Clarity would be nice.
We have shut down the economy, taking away people’s
livelihoods, which brings on many social/emotional issues that are directly
related to losing a steady income. And also taking away people’s other
healthcare that is deemed non-emergency. Some things can be put on hold for a
week or two, or maybe a month. But non-emergencies can get more urgent as days
pass. Things like cancer treatments, heart disease care, joint replacement
surgery, or even impacted wisdom teeth removal.
In the face of an emergency, we can be compliant. But we want
to know that there’s a darn good reason for doing what we’re being asked to do.
And we reserve the right to say when enough is enough.
I thought this would be a good time to look at this basic
Spherical Model axiom and see how it applies during the pandemic:
Whenever government attempts something beyond the
proper role of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it
causes unintended consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the
interference.
This pandemic response is an interesting case. There’s
certainly some element of the proper role of government. But there also appears
to be using that as an excuse for asserting power. So let’s take a look.
Asking the Question
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| New York Governor Andrew Cuomo screenshot from here |
Cuomo: The illness is death. What is worse than death?
Reporter: What if somebody commits suicide because
they can’t pay their bills?
Cuomo: Yeah, but the illness is maybe my death,
as opposed to your death. You said they said the cure is worse than the
illness. The illness is death. How can the cure be worse than the illness, if
the illness is potential death?
Reporter: What if the economy failing—
Cuomo: Worse than death?
Reporter: Equals death?
Cuomo: No it doesn’t. It doesn’t equal death. Economic
hardship—yes. Very bad. Not death. Emotional stress from being locked in a
house. Very bad. Not death. Domestic violence on the increase. Very bad. Not
death. And, not death of someone else. See, that’s what we have to factor into
this equation.
But the illness doesn’t mean certain death. The illness is
very close to certain survival. Except for a few with certain underlying
conditions, “the odds are always in our favor.”[i]
Just today a study announced that the state of New York has a 13.9% infection
rate. That’s 2.7 million people statewide. Infection rate within New York City
is probably 21.2%. But as an Epoch Times story reports today:
With about 15,500 current fatalities linked to COVID-19 in
New York, the death rate, or mortality rate, would be 0.5 percent.
That means that in New York, the hardest hit place in the
US, where the disease has killed more than most of the rest of the US combined,
contracting the infection means survival for 995 out of every 1000 people. As
diseases go, 0.5% fatality rate is high. Flu is about 0.1%. But 0.5% doesn’t equal
death, as Governor Cuomo implies.
In fact, as we went into this society shutdown, lacking even
the data we have now, we feared the disease might kill 3-5%. That still means
95-97% survival of those who contract it, but that was considered too risky. It’s
several orders of magnitude higher than the flu. So we shut down the world
based on that fear.
What would we have chosen to do if we had known the rate was
0.5% in our worst hit area, and maybe equivalent to the annual flu for the rest
of us? We didn’t have that information, but I’m asking it hypothetically.
Does shutting down save some lives? Probably. But
denigrating anyone as heartless and selfish for wanting to risk going back to
work is disingenuous. We don’t shut down the world because of the annual flu,
or because of car accidents. Why this particular virus, then?
In government’s basic role of protecting life, liberty, and
property, can government protect life from this virus at the expense of our
liberty and property without limit?
Government’s Goal
Let’s state government’s goal a little more specifically. It
is to slow the spread of the virus:
·
to prevent the medical resources from
being overwhelmed.
·
to buy time for development of treatments,
preventions, testing, and medical resources.
People have been pretty willing to accomplish those things.
The first has been accomplished in most areas. New York is past their peak. New
Jersey and some other areas are still facing bad times, but so far we haven’t
faced what Italy did, having to choose who had to die for lack of resources.
Governor Abbott of Texas pointed out[ii]
that, while we have a number of cases in our large cities, and at places around
the state, overall, we have had a death rate of 17 per million population. This
is while New York has had a death rate of 989 deaths per million. The US as a
whole has had 131 deaths per million.
That shows that Texas has been doing something right—or has
been very fortunate.
With New York’s mortality from the virus 58 times higher
than Texas, should Texas continue requiring people to stay home until New York
gets to our levels? Remember, that means taking people’s liberty and property.
Can that be justified when the medical resources, even in New York, are not
overwhelmed, and the spread has already been delayed?
Or can we balance saving lives from coronavirus while
getting back to regaining our liberty and property?
It seems reasonable, in places like Texas, to slowly start
going out. As Governor Abbott explained the opening up process:
If you’re going grocery shopping or whatever the case may be,
you know that you’ve gone to the store and you’ve been able to do that without
spreading the coronavirus. We want people, as they begin to go to the hair
salon, or as they begin to go to restaurants, as they begin going to a movie
theater—whatever they may be doing as we begin to open up businesses—maintain
those safe, healthy, distancing practices so that we can assure that we can
open up without spreading the coronavirus.
There will be some uptick in cases as we do this. But if we
can maintain a manageable level, that seems more prudent than a siege mentality
that locks us in our homes until we starve or get evicted. Whatever we’ve been
doing has already been keeping the death rate low. Opening gradually doesn’t
mean we necessarily kill more people. It means the Governor is keeping those two
“slow the spread” goals in mind and is avoiding using the crisis to grab power.
The Governor is hopeful that by fall schools can open. Most
people attending schools are less susceptible to severe illness. Those who are
in higher risk groups (that includes me) may need to be hypervigilant longer
than young, healthy people. And we can hope that treatments are available by
fall so that we can find a way to normalize post-Covid-19.
Here in Houston the public health data shows that we hit our
peak around April 4th or at the latest April 9th.
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| Houston Daily Case Count as of April 23, 2010 provided on Facebook by Leslie Joan May |
Yet I heard on news that we’ll hit our peak around the first
week of May, inconsistent with the data. That’s confusing.
The county set up a temporary hospital in a stadium parking
lot downtown; not a single bed was used. It is being dismantled.
Nevertheless, yesterday our county judge Lina Hidalgo
announced a new requirement that everyone leaving their homes needed to be wearing
a facemask, starting Monday, for 30 days. Noncompliance can result in $1000
fine and jail time.
Why now, when the voluntary social distancing we’ve been
doing has done its intended work already? Where is the data showing that
wearing a mask when not near people avoids spreading the virus
person-to-person?
This same county judge has been attempting to let felons
(including violent felons in her first attempt) out of jail because of the virus—because the virus spreads there. So, she would
like to let felons back out on the street, not with a 14-day quarantine,
because—where would they quarantine if they have to find housing first? Yet if
we law-abiding citizens want to walk to the park without a mask on—away from
all other humans, outdoors—we are the criminals.
Something is wrong with this picture.
People have been willing to wear masks. And do all the
social distancing that has been asked of us. Mostly in the name of helping
others rather than ourselves, regardless of Governor Cuomo’s accusations about heartless
people who want to get back to work. Most people are reasonable and considerate.
If they’re going to a place with a lot of contact (grocery stores, doctors’
offices, essential work around others), they’re going to be willing to wear a
mask—now that government finally admitted that mask wearing helps to prevent spread
both from the infected and to the uninfected. But being coerced
to wear one in places where there is no need because there is no human contact
with someone who hasn’t been in our house with us all along—that’s not even
reasonable.
What if someone is already recovered from the disease and is
no longer either contagious or susceptible? Are they exempt? No. They are
considered criminal for not wearing a mask, even in places where they couldn’t
spread it regardless.
To add to the lack of credibility, Judge Hidalgo wore her
mask at the press conference yesterday, at least part of the time with her nose
uncovered—unclear on the concept. One would assume that she is far enough away
from others at a press briefing that wearing a mask, other than for demonstration
purposes, would just make her harder to understand and would contribute nothing
toward safety.
In a rather embarrassing lack of attention to detail, the
graphic covering the story on the news listed things you can use as “homemade
masks, scarfs, or bananas,” which had social media coming up with some creative
responses.
 |
| Found on Texas State Rep. Valoree Swanson's Facebook page |
The question is not whether masks might be effective in preventing
the spread of the virus. The question is whether coercion is a valid way for
government to encourage the practice.
Threats to Life, Liberty, and Property
What does coercion do? Does it protect life? Maybe a tiny
bit under some circumstances. But our goal has never been to prevent all cases,
or even all deaths (although we wish we could); our goal has been to slow the
spread for those two purposes listed above. Since what we’re doing has already
accomplished that, why this added coercion now?
If we don’t ask the questions, then we suffer significant
loss of liberty and property for the sake of some vague sense that we’re
preserving life when in reality we might not even be doing that.
Government isn’t in control of the existence of the virus.
In an emergency—which this seemed to be—we were willing to take some drastic
temporary measures to preserve life. But even under these circumstances, when
government takes away a person’s business, that relates to the “takings” clause;
government can’t take that without just compensation. And because government
produces nothing, that just compensation comes from taxpayers—which means
workers making income; it is a finite amount made smaller by the stay-at-home
orders.
Has government done the right thing to shut down? We may not
know until we have hindsight and a whole lot more data.
Is government doing the right thing when it continues a
suspension of our liberties and the taking of our properties in the name of saving
lives? Certainly not if it can’t connect the dots between its actions and lives
saved. Certainly not if there are other ways to accomplish the saving of lives
(special care for the most vulnerable, for example.) Certainly not if the “cure”
is worse than the “disease.”
So, about government interference. Does the purpose—saving lives
from coronavirus—qualify as a proper role of government? Probably. Does saving all
lives from this virus at the expense of other possible causes of death
and at the expense of our liberty and property qualify? The protests we’re
beginning to see show that the people say no.
Are there unintended consequences to government stepping
beyond its proper role? Yes. Some of them life threatening. Most of them
threatening to our liberty and property—which amount to the living of our
lives. When government “saves” our life by taking our “livelihood,” preventing
us from “making a living,” is that really saving our life? In a few cases out
of a thousand, possibly. But in an overwhelming majority of cases, the answer
is no. Maybe we’re getting to the point where sensible people can assess their
own risk and act accordingly.
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