seems more onerous than the virus itself. Since last Thursday, a number of states, including New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut have issued measures aimed at keeping residents in their homes. While those measures are not strictly enforced, the New York Times reported on their front page yesterday: “By the end of the weekend, at least 1 in 5 Americans will be under orders to stay home.” Over 3,300 National Guardsmen have been deployed across 28 states in COVID-19 support roles. An overreaction?
Perspective is needed. For example, comparisons have been made to other pandemics, and the favorite of those who deal in hyperbole is the Spanish flu. It lasted two years and was the deadliest since the Black Death killed a third of the population in mid-Fourteenth Century Europe. While the origin of the Spanish flu is disputed, most authorities believe it began in a UK staging and hospital camp in Étaples, on France’s northern coast near Le Touquet, in late 1917. Allies chose not to publicize the pandemic, for fear of alarming folks at home. It finally died out in late 1919. By then an estimated 500 million people had been infected (a quarter of the world’s population), with 50 million dead – more than combined military and civilian deaths due to the War. Estimated U.S. deaths were 675,000, almost six times the 117,000 U.S. soldiers killed in the War. A comparable number of deaths in the U.S. today would be more than two million. But apart from its infectious nature, the comparisons make little sense. Then, news of the disease was hushed up. Today we have daily White House briefings. Then, the disease spread through crowded Army camps, hospitals and troop ships. Today, we have “social distancing.” Modern medicine, in 1919, was a thing of the future. Penicillin was not developed until the start of the Second World War. Today, public-private partnerships have been deployed seeking tests, curative drugs, immunizations and vaccines. One has only to look at old photographs to recognize that hygiene was not the same then as today.
We must also maintain a perspective regarding the economic costs of shutting down a major part of the economy. If people are kept in their homes for two weeks, the economy might be able to withstand it, with federal assistance. But if it goes on much longer, the effects would be catastrophic. There are some who claim that government will pick up the slack, in terms of either direct payments to consumers or no-interest loans to businesses. They will have to, but what people ignore is that government generates no income. Government spends. It is dependent on individuals and the private sector to pay its bills. Government is always most flush when the economy is most robust. Anything that impedes economic growth is a cost. Of course, some impediments are necessary, like taxes and some regulations, but they should be kept to a minimum. Stocks, a barometer of the nation’s health, have declined 35% from their February peak, down 20% in the past week alone. Morgan Stanley predicts a 14% decline in Second Quarter GDP because of the shutdown of businesses and declining trade. That would wipe out about $700 billion in GDP, mostly coming at the expense of workers who had been laid off. Jobless claims are expected to reach a million. While no one can put a price on human life, are these costs justifiable? After all, poverty and depression also kill.
Schools have been closed and college students sent home. Consider the effect on working mothers and on students whose families cannot afford the costs of on-line learning. Will colleges, at $35,000 a semester, offer refunds to students and their parents?
Death needs to be put in perspective. We are a country of 330 million people. According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control), in 2017 there were 2,813,503 registered deaths in the United States – or 5.35 deaths every minute – each a tragedy to family and friends, but unknown to most of us. Perspective forces us to recall that the 2018-2019 flu season infected 16.5 million people and killed 34,000 in the U.S., yet restaurants stayed open and people went to work. The H1N1 (swine flu) of 2011 killed about 12,500 people, yet people were not asked to stay home, and the National Guard was not called out. The sensible advice we have been urged to adopt – scrubbing our hands, using Kleenex and disinfectants, practicing social distancing, wearing surgical gloves or masks when out and staying home when fever or colds are present – will help contain the virus. With the exceptions of streets in San Francisco, we are a sanitary people. For those my age and health, the risk of death from a fall is greater than dying from Coronavirus. But COVID-19 has grabbed the headlines and therefore the attention of politicians who have injected fear into the people.
As skeptics, we recognize there are those who benefit from this pandemic crisis, or who look upon it as an opportunity: Internet retailers like Amazon benefit; opportunists include trial lawyers who see the potential for class action suits in deaths from Coronavirus in nursing home, universities, etc.; news people who seek more viewers and readers by sensationalizing the news; and politicians who use the crisis to garner more power, (or to condemn the President for acting too swiftly or acting irresponsibly).
There will be those who will say I make light of a serious situation, and they may prove to be right. We cannot prove a negative. But, while I see COVID-19 as a threat, perspective is needed. We should always be alert to the fact that liberty, which takes sacrifice to achieve and diligence to maintain, can be easily lost. George Washington, when asked what sets the American apart, replied “…he will die on his feet before he will live on his knees.” In today’s world of plenty, defending liberty, is only understood by a few – those in the military and those who have served the nation in combat. Most of us assume liberty is the natural condition of man. We don’t have an appreciation for its rarity and the cost it entails. We don’t know what it is like to live under a totalitarian regime, where the rules, which we now tolerate because they are temporary, are permanent. How many of us would be willing to give our lives and fortunes, so that future generations would be free? I fear not many today could answer in the affirmative
Another reader from New York sent an excerpt from a weekly commentary by Australia’s Rabbi Aron Moss. I do not know the man, but I like his words. He wrote of the fact that we never know what the future holds. “It is not that we have lost our sense of certainty. We have lost our ILLUSION of certainty.” Nobody, including experts, knows what comes next, whether it is the market, the economy or the path of COVID-19. In the Rabbi’s case, he was arguing for a belief in “Hashem,” or God. He was urging calm, as he said panic and fear are also contagious, which they are. My wish is that we stay calm, keep optimistic, and that we employ perspective as we analyze the past, consider the present and look to the future.
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