Saving the Economy

            The most contentious debate surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic comes down to a simple proposition: our health vs. the economy. Which is more important? Well, they are both important. So, the question becomes how to preserve one without destroying the other.

             Reaction to the invasion of the silent killer was horror at the rapid spread of the virus and its lethality. New York City quickly became the epicenter of the battle and led to Governor Cuomo’s decision to lock down the whole state. Other hot spots like New Orleans and Michigan soon followed suit. It wasn’t long before every state had issued a similar directive. Stopping the spread of the disease had become a singular, overriding objective. Concern for the economy was secondary.

            It was apparent right from the start that the country had been ill-prepared to fight such an epidemic. President Trump wisely closed our borders on January 31, but that didn’t prevent infections from spreading rapidly. Shortages of essential materials had governors crying for federal assistance to provide test kits, masks, gloves, gowns, and ventilators. Even the availability of hospital beds became critical when the number of patients threatened to exceed existing capacity.

            Yet, the national response was admirable. By mid-April, there were no longer any shortages of critical materials, and even testing was catching up. At the same time, the rates of infection, hospitalizations, and fatalities had come down dramatically.

            By then, unfortunately, the economy was in shambles. Shops and businesses were closed, many permanently; unemployment numbers were headed for double digits; the trillions of dollars thrown at the problem by the federal government provided some help, but no solutions. Recession loomed. Even Depression. It was time to reopen the economy, to put people back to work, to relax the rules on self-confinement.

            The debate heated up. How do we restore the economy without causing a resurgence in infections and deaths? How fast and how far do we go? On the advice of his health experts, President Trump advanced a three-stage plan to get the country moving again by May1.

            Some opponents, particularly Democrats and the mainstream media, cynically see a prolonged economic crisis as a political opportunity to inflict damage on the president; the worse the economy looks in November, the worse Trump’s re-election prospects will be.

            Others see mitigation (stay-at-home rules, banning crowds, limiting the re-opening of non-essential businesses) as our best chance to eradicate the disease. But there is a fatal flaw in that argument. Covid-19 is not going away. Mitigation only postpones its return; when personal distancing is no longer mandated, the disease will spread once gain.

            There are only two ways of slowing the spread of Covid-19: vaccination and herd immunity (as more people get infected, the fewer people there are to pass it on to). While we wait for an effective vaccine to be made available to the masses, we may see herd immunity develop naturally. But for that to happen, an awful lot of people will need to be infected. As Sweden has done, we would let the virus play out, run its course.

            This solution may not be as horrible as it sounds. First of all, we may be much farther advanced on this road than we think. We calculate the mortality rate of Covid-19 as the number of deaths (the nominator) compared to the number of infections (the denominator). Tests now being conducted randomly are beginning to show that we have under-counted the denominator in a significant way. The tests seem to indicate that there are far more infected people than we realized. These infected people are asymptomatic: they have (or had) the disease, but few or no symptoms, and, because of that, have never been tested and therefore never added to the denominator.

            That’s important, because these people have (or will have) developed anti-bodies that give them immunity to the disease and make it impossible to transmit it to others. That being the case, a resurgence of the virus will not be as severe as feared; there will be no need to resume the lockdown.

            We may, of course, see a spike in hospitalization rates in some places. But we have learned an awful lot these past few months on both treating the sick and mitigating the spread of the disease. We now know the people most susceptible to severe illness and how to minimize their exposure; testing will help identify those who need to be quarantined until they have recovered and developed anti-bodies; we will have to apply common sense rules to manage crowds at concerts and sporting events; and people will have to continue healthy practices in their daily lives.

            There is no reason we cannot once again have both healthy lives and a healthy economy.

           

           

           

           

Theft on a Grand Scale

            By the time the Wuhan virus peters out, we will have lost many thousands of lives and we will be struggling to regain our economic balance after seeing so many businesses dissolve into bankruptcy.

            We may suffer yet another great loss in November. If Democrats have their way, we will lose something else of immeasurable value: fair elections—to theft on a grand scale.

            Consider the familiar Democratic mantra: Republicans steal elections by disenfranchising minorities. For example, Democrats continue to cite the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia lost by Democrat Stacey Abrams, the first female African-American candidate for governor. A suit claiming black voting rights had been trampled went nowhere; in fact, African-Americans had voted in greater numbers and a higher percentage of eligible voters than ever. The tired mantra, at least in Georgia, was proven to be false.

            Democrats clearly need a new strategy. Not to worry. Many Democrats believe the Covid-19 pandemic, which discourages human contact, has given them one.

            The plan is very simple: replace voting in person with write-in ballots. The idea is now being actively promoted by no less a trusted luminary as Michelle Obama. She could just as easily have advocated opening the door wide open to voter fraud.

            With the elimination of the requirement to show up at a polling place in person to vote, absentee ballots will be available to everybody, including people who had no intention of voting. Even dead people. All it takes is a small army of unscrupulous political operatives to falsify ballots and mail them in.

            It’s not that difficult. Democrats have already proven they can steal an election. In 2018, ballot harvesting in California’s Orange County wiped out Republican candidates in what was traditionally a conservative Republican stronghold. Nothing stops them from committing this same sort of voter fraud on a national scale.

            The best way to prevent voter fraud is with voter ID at the voting booth. A valid ID is required for any number of activities, from cashing checks, to buying booze, to travelling on a plane. The claim that requiring a legitimate ID to vote suppresses minority votes is a complete lie, as well as an insult to minority voters. On the contrary, it is the single best way to guarantee the integrity of the election process. But with party standards set by the likes of Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, integrity has not been a Democratic strong point of late.

            Using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to push write-in ballots, Democratic governors will follow the lead of Governor Northam who recently signed a bill to repeal voter ID laws in Virginia and to extend early voting to 45 days to give cheats more time to falsify and harvest ballots.

            It’s all about achieving power by any means. If Democrats think they can’t win a fair election, they will find a way to win a crooked one.

Enemies Among Us

            I didn’t go to church on Easter Sunday because my church doors were closed. But services were recorded and available on-line. Such is the effect Covid-19 has on religious observance that infection is to be feared more than perdition.

            Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear took his role as infection fighter very seriously. He ordered churches to close their doors to prevent worshipers from coming inside to attend religious services. To enforce his order banning such gatherings, he said he would record the license plate number of anybody violating his directive and have the Health Department visit that individual’s home to impose a 14-day quarantine.

            A church in Louisville found a solution by having people worship in their cars. Call it a drive-in church service. That wasn’t good enough for Mayor Greg Fisher who prohibited church drive-ins. He did not, however, prohibit other drive-ins or drive-throughs like to liquor stores.

            Fortunately, Judge Justin Walker would have none of it. He issued a restraining order against the mayor’s prohibition, calling it stunning, beyond all reason, and unconstitutional. Bravo, Judge.

            On Good Friday a man was forcibly dragged off a bus in Philadelphia by two uniformed policemen. His crime? He wasn’t wearing a protective mask. A video of the incident has now been seen by over 2 million people.

            It is no longer enough to ask people to stay at home to help control the spread of the virus. Many governors are now ordering people to do so. Oregon Governor Kate Brown has gone one better by making any violation of her stay-at-home order a Class C misdemeanor punishable by 30 days in jail or a $1,250 fine.  And NO visitors!

            There are reports of people being arrested for surfing in the ocean or jogging at the beach. In California, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office encourages people to call and report violations of shelter-in-place orders.

            Has our country gone nuts? Only a totalitarian government controlled by a police state does this kind of stuff.

            Last week a wonderful lady had her husband drop off face masks for me and my wife. These were just two of over 250 she has sewed for her neighbors. On Easter morning another neighbor left a bouquet of freshly cut hydrangea blooms on our front porch. Our neighbors weren’t arrested. Not yet anyway.

           

A Spring Diversion

            We may not have major team sports to entertain us these days. But sometimes Mother Nature provides a bit of diversion to remind us that television is not the only source of visual pleasure.

            On a bright, sunny morning in last week,l I had what you might call a David Attenborough moment.  As I was walking up the driveway to my house, a flurry of activity on the top of a carissa holly caught my eye. Two adult brown thrashers were attacking a green snake the size of my thumb.  I’m guessing the snake had discovered a nest inside the holly with freshly laid eggs in it, but the birds were not about to let the slithering menace dine on their embryonic offspring.

            The birds performed a perfect tag team assault on the little reptile whose valiant defense was futile.  They were relentless, first one and then the other attacking ferociously from either side.  The battle lasted less than a minute, ending with the snake withdrawing to the interior of the shrub for protection.  The thrashers continued to flit around, looking for their foe, all the while chattering scouting reports to each other.

            Unlike David Attenborough, I didn’t have a camera to record the episode. But I took as much pleasure in the moment as I would have cheering for the home team Red Sox against those invading Yankees.

           

Indefinite Confinement

            In his Perquimans Weekly column last week, my friend Billy Rowell had a number of suggestions to relieve the monotony of sequestration. I had already done most of them: clean out closets, pull out old photo albums, weed the flower beds, get in touch with old friends. But there was one suggestion that made me nod in agreement: read that novel you’ve been putting off reading.

            That novel, for me, was “A Gentleman from Moscow” by Amor Towles. It turned out to be the most relevant work I could ever have read. It’s about Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, a Russian aristocrat in his 30s who returns to Moscow in 1922, only to be arrested for writing a seditious poem and condemned to house arrest in the city’s Metropol Hotel for the rest of his life. There he remains for the next 32 years, a span beautifully chronicled by the author.

            My goodness! Are we condemned to be under house quarantine for the rest of our lives like the Count? Admittedly, The KGB was a fearsome enforcer of Soviet conformity. But aren’t Americans being threatened these days to stay at home…or else? If not for the rest of our lives, how long?

            Here’s where I stand. I believe that President Trump’s instincts were correct in wanting to end mandatory confinement by Easter for those parts of the country where COVID-19 has not taken hold. He was talked out of it by his advisers who peddled panic at the possibility of victims falling by the hundreds of thousands unless Americans cowered in their homes in fear of that invisible enemy. There would be briefings every day, but no mention of the tens of thousands who are killed every year by the common flu, the opioid epidemic, cancer, heart disease, suicides, and automobile accidents. The only possible focus would be on the coronavirus.

            Meanwhile, the country is headed for economic disaster. People living in places like Perquimans County where there is virtually zero chance of infection cannot go to the bank or the library, eat inside a restaurant, go to church on Sunday, or get a haircut.

People who normally look forward to going to work every day now must sit and wait for the promised unemployment check.

            So, what’s the solution? The geniuses in Washington are now cooking up another multi-trillion-dollar piece of legislation that will in part provide work for the unemployed. On infrastructure projects. What nonsense. How many waitresses or hair stylists will applaud the opportunity to fill potholes or scrape rust from the nearest bridge?

            It’s time to let people who do not live in the so-called “hot spots” go back to work. They should do all those things health specialists recommend to minimize exposure to the virus. Sure. But shops and offices should open their shuttered doors to let people go back to work. That’s the best thing they can do for this country and for themselves.

            And another thing. With rare exceptions COVID-19 only kills older people. Kids who catch it recover in no time. So why not let them go back to school instead of barricading them at home where they waste their time playing video games and annoying their parents who have to stay home to watch them.

            Whoever said that the cure is worse than the disease will be proven right if we let this shutdown go on much longer.

Andrew Cuomo - Savior

            What’s with all the media slobbering over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo? There’s even talk of pushing Joe Biden aside in favor of Cuomo on the November ballot for president. There is no surer sign of Democratic panic at the prospects of pitting senile Joe against a Trump who mounts the bully pulpit every day. Polls show that even a buffoon like Trump can prevail, given the daily exposure. The mainstream media is trying its best to counter the president’s advantage by interviewing Cuomo every day and making him out to be New York’s savior in the Covid-19 crisis.

            But what has Cuomo really done to save New York? The real issue is not what he’s done, but what he hasn’t done.

            The media will not tell us that it was Cuomo who rejected a recommendation to stockpile ventilators when he had the opportunity and the money. Instead he spent the bucks on what has been described as a solar-panel boondoggle called Buffalo Billions.

            Also rarely mentioned is the role New York governors, including Cuomo, have played in reducing by 20,000 the number of beds in New York hospitals. The latest reduction of 500 beds occurred in Brooklyn when the Long Island College Hospital fell victim to budget cuts. New York could use those beds now, couldn’t it, Governor?

            And let’s not forget that the governor’s love affair with renewables is consistent with his war against fossil fuels. When President Trump proposed to allow offshore drilling along the East Coast, Cuomo signed a bill to ban drilling off Long Island, New York, even the Hudson River.

            This is the same Governor Cuomo who caved to environmentalists in 2014 by banning hydraulic fracking in New York’s depressed southern tier counties, an area shared by Pennsylvania and proven to be rich in extractable natural gas. Instead of giving New Yorkers a badly needed economic boost, he let Pennsylvania reap the bounty.

            If Andrew Cuomo can’t make decisions that are good for the citizens of his own state, why should we believe he can do better for the entire country?