on “Stay at home” orders

“Stay at home” has become a mantra, the only mental tool for many people who see every Wuhan coronavirus issue as a nail. I have some thoughts.

Being self-sufficient enough to stay at home is perhaps not as common as we might like. A much discussed Federal Reserve study found that 40% of Americans could not manage a $400 emergency; however accurate that is (there are substantive critiques of that study), it does speak to the degree to which many are managing household needs on a just-in-time basis. They aren’t able to stay at home for two months.

“Just stay at home” ignores the extent to which this virus, like all viruses, spreads through personal social networks, not simple geography. It’s ludicrous to accuse someone of spreading the virus by leaving your home to visit someone else when you both know you aren’t infected. And contrary to what some seem to believe, you can know.

The exception is coming into contact with a contaminated surface. But that’s why we are washing our hands properly for 20 seconds, or using sanitizer or wipes when we’re out and come into contact with door handles and such. This virus is not aerosolized in the atmosphere leading to getting infected by leaving your home. It takes sustained exposure to an infected person for airborne community spread, and that’s not likely with some simple social distancing and hand washing. Leaving your home is not the issue.

So much is uncertain, and the data available is incomplete and in some cases contested, which makes it impossible to know what the risks are. It seems to me many people are responding to that uncertainty, and fear of the worst, by landing on a solution, a tool, that is clear and simple and certain, giving them at least a feeling of control and safety. I think it’s a false sense of security, though, and as a strategy it breeds unseen and unintended consequences we’ll find out later are very harmful, and regrettably unnecessary.

on Decisions and Data

There are lots of calls for a nationwide shutdown, which the President I think rightly has rejected as unconstitutional. Generally people who have declined to get behind staying inside their homes for the next four to six weeks, or two to three months in some places, are accused of valuing money over lives. It’s tiresome.

The biggest problem policy-makers face finding the balance between stopping the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus and not destroying businesses and livelihoods is good data for the models they use. It seems to me there’s enough knowledge about epidemics that the models are reliable if the data is accurate. Is the data being used accurate?

I have a suspicion that in the not-so-distant future there will be good reason for recriminations about the economic harm inflicted on millions of people to prevent an infection that is not nearly as virulent as currently claimed. It’s a hunch, and I may be wrong. But that’s my guess today.

Here’s a quote from a significant piece out of the UK the last week of March:

There is room for different interpretations of the current data. If some of these other interpretations are correct, or at least nearer to the truth, then conclusions about the actions required will change correspondingly.

<snip>

If we take drastic measures to reduce the incidence of COVID-19, it follows that the deaths will also go down. We risk being convinced that we have averted something that was never really going to be as severe as we feared.

<snip>

But when drastic measures are introduced, they should be based on clear evidence. In the case of Covid-19, the evidence is not clear.

One of my biggest concerns today is that for too many, the evidence is absolutely settled, and no doubt about the interpretation of the data is allowed. No economic considerations are allowed, because the Wuhan coronavirus will kill tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions around the world if it is not stopped immediately, according to the currently accepted interpretation of the available evidence. I think that’s wrong.

I have a hunch we’re destroying the village to save it.

h/t Yard Sale of the Mind

on The Current Pandemic

From the start of “the President’s 15 days to slow the spread” guidelines that featured prominently in the daily task-force briefings, I quickly started scrolling past without reading the ubiquitous posts on Facebook and Twitter linking whatever daily advice was published, or passing on what ostensibly were first person accounts of the situations in various hospitals and ICU wards. It was too much, and too unreliable.

I certainly don’t have anything to add worth reading about the Wuhan coronavirus, besides what I’ve already posted on the polarized viewpoints too many people are applying to the question of what the local, state, and federal governments’ policies should be. Busybodies and would be authoritarians are having a field day, unfortunately. That will be something to watch in the weeks and months ahead.

As far as flourishing in April 2020 and beyond, though, do all you can to stay healthy, in the fullest sense. Health is more than not contracting an illness. Take care of your whole body’s condition. Keep your mind active, and challenged. Enhance the spiritual side of yourself. Give yourself permission to feel the emotions you feel, and try to identify them with some precision, but don’t let them have the only say, or even the final say. What you know is true from brighter days is still true, even in dark times like these. Hang on to it.

It’s not a simple either/or on either side

I have a hunch that two things are true that aren’t being kept in mind as the country argues about how to proceed in the next few weeks.

1. Those who are prioritizing “flattening the curve” and bringing the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus to a halt are not also secretly hoping to destroy the economy and use it as an excuse to install some sort of tyrannical rule. If there are some, they are the tiny minority. The main idea is to protect lives and prevent unnecessary deaths.
2. Those who are prioritizing loosening restrictions to enable businesses to reopen are not callous ghouls who don’t care if a few million Americans die as long as they can make a profit in the stock market. If there are some, they are the tiny minority. The main idea is to protect lives and prevent unnecessary harm to people’s livelihoods.

I believe we can do two things at once, in this case both limit unnecessary deaths and limit unnecessary harm to people’s livelihoods. It’s a complex problem we are likely to miss in both directions in the next several weeks. However, those who plant a flag at one end of the spectrum and accuse any who disagree, or even suggest another possibility, of being evil are making it very difficult for the country to move forward at all.

It’s not that simple

It seems to me a lot of the anger in our cultural and political life is a result of trying to oversimplify questions or issues to a simple binary option, when in reality there’s a range or sliding scale of possibilities.

Today’s example is how best to address the trade off between managing the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and managing the economy. It’s not one or the other. Talk of loosening restrictions on people being able to go out for the purpose of doing work and restarting economic activity is being met in some quarters by accusations of a willingness to trade millions of dead Americans for better stock portfolios.

It’s more complex than that. Both can be done, that is, both protecting people from illness and protecting the country from economic ruin. It’s a complex problem, to be sure, and the likelihood is that the balance will be missed in both directions for awhile. The answer to the complexity and failure to hit the balance, however, is not to suggest, as some seem to be doing, that no one should be allowed to go out until the spread of the virus has been stopped. It’s not that simple. It ignores the harm that strategy causes.

It’s been frequently noted in the past several weeks that part of the problem of getting people to understand the importance of not spreading the virus is a result of a failure to understand exponential rates of increase. I think that’s right. We also have a failure to understand complex systems and inter-related causes.

Human flourishing is not an isolated system with one input to consider, i.e., physical health determined by exposure to the Wuhan coronavirus. That’s a big factor and a serious input to address, but it has to be considered with respect to a number of other factors, and that seems to be difficult for many people to do right now. We’d best get better at it, though, or the cure for the COVID-19 pandemic may become as harmful as the disease itself. Yes, that is possible.

 

on OPM (other people’s money)

The current media fiasco making the rounds is a video clip of Brian Williams on NBC talking with Mara Gay, a member of the NY Times editorial board, in which the two of them agree with a tweeted claim that Michael Bloomberg, instead of spending $500 million on campaign ads, could have given every American $1 million and had money left over. Of course, the population of the United States is 327 million, so at best each person would get $1.53 of $500 million, but Williams and Gay were impressed with the idea given in the tweet.

The tweet and Williams and Gay are being roundly mocked, but it reveals a serious issue in America, the extent to which people have no idea how to think about extensive wealth that’s not their own. And it’s having serious political effects. Here’s Charles C. W. Cooke’s observation:

This, right here, is why so many left-leaning Americans think that “the billionaires” can pay for everything. It’s why Elizabeth Warren was enthusiastically boosted by the media despite her ridiculous pretense that she could pay for a series of gargantuan initiatives without raising taxes on anyone but the extremely rich. It’s why Democrat after Democrat promises not to raise “middle class taxes” while promising programs that require the raising of middle class taxes. How did this bad tweet make it onto TV to be endorsed? Why did Mara Gay agree with it? Why didn’t Brian Williams notice? Because the people involved in this clip thought it was true. This is how they see the world.

I get to watch a lot of people discuss various infringement issues and product liability claims, and it’s clear that a lot of our fellow-citizens see the world in this way, that billionaires and corporations valued in the billions of dollars are basically endless reservoirs of money that was gathered through no particular effort.

We’ve all seen the headlines from jury trials of awards in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and I call tell you from listening to similar discussions that the people awarding these sums believe that the individuals (billionaires) or companies (big corporations) would barely miss these sums of money. It’s amazing to consider.

And that’s why so many people have no difficulty imagining that the U. S. Government, the biggest repository of money in the country, could easily pass out $12,000 each year to every American, or pay every American’s medical expenses and every college student’s tuition and expenses, without any particular effects on the economy. People don’t know what the economy is, how wealth and money is generated, and that there are any limits to it.

We are in serious trouble if this way of seeing the world becomes ascendant in this country.

on the Biden candidacy

Third time’s charm, apparently. Joe Biden has not only won primaries for the first time as a candidate, he seems likely on the way to winning the Democrat nomination.

Lots of storylines going around after his sudden revival. How did it happen that Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar both withdrew and endorsed Joe Biden right before Super Tuesday, when both were in a position to earn substantial delegate support? Why did only Elizabeth Warren stay in for Tuesday’s primaries, only to withdraw on Thursday? It sure looks like a centralized strategy to maximize the damage to the Sanders campaign.

How mentally compromised is Joe Biden at this point? He’ll be 78 this coming November, which is not extraordinarily old in 21st century America, but it’s not young by any measure, and his performance on stage has not been reassuring. Did he do poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire because voters had a close look at him? He did very little campaigning in some of the states he won on Tuesday. Did his absence help?

Who would exercise influence in a Biden White House? There are a lot of people who have been around a long time while Joe Biden was a Senator and then Vice President. He’d likely serve one term. Who would be in line to succeed him? How much of the agenda would that person set starting in 2021?

There’s a long way to go to Milwaukee, and the reaction of Sanders supporters to a Biden nomination is not settled. Can he unify the party? Is Biden the most acceptable person for the Democrats to have lose to Trump in 2020 and keep their consulting and advising jobs? It’s going to be an interesting campaign, in any case.

what is normal

A key theme against President Trump is that he is beyond the pale for American society, that his mocking of people, his misogyny, his adultery and fornication, and his loose commitment to truth render him an existential threat to America, its politics, and the functioning of the republic. Therefore any means are appropriate to remove him from the office of the Presidency, because it’s imperative he not be “normalized.”

While I understand this as a politically designed rhetorical maneuver in an election year, I find it increasingly difficult to take it as a serious argument from most people who are making it who at the same time are promoting the status quo in the rest of government and popular, mainstream media. Mocking people, misogyny, adultery and fornication, and a loose commitment to the truth are hardly uncommon features of 21st century America, especially in popular media and politics. And yet it’s accepted as normal.

They have been common since the founding, I suppose, to hear some historians tell it, but I can speak personally to the last 35 years at least. The dramatic rise in distress over the state of discourse in politics and morality of a political figure is not a function of its sudden alteration with the rise of Donald Trump. I suspect the concern is now raised because he’s deployed aggressive rhetoric more effectively than most anyone else, and he’s deployed it against the Washington, D.C., status quo.

I am excepting from skepticism a few of the President’s critics who ground their critiques in principles different from a concern for the nation’s, or conservatism’s, political conduct. These few connect the soul or character of the nation to the types of leaders the people choose, and they do not and have not limited their criticism to Donald Trump as if he is sui generis among American celebrities.

These few critics, though, aren’t the ones people are listening to, because they don’t share the same goal of restoring the nation’s character. People are listening to the critics who bewail the coarseness of the President while advocating the continuing power of the status quo, comprised of men and women equally coarse and vulgar, but who haven’t had attention put on their character or behavior in the way that has been done to Donald Trump. It renders the criticism of the President very hollow, in my opinion. Don’t expect me to be in a dither about behavior from one person and not at his political opponents demonstrating precisely the same thing.

on horrible choices

The jury in the case against Harvey Weinstein starts deliberations today. I’ve noticed more than one observer suggest that his defense team, led by Donna Rotunno, has done an effective job at establishing a basis for reasonable doubt. I don’t think there’s any reasonable doubt that Mr. Weinstein has done wicked things to many women. Whether they comprise crimes for which he should lose his civil liberties and freedom is another question I can’t answer, not having been in court to hear the evidence and testimony.

And that would be a horrible choice facing a juror, if it’s accurate to say the defense has established doubt at least approaching reasonable. Sexual assault and rape are horrible, and our justice system must function to prevent them as much as possible. Incarceration, especially for life, is horrible, and we mustn’t pretend it’s not in our quest for criminal justice. No matter how horrible we think the crime is, every alleged perpetrator deserves due process and a fair trial, even if we can’t imagine a wicked man being acquitted.

An unwillingness to honestly grasp that we often have a choice between two horrible options is a weakness in our moral discourse today. Asking men to engage in warfare against other men is a horrible thing. Infantry combat is a horrible thing, and our country must care for thousands of veterans who have been badly injured over the last two decades. Whether or not the choice to engage in war in Afghanistan and Iraq were the right choices, nations will always face the horrible choice of conducting war.

Because the war in Europe in 1944-45 was horrible for the men who fought it, but it was a horrible option that had to be chosen because the other option was even more horrible, Nazi Germany’s hegemony in Western Europe. However, the horrors of Nazi Germany did not somehow make fighting to liberate Europe any less of a horrible reality for the men who did it. We can’t pretend that war is not horrible merely because it’s necessary. And of course when war is necessary is extremely complicated and contested.

All this to say, should it happen that Harvey Weinstein is judged not guilty at trial, it’s going to be very hard for a lot of people not to feel the wrong choice was made by the jury for no good reason. But there is a good reason for the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” in criminal trials. Those of use who have not heard the testimony and seen the evidence would be wise to recognize that the jurors were faced with seeing a man imprisoned for the rest of his life, and unless the grounds for that are well established, that would be a horrible choice.

on Enforcing Political Correctness

The Donald Trump presidency seems to have exposed some weakness in the Progressive social movement that has led to some of its more extreme reactions. I’m afraid those reactions might get worse this election cycle, and at the end of the year should President Trump be reelected.

One interesting factor is narrowing support for the Leftist movement, even as its supporters become more deeply committed. “People are getting sick of it” is the title of a post by Rod Dreher that explores some of the dynamics leading people who are largely sympathetic with center-left policies and agendas to pull away from the political and cultural left in its most “woke” forms.

Managing the pushback and the effort to keep the woke Left from wielding power can be a dicey project, though, because of how the woke Left enforces its views on what should be politically correct. Dreher quotes Eric Kaufmann:

To be blunt, left-wing political correctness is more powerful than the right-wing variant. For instance, many social conservatives may dislike environmentalist candidates in their ranks, but dissidents on the left of a conservative party won’t have their character questioned and reputation trashed.

Dreher and Kaufmann are both worth reading to understand the deep cultural and political conflict in our society.