The editors of the Wall Street Journal conclude their editorial critical of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to lock “down his state again” with some advise that sounds pretty prudent to me:
U.S. political leaders from the top down have talked about Covid-19 as if it’s an all-or-nothing choice: Lock down the economy to “crush†the virus or let it rip. The reality is that we may have to live with the virus for a long time, and that means managing its risks while letting the economy function to avoid mass poverty. The price of lockdowns is higher than their benefit.
Those making the decisions are doing so with a confidence that they won’t participate in the mass poverty. We are not all in the same boat.
And we cannot offset the creation of mass poverty either by taxing “the rich” or simply having the Fed extend credit without severe adverse consequences.
I think it would be easier to make focused plans if we could do it at a national or at least regional level. What happens in Florida and Texas affects what we do in PA. Testing is getting worse. By Tuesday we will be unable to test inpatients unless we get lucky and find reagents somewhere. We still dont have reliable antibody tests. Our ID people have been doing follow up on different antibody tests and now believe that the Abbott test is not that reliable. They are not expecting good, reliable Point Of Care (POC) testing until October. Concerns about PPE are building. Supplies were projected to be good, then it hit the south and west. The assumption that this was just a northeast problem is hurting us.
Remember Florida requiring that people from NY be quarantined? Now we have the same but in reverse. How does the economy really function if we have the states going back and forth like this?
Steve
A national plan would result in what I have called “one size fits New York” or, alternatively one size fits Texas. As of today the mortality rate in Texas due to COVID-19 is less than 10% that in New York per million population. Florida’s is a bit higher than Texas’s but not by a vast amount. Pretty obviously different plans are needed for New York than Texas and Florida than New York. There is a better argument that a plan for the Boston to DC corridor might be prudent. The main barrier to that is the states themselves. Nothing is stopping them from doing that.
I think almost precisely the opposite should be done. We should have shut down interstate (and international) air passenger traffic long ago and the interstates should have been closed to passenger traffic. The economy would do just fine as long as freight kept moving between states.
“Those making the decisions are doing so with a confidence that they won’t participate in the mass poverty. We are not all in the same boat.â€
And I think it’s even worse. They see that they can either bask in the glow of celebrity, or achieve political gain. It’s grotesque to witness.
I’ve been advocating some form of flexible focused approach, combined with sensible cost benefit from day one. I have no doubt some of the issues steve cites are true. But the politicization of this now tells me that nationalizing a response would be a disaster. There is no reason disease response should break upon party lines. Better to keep the irrational or ill motivated policy responses broken up into little pieces. And don’t worry, Florida is not going to turn into a leper colony despite the media hysteria.
” But the politicization of this now tells me that nationalizing a response would be a disaster.”
It is already chaos. Not sure which is worse, chaos or disaster? Dave is wrong. It doesnt need to be one size fits Nebraska. There are glaringly obvious areas that could be addressed. Why is PPE still an issue? Make it a national priority. Why do we only have one factory in India making Dexamethasone, the only drug shown (probably) to reduce mortality for Covid. (Short answer is capitalism and markets, but we need to overcome that.) We are going to close interstate travel except to trucks? Ugh, as if. For business that really needs in person contact why not develop hotels and meeting areas with negative pressure rooms, not that hard to adapt, and provide adequate masking help and distancing.
And you are going to hate this one, but why not have consistent standards for opening up? Look at where we are now. Everyone opened at different standards and now we have massive problems down south. Florida hit 156 yesterday. You and Dave appear to have magical powers and know that it will not climb much higher. I am hoping that it doesn’t, hoping the paper on seasonality is correct, but the trend looks bad and knowing how the disease works would expect it to get worse. And if people in Florida want to die by the thousands to preserve their liberty, or something, God Bless their little pea picking hearts, but it means that the rest of the country is then short on supplies. Now imagine if we had a nationalized approach that recognized that this was not just a NYC problem. That we should have prepared for problems in the rest of the country.
Steve
Your experience of government operations is too limited. It doesn’t need to be “one size fits New York/Texas)” but it would be because that’s what the bureaucracy can administer. The federal government does not enforce different standards in different states. That’s what the states themselves are for—dealing with the conditions on the ground.
You’re exaggerating. I am basing my assessments on the facts on the ground and a few reasonable assumptions, for example, that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in New York and in Florida began around the same time (the first diagnosed case in New York was on March 1 and the first in Florida on March 7). The mortality in New York has been about an order of magnitude higher than in Florida. That’x a fact. I only see a few reasonable explanations for the discrepancy: bad management and bad luck in New York. I suspect both are true. And there’s sunshine in Florida.
As I see it you need to produce a justification and explain your assumptions. If you assume a worst case scenario, we may as well hang it up. We’re all going to die. That’s the worst case.
I have no magical powers……….except in my head.
I’m fundamentally an empiricist. The NY fits all has been a disaster.
An absolute disaster. Look at Cuomos nursing home fiasco. Death by governor. Its not arguable. Yet the media fawn. This is politics, not science.
Stop with the Florida stuff, steve. The testing is incompetent and political, as are death rates. I take any reported number and immediately discount it by a third. The statistical integrity is just plain horrid. I can’t make steel without accurate chemistry or temperature. I can’t make investment decisions without reasonably accurate metrics. And when you don’t have them, you go to the anecdotal. Florida is not about to become a giant morgue. Get a grip.
I think the fundamental difference between people like me, and – whatever you want to call it – Democrats, leftists blah blah, is that I start with the notion that solutions start with individual choices, family, community. If local control can’t do it, then you elevate sequentially to local government, state government, federal government. The school PTA can’t fight a war with China. You guys start with federal solutions. I think its absurd on its face, and empirically absolute folly.
That’s called the principle of subsidiarity.
I think that there’s a common mistake. When you look around you and see incompetence at the state and local levels, you assume that it must be better at the federal level. Guess what? It isn’t. It’s just farther away and out of sight.
Dave
Trust me, I wasn’t thinking competency. I was thinking capacity. The city council can’t operate the South Pacific fleet.
“The testing is incompetent and political, as are death rates.”
Perfect example of the cult influence. The empiricist makes his decisions based upon the numbers, except if he doesnt like them he just chooses new ones. I guess you get to do that, but I sure cant. I can just see myself telling some husband tomorrow that even though his wife’s BP was measuring 60 I decided it was really 100 so I just ignored it. Have no idea how that stroke happened.
In all seriousness this has been one of the most frustrating things about trying to discuss stuff with conservatives. This post-modern approach where there is no acceptable data except for the stuff I make up makes it impossible to have anything like a data based discussion.
Steve
Look in the mirror, steve. You reject any data or study that doesn’t fit your worldview.