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Thoughts on Lockdowns
A long time ago, I was doing work in a large financial institution and we had this thing you may have heard of called the financial crisis. During the crisis and our mad policy responses to the unique situation of the time, the CFO was doing a town hall I was watching, and he said something to the effect of: “The government is giving out all these loans, and we took the loan. We don’t need the money, but the market situation is such that if we didn’t take the loan, it would be assumed we were failing. So we are going to hold on to it until the government lets us give it back.”
I think this is a pretty good way to look at state and local level coronavirus responses. That the negative inference derived from not doing the most extreme version of things, whether it is locally appropriate or not, is what is driving the massive overreaction. I think this is derived from the fact that nearly all of our national media is based in NYC and their parochial myopia drives a lot of our national consciousness. And COVID is very much a problem for NY.
None of this is to say that people shouldn’t proceed prudently.
Published in General
An Abundance of Caution translated: “We will do the most extreme thing imaginable regardless of whether it makes sense in the current situation.” Sounds like a real good plan, yeah right! So now the problem is, once that train has left the station how can it be recalled? Which governor has the moxie to say, “This is nuts, lets take another look and see what really needs to be done?” And could that governor take the heat after standing against the artificial panic we’ve created so far?
Anyone see a Calvin Coolidge anywhere?
I like the post, but I’m not sure about the NYC media explanation. They were pretty nuts about COVID-19 even before things took a turn for the worse in NYC. You are probably right that the NYC-based media has no idea how much this the disease itself has been a non-event almost everywhere outside of NYC.
I’ve been running some numbers today — new numbers, focusing on county-level data, at Mendel’s suggestion. I may do a full post on it.
Of the counties with the most deaths per capita, limited to counties with population over 100,000 — ready?
In fact, if we look at the top 25 counties, 19 are in the NYC metro area (10 in NY, 8 in NJ, 1 in CT). The other 6 in the top 25 are the New Orleans area (2 parishes), the Detroit area (3 counties), and one county in MA (Hampden county, which is Springfield).
The next 5? 4 in NJ, 1 in LA.
Well, that’s about the most pukeworthy thing I’ve read all day.
I think it was also promoted that it would be like Italy here. Because we didn’t really know where it would go, I think past evidence (and immediate from Italy and China) is that epidemics are pretty hard on urban areas. .
The Michigan site has pretty good numbers on hospital regions and bed/ventilator availability. https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98159-523641–,00.html Here are the regions:
And by county:https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98163_98173—,00.html
I still don’t know how I feel about almost 11 or 12 years later. I get why it was done. It seems like one of those things that shouldn’t happen though. I am not sure if I had been in their shoes that I would have done anything different.
So you have the crisis, you have the panic about the crisis, and then the panic about the panic.
Thanks Okie Sailor.
The Conservative Treehouse released the Governor of California’s liberty stripping provisions yesterday. Those provisions line up perfectly with what Bill Gates ahs been stattig: that perhaps the best thing is to ahve an ongoing lockdown – perhaps as long as 18 months. The document seems to be hopeful, except a person needs to read between the lines.
Look at what Provision 5 and Provision 6 are about:
(5) The ability for businesses, schools, and child care facilities to support physical distancing.
(6) The ability to determine when to reinstitute certain measures, such as the stay-at-home orders, if necessary.
This lockdown in Calif is gonna re-descend on us, even if by June 1st it is lifted, unless
1: either the citizens rise up,
2: or Trump really makes it a top priority to let Gavin Newsom know people in Calif are citizens and have the protection of the US Constitution
Michigan’s governor notwithstanding, I don’t think there’s much evidence that the government is over reacting. So far it looks like measures taken to limit virus spread are being effective, and to the extent that these measures have been not been fully implemented in some states we are suffering from more virus infections in those places.
Now that the pandemic is peaking out in the US there is a danger that we will let up on efforts to suppress it too soon and then we’ll see it come roaring back.
What are we going to do then? Re-impose restrictions? We’ll be right back to being threatened by the prospect of the medical system being overwhelmed with massive loss of life. According to the figures we have available to us now, only about 3% of the population in the US will be immune to this disease once this first wave passes. That leaves most of us still susceptible to it.
The way it’s shaping up right now there will be a long, fat tail to this first wave of the pandemic and possibly a second wave, most likely next Fall. This means we’re not likely to be going back to normal after May no matter what the government does. People will be afraid to go out and won’t return to all their normal activities.
This virus has changed the way we live, and I’m afraid that’s going to be for a long time. All those big, shiny sports arenas that cities have built all over the US? I wonder what they will be used for now. I wonder how it will be possible to continue team sports at all, at least until we get a vaccine, which is not a sure thing.