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Day 113: COVID-19 We’re All in Exactly What, Together?
The screengrab is from the Rt:Effective Reproduction website. I featured it before in Day 104: COVID-19 It’s Over, But How Do You Convince People That It’s Over?. That was a week ago and if you go to the site and click on older graphs you can see (at least according to their methodology) things are moving in the right direction.
And yet we are constantly serenaded on television with the public service announcements featuring persons who do not live in hovels talking about how “We’re all in this together.” That is, we stay at home, isolate ourselves, keep our shops closed (except for where they are beginning, unevenly, to open under new rules), and sacrifice ourselves for the greater good.
Mind you, I am not against self-sacrifice. Mrs Rodin takes the view that (intellectually) there is no such thing as “altruism”. I concur that people will do things for psychic compensation — emotional, religious, patriotic– that we view as altruism. So people do self-sacrifice for personal reasons, some of which we heartily approve as a society.
But in the strictest sense, it is clear that we are not all sacrificing in the same degree or to the same extent. Thus it is said that we are all in the same “storm” together, just not in the same “boat.” Accordingly, we need to have freedom to navigate through the storm in ways necessitated by the individual condition of our own “boat.” And when you overlay the question of what exactly is the “storm” in which we find ourselves together, things get even more complicated.
It is now evident in hindsight that there were multiple choices that could have been made. The decision to shutter “non-essential” businesses and activities started out as a simple (allegedly) short-term strategy but has now morphed into a power struggle between individual liberty and collective rights with a health component. The “storm” has morphed from a health emergency to a political battle.
If absent bad public policies everyone would live forever, that would be one thing. But the opposite is true: No one lives forever even with good public policies. So why are we destroying our future well-being in the name saving some unknown, incalculable increment of life. The same society that accepts millions of abortions cannot accept hundreds of thousands of premature deaths — the avoidance of which costs so much and gains so little?
If the virus were free to pick its victims unaffected by government policies but hindered only by the decisions and actions of individuals and private organizations, there would be winners and losers as there always are. Sadness would come to many, as it always does. But those victims would be victims of the natural order, not the often wrongheaded actions governments.
If it was really a choice between all tragedy incurred or all tragedy avoided, then broad-scale governmental action might be reasonable. But it isn’t.
This is a challenge to be met with conservative beliefs. Either you believe that life is what it is and people should have the broadest possible chances to make their way through it, according to their own predilections and beliefs, or you feel that populations should be managed toward some ideal goal. History shows that there are sorrows and joys in the former, and widespread despair in the latter.
Let our people go.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
Yesterday I was gratified during a meeting to hear a majority of my employees express a desire to “return to normal” despite their fears, because I know that whenever there is a change, there are people who invest in the new situation who will be reluctant to give up their investments. This is aside from the fact that there may be some who will find a positive good in economic collapse and chaos. People will be convinced by leaders they trust, and I think that this right now is Trump’s make-it-or-break-it time. He can’t wait til the fall.
I am in South East Michigan , near Detroit. A Hotspot. Even so, I am amazed how many of my friends support Governor Whitmer and want to keep everything shut down until there is a vaccine or a cure. My retired friends particularly feel this way — their lives haven’t changed significantly. Personally, I want to get the economy cranked up again, and I want to socialize, go out and do things, and meet at Church and participate in communal worship services. I would like to go to the office and work outside my home. Still, it is amazing how many of my friends chant “Science!” and want to experience non-life huddled in fear at home.
Our Royal Highness of Washington State has described the new rule for restaurants that wish to open in the next phase. Aside from operating at only 50% capacity, all restaurants must keep detailed records of all patrons; names, phone numbers, and email addresses for later contact-tracing if someone who happened to eat there gets sick.
Do any of these friends understanding what is going to happen to their retirement if everything goes belly up? Do they have all their money in gold at their homes? Do they have weapons to protect that gold? I am sorry. I was going to ask if they were clueless as to how vulnerable they are to general economic realities, but then I realized they must be.
Similar announcement in California for whenever that might be. I guess we are gaining the benefits of sharing “best practices” amongst the Western States Pact. (sigh)
I think Trump is willing to risk it all. Because to take no risk is certain death. Not so much physical death, though surely that may happen. If we stay shuttered, those who prey on fear will win.
I just watched the Dr. Bush video, and he talked about Marines who face machine gun fire, and flames to rescue a fellow soldier from the enemy.
The enemy Trump faces is not the virus, but an army of leftists who would have us cower in fear, forever, amidst uncertainties, (not just a virus) that will always be present in life.
There is much we don’t know, but with careful action, I think we can pass through this storm. It will be no picnic, I’m sure.
Thank G-d Hillary is not President. I don’t even want to imagine….
Like the Flight 93 passengers said, “Let’s Roll.”
seniors lives have not changed significantly, Yet, but they will.
How will their savings, pension and SS continue if everything collapses?
Well, you said it better than I did. 😁
I think we need to have an amnesty plan for politicians.
We don’t blame you for putting a grossly ineffective, hideously, ruinously expensive plan in place because that was the option provided by the official experts.
We do blame you for not adjusting to empirical reality now. Healthy young people (69 and below) are not at risk. From the Teddy Roosevelt to dozens of reporting sites from across the world we know that the models are wrong.
Move heaven and earth to protect and isolate the vulnerable. Give them every prophylactic meds and focus testing on them and those close to them. Otherwise, let people choose their precautions, assume we are not idiots, stop deferring to proven incompetents and lead the economic recovery without anti-growth fetishes like the Green New Deal or rewriting labor laws.
Amnesty applies only if you act now. This is a limited offer.
Would you let this amnesty apply to media, or only to politicians who are in elective or appointive office?
No breaks for media. They are alleged to be in the information and research biz. The great bulk of experts, governors and mayors are now in full butt-covering mode, aided by the hurt-Trump-at-all-costs major media.
Corona is not ebola. It’s not even the measles. It’s worse than a common cold. Slightly worse than the flu.
Time to get back to February and stop this stupidity. They scared the bejeezus out of us, and we dutifully complied, and we might assume that their scary reactions were in good faith, but it no longer is clear to anyone that this quarantine is wise.
Never let the military decide if we go to war. Their perspective is not always the best because they see the world as a military man sees the world.
Never let lawyers decide legal policy. Lawyers see the world as adversarial and they see troubles as a source of income.
Now we’ve learned we should never allow doctors to make public policy. They see the world as a doctor sees it, and they see everyone as a patient. Their drive is to keep their patients safe. This makes terrible public policy.
Well said.
At the beginning of this circle jerk, a graph was widely distributed that showed the lethality and transmissibility of various diseases, but it was an extremely misleading graph because it was logarithmic for 0 t0 10 and then linear for 10 to 60. I re-created the graph keeping it all linear. Here it is.
Corona Lethality and Transmissibility
Corona is in the orange rectangle, which is the range of guesses as to its place on the graph. At it’s worst it was somewhat bad, but some thought it could probably be even worse. China lies, you know. But our experience shows clearly that corona inhabits the lower left side of that range. It’s time we stop pretending that it’s the Black Death combined with the Spanish Flu and a touch of Polio and the measles. In fact, it is slightly more deadly than the flu or the common cold.
If those numbers on the Y axis are supposed to represent the case fatality rates, your box for coronavirus seems to be placed too low. It’s too low for Michigan, anyway. But the label on the Y axis is unclear. It doesn’t specify percent of what.
Where do these data come from?
I made a meme. Let’s see if anyone else likes it.
It was a graph circulating back in March. The y-axis is the average number of people infected by each sick person. I copied the data and corrected the scale.
“We are all in this together”
It sounds like another terrible nausea inducing company meeting
To answer your question: groundhog day except no Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell
Gilligan’s Island sounds like paradise right now
Yeah, they are clueless. If you have any brilliant ideas on how to reason with them, I am all ears.
84,000 dead since feb 29.
That’s one hell of a flu.
We aren’t all going to die.
It’s not the black death.
But it’s sure not the common cold, the measles or the flu.
I am retired and my wife is de facto retired (retirement at the end of the canceled spring semester). We are in the scary part of the death rate by age bracket. We received our normal retirement payouts plus $2400 and our expenses went down, so March was an easy month for us; it is very easy for us to stay shut down. But nobody should be extrapolating our choice to remain at home for the near future as a prescription for anybody who needs to work.
What the world needs right now lest we all die from the economic complications of the covid-19 pandemic is a really heated presidential election.
The press has been making a lot of money on this ongoing story. The longer they can keep the clicks coming, the longer they can pay their bills. If the press could replace its covid-19 income with presidential election income, the public would find a way to live with the virus, which is never going away now.
Came across 2 interesting articles today:
We now know that the majority who contract COVID-19 are asymptomatic. That changes everything https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-now-know-majority-contract-covid-19-asymptomatic-changes-everything/
Over Half of All U.S. Deaths Have Occurred in Just Five States: NY, NJ, MA, PA, MI
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/05/wuhan-virus-watch-over-half-of-all-u-s-deaths-have-occurred-in-just-five-states/
Heck of job, Brownie!
I agree with this, but I still think that the damage done to the economy will lead to much more misery for many more people than most Covid infections.
Regardless, the hospitals lost me completely when they delayed my father’s chemo to “save” him from death, though he’s dying already, and he was willing to take the risks of Covid (and another round of chemo) to extend his time with my mother who was, of course, not allowed to support her husband as he went into the hospital alone.
Perhaps one should not be sympathetic to him because he is an older fellow who is already in the final stages, but they also delayed the surgery of a dear friend’s teenager because those tumors in her body were somehow “elective” enough to wait a few extra days? (To be fair, she’s now had surgery, but whoa! I used to think the big “C” was something else.)
Of course I understand there are cost/benefit analyses going on all the time in hospitals, but it seems to me that Covid has become the end all of everything to the detriment of much else, and that is a problem. Even if it actually IS the Black Death.
Regardless, there is enough information about those 80,000 lost souls that makes me conclude that the biggest thing we have to fear is fear itself. This is a “pick your poison” scenario, after all, and for many Americans who are healthy and young, Covid is not anywhere near as potent a poison as an economic collapse. The exceedingly high debt, which keeps growing, is already going to steal futures in ways we cannot predict. And for what? To flatten the curve, right?
When exactly is it flattened?
I don’t think this is as much a government problem though. People themselves are locked in their closets, which I get if one is 70 with diabetes. I have no idea why the thirty year old in the peak of health won’t go outside for a walk.
That is horrific. This is what happens when bureaucrats and politicians make decisions.
My daughter has had a wire loose from her braces since this started. She’s developed a callous so it doesn’t bother her now, but I’m paying a lot of good money to get her teeth straightened and she is needlessly suffering (albeit mildly) and who knows what direction her teeth are moving now.
Teeth: another whole thing. Funnily enough, I just got off the phone with my dentist in Texas. I’m flying home to Austin, but then I have to wait 21 days before I can go get the check-up that was canceled in April. I don’t have an issue that matters like your daughter, but I am like… wasn’t any quarantine just 14 days? Not if you get off a plane. (Siiiiiiggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.)
It’s not my dentist’s fault, but I truly don’t understand the “science” when I’m not flying from a Texas designated hotspot, and I’m not actually going to be locked in my house either way.
The hospitals and healthcare settings closed to avoid infecting patients with the virus. Granted, they were legitimately concerned about being overwhelmed with covid-19 cases in the major cities, but across the country even in states and cities with low population densities, the main concern was keeping their patients safe from the virus itself. They are to be commended. They took a huge hit financially for going this route.
A person getting treatment for cancer would be really vulnerable to this virus. The hospitals did not have adequate protection in place for their patients.
The healthcare industry’s main worry all the time is preventing infections from spreading to their patients. This particular virus is more contagious than others they have procedures in place to prevent. The only answer for this virus is to set up separate facilities for now.
Of all the lessons learned from experiences in other countries, the most valuable was Italy’s in that the healthcare industry became the vector for the disease. This virus penetrated all of their normal defenses against contagions in healthcare settings.
What’s it more like? The black death, or the flu?
Yes, it’s like a bad flu. I’m actually expecting it to be about 10 times worse than a bad flu season. But I don’t think that this changes anything of consequence, because the conclusion is the same — stop panicking and go about your business. Sure, wear a mask and wash your hands and whatever, if you want. But the shutting down the world is not a good idea here.