The Coronavirus

[Bob Butler 54]

The way I see it, there are at least four groups of experts relevant to the COVID 19 problem.

There are the doctors.  They advise on how to best save lives.  Of course they need equipment, gowns, gloves, masks, ventilators, test kits, and test auxiliary supplies such as swabs.  They assume the objective is to save lives, and have a plan to do so.  It is to test, trace and isolate until such time as a treatment or vaccine is developed.  The way they see it, is that if you relax the isolation precautions such that the rate of infection is above one, R0, you get exponential growth in the number of people infected and and overloaded health care system as a result.

The second set of experts are on the economy.  They will tell you the sooner you open up, the more you open up, the better for the economy.

I do not  reject out of hand either group.  You have to give each it’s due.  To me, it is opening up responsibly, to keep R0 below one.  Urban states have the disadvantage of population density.  R0 is inherently higher.  Thus the coastal states got hit first and thus far the hardest.  They will have to take more precautions than rural states that start with an inherently lower R0.

As you open up, you increase R0 on average to above 1.  You will have outbreaks.  You have to test, trace and isolate to kill the outbreaks.  Unfortunately, the federal government has put roadblocks on having enough tests.  This path is currently unavailable to us.

The third group of experts is the Democratic election advisers.  They believe that if you prioritize the doctors over the economists, put people ahead of dollars, you wind up ahead in the voting.  So far it is working.  This seems to be a valid model of the electorate.  The approval numbers for the governors and for Trump reflect that the people in general favor stricter isolation and valuing life over the economy.

The fourth group is the Republican election advisors.  Many of them think the better the economy, the more chances their candidate has.  Thus, they want to minimize what the electorate knows that is bad.  Thus, the roadblock on tests.  The more you test, the more you find that things are bad, the worse your governance seems.  Thus, the doctors are unable to use their preferred strategy.

Now there is an alternate medical strategy that depends on herd immunity.  It is hoped that if you already had the bug, that you are immune.  If you maximize the spread of the disease, the sooner the herd immunity gets a chance to develop.  This may or may not be true of this bug.  Still, if you value the economy over life, dollars over grandma, it is a way to go.  Unfortunately, it is a poor election strategy.  You cannot say you are using it.  The majority of the American people value life over money, and you will get clobbered.  This may be the Republican strategy, but one they cannot talk about.

So those who put money over lives generally lie or live in a fantasy.  I don’t know which from person to person.  Can only guess.  In a way it is irrelevant.  Both are bad.  Both encourage the belief that testing is bad, and eliminate one of the tools necessary to bring R0 down, from preventing the health system from overloading.

The other problem is that certain sites force outbreaks, force a high population density, force a locally high R0.  These include nursing homes, meat processing plants and prisons.  As the employees of such places go home after work, they infect the community, which in turn infects the neighboring community, etc…  If these locations are not addressed, and they currently often aren’t, the advantage the rural states have in an artificially low R0 is gotten around.  Without testing, tracing and isolation, all blocked by the federal government, the rural states are as vulnerable as the urban states.

That summarizes it.  That is where I am coming from.  That is why I hold those who are advocating preventing the medical strategy in such blatant contempt.