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.