Posted on 03/23/2020 5:57:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
As (mostly) blue-state governors trip all over themselves trying to test the limits of what a real totalitarian police state would look like if their Bolshevik wet dreams ever came true, reasonable Americans wonder if the proscribed cure to stopping the Wuhan virus might, in the long run, be infinitely worse than the disease itself.
Leftists and even some big-government type conservatives have taken advantage of what they clearly see as a great opportunity to virtue signal on this issue, because nothing says Im a good person better than a condescending tweet or pajama-clad quarantine video. Were saving lives, they say, so any action is justified. SHUT IT DOWN, they implore all over Twitter. Yes, everybody should be taking precautions and no, nobody should be gathering in large crowds or partying it up on Spring Break at the beach, but New York, New Jersey, California, and others are taking things to the point of unworkable absurdity, and goading President Donald Trump and thus-far noncompliant red-state governors to join them on the tyrannical bandwagon - one that, in the name of saving a few, could end up sinking the entire ship.
But some are pushing back. Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, has been one of the few Republicans to criticize the president on this issue and call for a more measured response. You dont shut restaurants down for 30 days, he said last week. I have no problem with (stopping) sporting events or things that dont impact our civil liberties and dont impact everyday life. Those are things that I think we can suspend for a period of time. But its just craziness to shut down businesses or parts of the economy that are absolutely necessary.
We are in the midst of a panic that is creating irrational responses, Buck said, calling the closures an overreaction to a very serious situation which is now causing some serious civil liberties issues.
In an article titled Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown, The Wall Street Journals editorial board posited last week that No society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its economic health.
Even Americas resources to fight a viral plague arent limitlessand they will become more limited by the day as individuals lose jobs, businesses close, and American prosperity gives way to poverty, they wrote before calling for a strategy thats more economically and socially sustainable than the current national lockdown.
In a normal recession, the WSJ argued, the country would lose around 5% of output over a year, but this crisis may cost that much, or twice as much, in a month. Scary stuff, but to seemingly most of those in charge at this point, the Chinese coronavirus is way scarier. Yes, the death toll has been relatively small so far, but if left unchecked hundreds of thousands, if not millions, could die, they tell us. Should the curve be successfully flattened, they say, well save upwards of a million American lives.
But even if all that is true, and it may very well be, at what cost is this curve truly flattened? As Tucker Carlson noted last week, an epidemiologist - like Dr. Fauci - would tend to believe the answer is simple: shut it down, close every public space until the virus passes. Yes, we could do that, conceivably. Its certainly what the left wants, although arguably for entirely different reasons.
The WSJs many supporters on Twitter included names like RNC member Harmeet Dhillon, economist Brian Wesbury, conservative writer Ann Coulter, former NBC host Megyn Kelly, Fox News host Laura Ingraham, and even NYT White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, all of whom were among many tweeting out the article and, in some way, wondering what we are doing to ourselves. Plenty were opposed, including the Daily Beasts Sam Stein, who called it an editorial that could not be more catered to the angst of the papers wealthy readership. Third Ways Mieke Eoyang ominously promised to remember the WSJs take. FAIR Media Watch called it horrific.
ProPublica president Richard Tofel accused the piece of ducking the key choice, the emerging question will be whether the public health gain is worth the economic loss. Indeed, the WSJ contended that this shouldnt become a debate over how many lives to sacrifice against how many lost jobs we can tolerate. Though they mean well, that misses the point entirely. Its not about simply lost jobs. Its about shattered lives, shuttered businesses, and a looming second Great Depression that would, over the long haul, kill millions more Americans than the Chinese coronavirus ever could even if left unchecked.
Dr. David Katz, founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, called for a more surgical approach in a New York Times op-ed published Friday. Instead of tanking our economy for everyone, Katz argues, why not focus on protecting those most vulnerable?
This focus on a much smaller portion of the population would allow most of society to return to life as usual and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy from collapsing, he wrote. Healthy children could return to school and healthy adults go back to their jobs. Theaters and restaurants could reopen, though we might be wise to avoid very large social gatherings like stadium sporting events and concerts. So long as we were protecting the truly vulnerable, a sense of calm could be restored to society.
Evermore importantly, such an approach could very well end the threat for good as society develops a natural herd immunity to the virus.
The vast majority of people would develop mild coronavirus infections, while medical resources could focus on those who fell critically ill, writes Dr. Katz. Once the wider population had been exposed and, if infected, had recovered and gained natural immunity, the risk to the most vulnerable would fall dramatically.
Its a solution recently advocated by Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, who called for a combination of herd immunity and isolating the most vulnerable as an effective way to fight the virus. Since most experts say the virus is going to pass through most of the population anyway, it may indeed be the ONLY way, that is unless we want to experience another Great Depression or turn into Zimbabwe through the hyperinflation that some proposed solutions would cause.
Like it or not, our leaders must decide what defines an acceptable level of exposure versus falling off an economic cliff, one that could result in far deadlier consequences over the long haul. Either way, there will be suffering. Either way, people will die. Its not evil to point out the stark, brutal truth. Life is rarely fair, but its immensely more unfair to pretend there is no other sane choice than simply shutting it all down.
Yup...
Im a physician, or was. Im sharing what I read. As I posted, who knows? Its new. Would you like this better?
Its just a flu, guys! Its nothing. We are going to have a new 100% effective drug this afternoon! And a vaccine that is harmless! Next week! (This amuses me. Antivaxxers demanding a vaccine.) Look! The Death Rate is GOING DOWN!!!
Would you like that better or the truth?
Not against the idea, but I’d like to know exactly what “isolate the most vulnerable” entails.
Yes. Put all the over 65 year olds, the cancer patients m the obese, the ones with high blood pressure and those with diabetes away for a month.
“Its not evil to point out the stark, brutal truth. Life is rarely fair, but its immensely more unfair to pretend there is no other sane choice than simply ‘shutting it all down.’”
I was just in the car, running mail up to the post box (which is a mile away) and had the radio on. Our local Conservative Morning Guy was doing a day-by-day on how China totally muffed this up and tried to keep it HIDDEN from the rest of the world when this started back in December in a public market in Wuhan.
Kinda scary, actually. I, for one, am putting the blame for this world-wide problem squarely on the Chinese Commies.
As that little twerp Greta would say, “How Dare You!”
The b@stards!
Note to Trump: Talk to Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea - where they didn’t shut down their economy. Ask them what they did and how they did it. Quit listening to the arrogant U.S. NIH/CDC/FDA bureaucracy - they failed, in fact worse, they obstructed faster U.S. response, leaving you and the nation bare to a last ditch shut down and shelter in place strategy - which didn’t have to be.
Bump
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