 |
| People's Liberation Army in Wuhan |
What is the honest answer to the question: “What political
prescriptions utilized to fend off Coronavirus have been successful?”
The obvious and modest answer is -- we are not certain. No
one need doubt that modesty is in short supply among politicians the world
over. To assemble actionable data, you must know the denominator and the
numerator of the data set. Victor
Davis Hanson tells us we can be certain of neither in the case of
Coronavirus: “The result of scientific arrogance, without practical audit,
presents as something like the surreal online ‘world meter’ data on the hourly
progress of the virus. Such sites offer superficially impressively precise, but
ultimately flawed, information on COVID-19 cases, mortality, and lethality and
infection—without label warnings that neither the number of actual active or
past infectious cases, nor the percentage of those who die from, rather than
with, can yet be accurate. Much less are we informed by such electronic meters
of the absolute unreliability of statistics from China and other authoritarian
countries.”
Even the utility of our death figures is questionable. Of those who have died, we can’t be sure that
Coronavirus was the primary cause of death; we know only that Coronavirus was present at death. And the figures of those
who have contracted the Coronavirus are incomplete because testing is
insufficient. We are trying to deduce the final score of a ball game at halftime.
Modesty compels us to acknowledge there is much else we do
not know. We know the point of origin of the virus, Wuhan China, but we have been befuddled by numerous causal theories. Fox News is reporting in an exclusive that the virus outbreak "likely originated in a Wuhan
laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China's
attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are
equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States...The Wuhan wet market initially identified as a possible point of origin never sold bats, and the sources tell Fox News that blaming the wet market was an effort by China to deflect blame from the laboratory, along with the country's propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. and Italy."
The new report, if true, may present a problem for Senator Chris Murphy, who said recently that the blame for coronavirus “is not because of anything that China did” and instead rests squarely with President Trump.
There is a critically important economic component to the
epidemic. Here in Connecticut, and elsewhere in the nation, we are struggling
with the economic component of the epidemic. Governor Ned Lamont has been
vested with extraordinary, perhaps unconstitutional, powers. For the time
being, Lamont is putting on a show that involves juggling with one ball. Everything
in Connecticut, including the state’s enfeebled economy, weakened by decades of
over-taxation and limitless spending, has been subordinated to ending the
virus.
Coronavirus, like all preceding viruses, will diminish when
a) herd immunity develops and the virility of Coronavirus diminishes, and or b)
a vaccine is developed and made available to all who may contract the virus. This
is the one ball politicians are adept at juggling.
Unfortunately for the governor of Connecticut and the state’s
deferential General Assembly, the measures adopted to reduce the virus – business
shutdowns and self-sequestering – may irreparably damage Connecticut’s economy.
In Connecticut and other states, we are witnessing the predicable effects of
the first national recession planned and executed by politicians.
In Connecticut, unemployment is rampant, deficit spending is
through the roof, and the state’s economy is sputtering because of the artificial
shutdown of businesses. The condition of Connecticut’s economy is the second
ball politicians must juggle, whether they wish to or not. Some politicians,
the ruin of the nation glinting in their eyes, have said they would be willing
to continue to enforce the business shutdown until a vaccine is produced and
made widely available, perhaps a year or more in the future. Beyond a certain
point, fast approaching, this suicidal policy is an economic wrecking ball that
will destroy the state and the nation’s economy – not to mention the political futures
of the immodest politicians who only know how to juggle one ball at a
time.
Comments
This is not (or should not ) be a political issue, rather a sense of how vulnerable our nursing homes are. My elderly mother with Alzheimers just died in an excellent nursing home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was interesting how I felt compelled to tell people of her death and explicitly state it was not coronavirus related. The nursing home had done an excellent job of isolating the population of residents.
if this is "public health science" driven I certainly don't see it at the state level.
The reduction in hospitalizations cannot be reliably attributed to the shutdown. After all no more than 30% of the population is working at home (although laid off people might raise this). The rest are working in factories, grocery stores, delivery, other services. So it is an imperfect and porous shutdown. Either state government is clueless or there is more politics than you might expect in their actions.