I am not an infectious diseases expert. And, unlike Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade advisor cum political hitman, I have enough sense not to play one in the midst of the worst pandemic in over 100 years.
That’s why I’m reprising this query in a spirit of consternation, not vindication. I first raised it when world leaders were making an almost fetishistic show of issuing shutdown orders. Indeed, one got the impression they were welcoming the socioeconomic fallout that was bound to follow as a Covid badge of honor.
Here is how I bemoaned the lack of common sense in their orders in “Fighting This Coronavirus Is Setting an Untenable Precedent” on March 31:
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Politicians and experts alike seem so fixated on fulfilling their own doomsday prophecies, they seem oblivious to the obvious question: What happens next time?
Are we dimwittingly committing ourselves henceforth to fighting pandemics the way we’re fighting this one — with all of the opportunity costs and collateral damage that would entail each time? After all, we managed to defeat every other pandemic without shutting down the global economy and turning countries into hybrids of ghost cities and police states.
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I hasten to clarify that I did not query this in a vacuum. Because I had already delineated a four-point plan as not only the least costly but also the most effective way for Trump to lead the fight against this coronavirus.
I did so in “Medics Complain about Lack of Supplies To Fight Coronavirus. Trump Passes the Buck … Again” on March 20. For example, the fourth point in that plan reads as follows:
Have the surgeon general assure the public not only that common sense is sufficient to determine self-isolation and social distancing, but that over 98 percent of people who get coronavirus survive it after experiencing relatively mild symptoms. But Trump himself should prevail upon the American people to accept wearing masks and washing hands (obsessively) not only as new (patriotic) norms, but as second nature.
But don’t get me started on the alarm I sounded even before that – in “Coronavirus: The Worldwide Lockdown” on March 14 – about shutdowns creating a “perfect storm for a wave of domestic abuse.” I followed up with “Covid-19 Stay-at-Home Orders Triggering Domestic Violence” on April 7.
Sure enough, sickening reports have abounded since then, chronicling the complaints of women who are trapped with their abusers.
Unfortunately, it appears not a single politician bothered to consider: What happens next time? The famous Dr. Anthony Fauci allowed that Covid-19 might become seasonal. But his was a solitary voice among experts back then sounding any alarm about what happens if our Covid spring became a Covid fall.
Well, despite my prescient query, it turns out I was wrong too. Because that Covid spring has become the Covid summer. More to the point, the second shutdown I queried with respect to fall is now underway:
While President Donald Trump obsesses about his re-election hopes in his White House bubble, state and local leaders are frantically reversing state re-openings that he demanded, which turned America into the world’s biggest coronavirus hotspot. …
As new cases of the disease reach 60,000 a day nationwide, many leaders, including those who supported Trump’s aggressive approach, now have little choice but to prioritize science over politics, leaving the President looking out of touch with reality. …
The picture is of a nation that is beginning to shut down again in defiance of the President’s triumphant but misleading claims that a ‘transition to greatness’ is under way.
(CNN, July 14, 2020)
Except that, as I argued above, the premise of this commentary is that it made no sense to shut down the country in the first place. I thought from the outset that living with Covid-19 was a categorical imperative. That’s why I championed testing, social distancing, and therapeutics over shutdowns in my four-point plan.
But here’s the rub: At the height of our Covid spring, when the country was under its first shutdown, the highest number of new cases was 43,438, with a 7-day average of 31,553. Compare that to the trend now unfolding – as our Covid summer is just getting into full swing:
The United States on Friday reached 60,000 new cases for the first time, and the number ultimately soared to more than 68,000 — setting a single-day record for the seventh time in 11 days. … At least six states reported single-day records for new cases: Georgia, Utah, Montana, North Carolina, Iowa and Ohio.
In Georgia and Texas, a governor and a mayor warned that some sort of shutdown might have to be reimposed.
(The New York Times, July 13, 2020)
Clearly, science, logic, and common sense would dictate that, if the spring cases caused a nationwide shutdown, these summer cases should cause another, even more urgent one, no?
Yet no less a scientist than Dr. Fauci is recommending against it. This, even as new coronavirus cases not only soar past those experienced in the spring but seem destined, by his own estimation, to top 100,000 in the fall.
‘I wouldn’t necessarily say an absolute shutdown, lockdown, but if someone is going from gateway to phase one to phase two and they get into trouble in phase two, they may need to go back to phase one,’ Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told members of Congress during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. ‘I don’t think they necessarily need to go back to lockdown.’
‘Gateway’ refers to requirements the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laid out in its reopening guidelines that the agency says should be satisfied before a state considers moving into the next phase of reopening.
(CNBC, June 24, 2020)
To be fair to Dr. Fauci and the CDC, not a single state met the gateway requirements before each of them rushed to reopen. That’s why it was so predictable that Covid-19 would have them reeling as they are today.
Only Delaware and Maine reported declining COVID-19 cases in the past 2 weeks, while 39 states have seen the number of confirmed infections rise [and many are recording unprecedented death tolls].
(CIDRAP News, July 16, 2020)
To his credit, Fauci recognizes that dizzying pendulum shifts (between shutdowns and re-openings) are equally untenable. Therefore, moderating behavior between phases now seems the default guideline. As it happens, I suspect this will end up approximating my four-point plan in practice. Like they say, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. So I’m cool with that.
Incidentally, mini outbreaks are threatening NBA and MLB efforts to resume play. What’s more, nothing indicates how Covid will likely beset not just sports events but all public gatherings (e.g., campaign rallies and conventions) quite like this:
The 132nd Rose Bowl Parade will not take place on place on Jan. 1, 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic officials announce Wednesday morning.
It’s the first time in 75 years that the parade has been canceled.
(Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2020)
In any event, just keep doing your part, come what may: wear a mask, wash your hands, and avoid crowds. And remember that, unlike apples, one Covid person can infect a whole gathering (a.k.a. super spreaders, Covid vectors).
Related commentaries:
setting untenable precedent… domestic violence…
four point plan… Covid thread…