Trump is itching to lift the social distancing recommendations and requirements to get Americans back to work to forestall immense unemployment claims and to get the economy moving again. "The cure must not be worse than the problem," he has said, and "We can do two things at once."
This page has long argued the first. It seems to me we can do both contain the virus and not tank the economy into recession but I am convinced both by common sense and the data that the virus must be contained and then eliminated as a precondition to relaxing the shutdown and restarting the economy. In that meaningful sense, the two, contain and restart, cannot be done together literally "at once." My half agreement with Trump comes with personal deficiencies. I am an idiot blogger and Trump is an idiot president and the scientists and medical professionals are not and they are arguing for tighter and prolonged social and economic activity restrictions to contain the virus first and the economy be damned.
It has seemed to me that a total clampdown on all non-essential social and economic intercourse for fourteen days must come first and is needed to contain the virus where it is; to, in that fortnight, test everyone who has the cardinal symptoms, fever and dry cough, and for positives, isolate them at home and all their cluster of contacts.
The standard for success has to be clear, otherwise the restrictions will continue or will be relaxed on insufficient data. The standard should be a flattening of the curve of new cases, no daily near exponential growth. If the latter obtains then the total lockdown has to continue until the incidence of virus flattens. If, which I think is extraordinarily unlikely (Tom Bossert predicted in "approximately 1 week" the U.S. would be the number one country hit by the virus in the world, surpassing the only two with a worse infestation, China and Italy), and The Surgeon General has said the number of cases and deaths are going to keep increasing, but if, against all evidence and learned scientific and medical expectations a flattening does occur then the restrictions should be lifted. Only then.
Trump's concern that he personally is prescribing an economic recession as a cure for a virus, is a concern that a president should have. I completely disagree with the New York Times writer yesterday whose rule one was that in medico-scientific matters such as this only medico-scientific experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci should be at the microphone. Not non compos mentis boobs. We are a Republic of non compos mentis boobs. We are not a technocracy. The New York Times writer’s ancestor Walter Lippmann argued that we should be a technocracy but he didn’t get enough votes. With the valuable assistance of the Russian Federation we elected this non compos mentis boob (albeit at a 3,000,000 vote deficit) and he should be the one at the microphone. To prove Lippmann right. It has never made sense to me that 372,000,000 people should suffer recession, economic dislocation, and job loss, that small and marginal businesses should shutter and may have to close permanently; that trillions of dollars must be lost from the stock market—in order to keep an infected cohort the size of Hackensack, New Jersey from having 1.27% of its people, 560 total, die of Trump virus. Makes. No. Sense. But that is what the health technocrats urge upon the boob.
The infected cohort is going to increase. Period there. If the infected population increases ten-fold to 439,630, 5,583 virus related deaths will result at the 1.27% mortality rate. We don't want that; we don't want 560 dead of the virus much less 5,583 dead, but we are going to get more than 560 no matter what we do and the question that Trump has to answer is what price 372,000,000 pay—and, be frank, his chances for reelection are on the line also, for 5,583 dead.
I am persuaded to a standard of more probable than not that if the most draconian cessation of social and economic life reasonably attainable were instituted for a brief, say two weeks additional, period that the virus would be stopped and the economy could restart. But the goal must be met: a flattening of the curve. If not, Trump, see ya, wouldn't want to be ya, and the rest of us are going to have to have a recession. But if the horse of public health is put before the cart of economic revival as it must if it is to be sane and as it must if it is to be efficacious, then I, Proud Idiot, foresee a quick as reasonably possible return to both health and prosperity. The only downside is some increased chance of Four More Years of government of the idiot, by the idiots, for the idiots.
This page has long argued the first. It seems to me we can do both contain the virus and not tank the economy into recession but I am convinced both by common sense and the data that the virus must be contained and then eliminated as a precondition to relaxing the shutdown and restarting the economy. In that meaningful sense, the two, contain and restart, cannot be done together literally "at once." My half agreement with Trump comes with personal deficiencies. I am an idiot blogger and Trump is an idiot president and the scientists and medical professionals are not and they are arguing for tighter and prolonged social and economic activity restrictions to contain the virus first and the economy be damned.
It has seemed to me that a total clampdown on all non-essential social and economic intercourse for fourteen days must come first and is needed to contain the virus where it is; to, in that fortnight, test everyone who has the cardinal symptoms, fever and dry cough, and for positives, isolate them at home and all their cluster of contacts.
The standard for success has to be clear, otherwise the restrictions will continue or will be relaxed on insufficient data. The standard should be a flattening of the curve of new cases, no daily near exponential growth. If the latter obtains then the total lockdown has to continue until the incidence of virus flattens. If, which I think is extraordinarily unlikely (Tom Bossert predicted in "approximately 1 week" the U.S. would be the number one country hit by the virus in the world, surpassing the only two with a worse infestation, China and Italy), and The Surgeon General has said the number of cases and deaths are going to keep increasing, but if, against all evidence and learned scientific and medical expectations a flattening does occur then the restrictions should be lifted. Only then.
Trump's concern that he personally is prescribing an economic recession as a cure for a virus, is a concern that a president should have. I completely disagree with the New York Times writer yesterday whose rule one was that in medico-scientific matters such as this only medico-scientific experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci should be at the microphone. Not non compos mentis boobs. We are a Republic of non compos mentis boobs. We are not a technocracy. The New York Times writer’s ancestor Walter Lippmann argued that we should be a technocracy but he didn’t get enough votes. With the valuable assistance of the Russian Federation we elected this non compos mentis boob (albeit at a 3,000,000 vote deficit) and he should be the one at the microphone. To prove Lippmann right. It has never made sense to me that 372,000,000 people should suffer recession, economic dislocation, and job loss, that small and marginal businesses should shutter and may have to close permanently; that trillions of dollars must be lost from the stock market—in order to keep an infected cohort the size of Hackensack, New Jersey from having 1.27% of its people, 560 total, die of Trump virus. Makes. No. Sense. But that is what the health technocrats urge upon the boob.
The infected cohort is going to increase. Period there. If the infected population increases ten-fold to 439,630, 5,583 virus related deaths will result at the 1.27% mortality rate. We don't want that; we don't want 560 dead of the virus much less 5,583 dead, but we are going to get more than 560 no matter what we do and the question that Trump has to answer is what price 372,000,000 pay—and, be frank, his chances for reelection are on the line also, for 5,583 dead.
I am persuaded to a standard of more probable than not that if the most draconian cessation of social and economic life reasonably attainable were instituted for a brief, say two weeks additional, period that the virus would be stopped and the economy could restart. But the goal must be met: a flattening of the curve. If not, Trump, see ya, wouldn't want to be ya, and the rest of us are going to have to have a recession. But if the horse of public health is put before the cart of economic revival as it must if it is to be sane and as it must if it is to be efficacious, then I, Proud Idiot, foresee a quick as reasonably possible return to both health and prosperity. The only downside is some increased chance of Four More Years of government of the idiot, by the idiots, for the idiots.
