What’s Wrong with this Picture?

News headlines on COVID-19 are meant to frighten in every possible way. You will never, ever see the virus statistics, sourced from the CDC and/or John’s Hopkins, presented in this way:

0.12% of the US population (one tenth of 1%) has tested positive for COVID-19

0.0041% of the population has died from COVID-19

That’s what the numbers look like (as of April 8th) when put in context. And we are supposedly only a few days away from the “peak” of the crisis.

The time has come for a difficult but necessary decision by government leaders at all levels to relax the stay-at-home restrictions for younger healthy adults and children and soften social distancing guidelines. They must send this lower-risk portion of the population back to work and school. There is a stark reality occurring within the US economy that must be addressed now before we lose the chance and it becomes a much worse problem than the virus. Keeping everyone home to try and prevent the worst case COVID-19 mortality scenario is no longer as important as staving off an economic collapse. Harsh? – Yes. Here’s why:

While most politicians and the media are going pedal to the metal on the small fraction of the US population directly affected by the virus, the other 99.9% have been tossed into a giant well of uncertainty about their jobs, businesses, savings, travel freedoms, religious gatherings, food and paper goods, graduations, weddings, etc, etc, etc. All these people still need a functioning society and economy to sustain themselves and their families. The unemployment numbers released by the government this past week now show a huge increase in the number of people not working (because of social distancing and remain-at-home orders), particularly in the service industries. Escalating unemployment always leads to a recession, and in extreme cases (which we appear to be in) it will lead to a depression. We already know from history the tumult and destruction an economic depression or severe recession brings to a society. Among other things, a significant rise in suicides occurs accompanied by higher levels of domestic violence. We don’t have to create a complex computer model to know this fact. All anyone needs to do is read the history of any country in the world (including the US) and what actually happened to their society in the immediate aftermath of an economic collapse. If we don’t act very soon, this much larger and more devastating calamity, greater than anything COVID-19 could possibly cause in this country, will ensue. This is a clear case of government leaders needing to see the “forest through the trees”.

There is no question in our minds that a fear of media and political backlash is dissuading a tough but correct decision to end the social distancing and stay-at-home orders. Politicians, especially at the local level, know it can be a career killer if the media turns against them in an election year. And while President Trump doesn’t let media backlash affect his decision-making nearly as much, he is still between a rock and a hard place regarding COVID-19.

When the President does decide to relax quarantining and social distancing guidelines, the media will almost certainly spin the infection and death numbers as taking a turn for the worse with the President being at fault. If the decision to end social distancing is not made, and the country plunges into depression, the President will be blamed for not acting in time to save the economy. The news media will then quickly pivot to the horrors of depression, and ongoing deaths caused by COVID-19 will become an afterthought. The media and many Democrats have telegraphed this intent very clearly.¹ There will be an equal amount of backlash no matter which decision President Trump makes. Ironically, this makes his decision easier.

We think it would be very helpful at this point to try and channel “Mr. Spock” for a moment. Applying pure logic to this situation without the surrounding whirlwind of emotion reveals a course of action that has considerable value (but may be hard to swallow for some). The plan below has already been articulated in some form by a number of clear-thinking people – we didn’t come up with on our own. But we do fully agree with it.

• Continue to follow social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines for the elderly population and anyone else with high risk pre-existing conditions. Immediately end social distancing and stay-at-home restrictions for everyone else who is healthy. Lift all government restrictions on businesses and services that have been shut down and recommend all the people who are not in a high-risk category return to work. The value of this solution is that it still greatly reduces the chances of infection for the most vulnerable among us, but at the same time limits the further decimation of small businesses and halts our trajectory into an economic depression.
• There is an obvious downside to this approach (but it does have a silver lining). Given how contagious COVID-19 is, there would be many more new infections among the population who would no longer be quarantining or social distancing. In fact, it would be reasonable to assume the virus could spread throughout that entire portion of the population before a vaccine is available. At first glance, this seems horrible, especially with the way the media has portrayed the sickness aspect of this virus. But we’ve now had a chance to analyze a sample size of over one million people worldwide who’ve been infected with the virus. The vast majority of those who are not elderly or with pre-existing conditions either get sick with flu-like symptoms and recover or are completely asymptomatic. Also, most in this group who do get sick recuperate at home without the need for hospitalization.
• So why not just let the virus run its course through this less vulnerable part of the population? Even at the peak of infection within this group, most will still be able to work and produce, returning the economy to a safe place. A silver lining to this approach is that it enables the benefits of “herd immunity”². This natural defense to the virus would be able to reach its fullest potential because a much bigger part of the population will have become infected. In addition, the disease resistance provided by herd immunity would arrive much faster than pursuing the current course of social distancing and staying at home. We will never be able to reach the herd immunity threshold with only a 0.12% infection rate.

It is very difficult for many of us to place a higher value on the health of our economy in relation to preventing a death from COVID-19. This is particularly true when the argument is made that the death that may be prevented could be one of your own family members. However, in the course of action proposed above, the value judgement is different. While there will still be some deaths in the lower-risk group, the emphasis shifts to weighing the health of the economy against COVID-19 infection, which may result in sickness but not in death. This is where we see little if any difference in how we deal with influenza every year. We don’t stop working en masse and shut down the economy for influenza.

There are those who believe we can ride through a longer period of stay-at-home and social distancing by way of financial assistance from the federal government. We don’t have a lot of faith in this approach. For example, the local businesses we interact with in our town, which took many years of work to build up, now have skeleton staffs or are closing entirely due to the lack of customers. The longer the stay-at-home orders are in place, the longer the time frame and greater the effort will be needed for these businesses to be reconstituted or replaced. It is not a money problem. The lifeblood of most of these businesses are a handful of dedicated employees who know the business inside and out and work tirelessly to make it profitable. Once these “special” employees are let go along with all the others, the core of the business operation is lost. Even if the business is kept financially afloat with government loans until the crisis is over, it cannot instantly return to its former state of efficiency and profitability without those original key players. Some of them may return, but their hard-working nature and commitment that made them so indispensable in the first place would have long since driven them to some other source of income. They may be reluctant to leave that “other” job as it is itself a new opportunity. It will take time to recruit and train new people to fill their shoes.

In addition to the economic downturn, there’s another simmering problem brought on by our approach to the virus that is brewing. People are dividing into two camps:

1. Those who’ve become ultra-cautious and go above and beyond the safety guidelines because they are genuinely scared.
2. Those who are less concerned and only casually observe the guidelines, usually with a wink and a nod.

We knew some measure of this would occur when social distancing first started because it’s human nature. But as time goes on and both groups entrench, it’s becoming clear that the tolerance level each has for the other is wearing thin and could come to a breaking point. This newest source of animosity is completely unnecessary and the result of an irresponsibly induced panic by the media. There is already plenty of ideological division in this country and we don’t need any more. Ending social distancing now will nip this in the bud before it gets out of control.

We are starting to see quotes from disease experts indicating that while COVID-19 is bad, it’s not as bad as they originally thought.³ While these experts correctly raised the warning flags, told us how to prepare for the danger, and properly advised the President, their political role in this crisis should now be secondary. With the economy in peril, predicted virus casualty numbers being revised downward, and a culture war beginning over who is and isn’t taking proper precautions, the executive decision process is now multi-factored. The President, in his role as our country’s Chief Executive, must apply his action-oriented practical thinking to try and wind down the panic and get the large healthy swath of the population back to work.

¹ Here is a quote from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that sums up the Democrat viewpoint (he is responding to the suggestion of relaxing social distancing to save the economy): “My mother is not expendable. And your mother is not expendable. And our brothers and sisters are not expendable. We’re not going to accept a premise that human life is disposable, we’re not going to put a dollar figure on human life.” Cuomo is obviously compassionate. But a myopic response like this only serves to scuttle a difficult but necessary discussion before it can start.

² A simple definition herd immunity from Dictionary.com – “the immunity or resistance to a particular infection that occurs in a group of people or animals when a very high percentage of individuals have been vaccinated or previously exposed to the infection.”

³ Unfortunately, we are also seeing evidence that health officials in some states have changed the criteria that assesses COVID-19 mortality, such that ANYONE who dies of any cause, and also has COVID-19, will have their death reported as “due to COVID-19”. This obscures the real multifactorial nature of the decedent’s illness and makes COVID-19’s intrinsic virulence appear far worse than it truthfully is.