Stay-at-Home Is a Good Thing

Why is believing in "stay-at-home" orders difficult to believe in the face of a severe lack of testing to determine the true breadth of coronavirus? From The New York Times:

• "As President Trump pushes to reopen the economy, most of the country is not conducting nearly enough testing to track the path and penetration of the coronavirus in a way that would allow Americans to safely return to work, public health officials and political leaders say."

The USA has a population of about 330 million. According to the Johns Hopkins real-time model, so far we have only given 3.3 million tests. That is 1% of the population.

One percent is less than a rounding error in any statistical model, yet we want to make national policy based on it?

I trust scientists, science, and public health officials. I do not trust politicians whose focus in on putting money in the hands of businessmen and businessmen who pander to politicians. I will obey the stay-at-home order in my state until I can be relatively sure that my own risk is minimized. That might even be longer than the current order ends on April 30.

I know many are in very different conditions than I am, living alone, retired with a pension and Social Security, a debt load that, while heavy, is manageable. I also know there are pressures on others that I do not have, and I equally sure that the risk of severe illness and death is far greater for my age-group. Making a small sacrifice is not a big deal for me.

Will we experience a repeat of history?

Will we see a repeat of history? 

Will the world experience another, perhaps even greater depression?

Newly-elected, President Herbert Hoover came to office just before and "pursued a variety of policies in an attempt to lift the economy" during the initial part of the depression. Because he headed the federal government, he had many tools at his disposal, as did President Obama during the later Great Recession. Hoover, however, was a former businessman and politician and a conservative. The Great Depression became the central problem of the Hoover administration, but he was one who "opposed directly involving the federal government in relief efforts."

Sound familiar?

This 'minimal-government-involvement' mindset goes against many of the major economic thinkers and the financial processes put in place after the Great Depression to prevent - well, they hoped it would prevent - a proliferation of the conditions that gave rise to the greed and myopia that caused the Great Depression, and subsequently the Great Recession.

That mindset, however, fits very well with the elimination of the administrative order...

What noise down yonder pathway comes? Tis the piper come for payment.

It is time to pay the piper.

For the decades since the Great Recession, governments at all levels from the federal to the states and localities have cut public health funding almost out of existence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has had its budget whacked. In Maine, then-Governor Paul Le Page cut the state's health department nursing staff from 90 to less than 20. As Detroit neared bankruptcy, all of their health educators, the people who teach others how to be health-wise, were released. 100% of them. A former Oklahoma state representative, an emergency room doctor, said it is easier to cut public health than to cut personal benefits or access to care. 

 

And cut they did. While you might be inclined to blame the current Republicans for all this, there is plenty of blame to go around. This process of cut, cut, cut has happened under both Republican and Democrat administrations. Politicians cannot be accused of taking the long-view on something as seemingly benign as public health.

Until a pandemic shows up. One has.

Now the piper is demanding payment. A rapidly-increasing death toll is a cost of not being prepared, of being slow to react, and of misreading signs of a coronavirus against which not one person on Earth had immunity.

 

We have waited until the house is on fire to start interviewing firefighters. It is time to start thinking of mankind as one family living on this Earth. It is time to start thinking more long-term than we have. We need to prevent fires, not just put them out.