RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/when-will-it-end/

Congressman Chip Roy (R., Texas) argued on the homepage Friday that the “government needs to make a decision about when we are going to free up the economy.” From the true premises that uncertainty is bad for the economy and that an indefinite shutdown of social life is as uncertain as it gets, Roy makes the case that the government must select a date to lift the shutdown — a virus “D-Day.” By that date, the government will vow to have the epidemic under control, and it’ll mobilize all federal, state, and local resources toward keeping that vow. Our current path risks economic devastation and its attendant downsides.

There’s something attractive about this argument, but in an article in The New Atlantis, Ari Schulman gives the obvious objection:

It is not possible to place meaningful estimates on the true economic cost of [the worst-case scenario in which the virus spreads unchecked], except to say that there is good reason to believe it would be worse than the current shutdown. We simply do not have a good frame through which to view this future. Our world is too different from 1918 for the Spanish flu pandemic to offer much guidance. . . .

The most urgent task for the president and national leaders is to articulate the purpose of the shutdown, what it aims to achieve, and how we will know when we have. The current answer — “15 days to slow the spread” — is arbitrary and unpersuasive. The question is not How many more weeks or months? but Under what conditions can we relax blanket national closures?

Various answers suggest themselves. We might say that the shutdown can end when the case curve bends: That is, when new daily confirmed cases peak and decline. We might also look for the share of tests returning positive to steadily decline, suggesting that testing is finally widespread enough to capture most cases. Perhaps most importantly, we might look for a peak and decline in Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths.

That doesn’t mean the shutdown is the only way to deal with the pandemic. As Schulman goes on to argue, the U.S. was forced to take such an extreme measure only because our early response was insufficient:

We already have a gold standard for fighting epidemics: early identification of symptomatic patients, contact tracing, isolation of those infected and exposed, and widespread random sampling of the population to detect new outbreaks among unidentified contacts. Only by identifying and isolating the sick can the healthy get back to work.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/03/covid-19-the-blunt-instrument-of-suppression/

“‘A country which is fully employed, or close to it, is in a better position to fight a public health emergency than one confronting an impending recession or depression. As jobs are shed and stock markets plummet the need is to at least consider a different approach to the coronavirus pandemic.”

The precautionary principle was in vogue some years ago in the context of the climate debate. However, the argument is a general one. It turns on the outcome of something being so bad that even a small probability of it occurring is unacceptable. In other words, its expected cost (the probability of it occurring multiplied by the costs it would impose if it were to occur) would almost certainly exceed any costs of putting in place measures to prevent it from occurring.

The precautionary principle has a frailty as a guide for taking preventive action. The costs of taking action are real and tangible, whereas the costs of not taking action are speculative. What has this to do with combatting the coronavirus pandemic? It provides a foil. The situation facing us effectively stands the precautionary principle on its head.

To explain. Whereas the costs of inaction on the health of the population due to the virus can be calculated with a fair degree of confidence by epidemiologists, albeit along a scale; the costs of taking a range of aggressive actions to curb the spread of the virus are speculative. At worst, the social and economic costs of such actions could be so high as to outweigh their public-health benefits. And this is what I would like to discuss in light of an influential report (“Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand”) issued on March 16 by the Imperial College London on behalf of its Covid-19 Response Team. The “IC Report” is based on epidemiological modelling.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/time-for-trump-to-address-the-dread/91057/

President Trump may have had his reasons for denouncing an NBC reporter at the press briefing this week, but we thought the question from reporter Peter Alexander — “What do you say to Americans who are scared?” — was a slow pitch, meaning an opportunity for the President. Our sense is that the country is filled with dread over the pandemic. Its’s aching for an answer from the president of the country in a presidential setting. The country is waiting.

The question sent us back to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first inaugural on March 4, 1933. It was the last inaugural on the date originally set in the Constitution. Roosevelt delivered the speech from the East Front of the Capitol moments after being sworn to the Constitution. The speech is one of America’s most memorable — and echoes powerfully in the current crisis.

Roosevelt began by saying that he was certain his fellow Americans expected him to address them with candor. We were, after all, well into what came to be known as the Great Depression. FDR called it a time to speak the whole truth. “Nor need we shrink,” he said, “from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive, and will prosper.”

And then the famous words: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

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.