Every once and awhile the blogger steps out from his persona and writes seriously, as he did here.
The Burden of Proof
We've commented a lot here on the Coronavirus and we've accepted the strategy employed in the U.S. to date including the strategy employed by our own state. But this blogger presents the counter argument, or suggests it, in a different, and indeed jurisprudential, manner. It's short and worth reading (most things on our own blog being long and likely now worth reading).An aspect of this that we're going to have to increasingly consider as a society, fwiw, is that at some point the economy has to be opened up. It's a hard, hard thing to be willing to consider and some aren't. But most people don't live in a world where they can't work, and frankly the resources of the entire nation can't indefinitely be tied up in the creation of fictional money to tied the economy over. It won't work indefinitely. That inevitably leads to the point that those who are noting this are arguing to kill people for economic reasons.
That's not really what most people mean. There are those of course who completely argue to throw all caution to the wind and just open everything back up, or who argued never to close things down in the first place, but they're few. What most people mean is that at the point where it seems we've flattened the curve we have to cautiously open things back up. It won't be instant but so far nobody is arguing that it take six months to fully reopen.
Lurking in the background of all of this is the big unknown question. What if SARS-CoV-2 comes roaring back as things lift?
There's a lot of negative speculation in the press and country right now which inevitably brings out the least likely worst possibility as the probable. I frankly think, and I'm not ignorant on viruses in general, that a general revival of the pandemic next Fall is overwhelmingly probable. My overall prediction is that a vaccine will come quicker than predicted, given the resources going into it, and antivirals that are not yet developed for this disease may be able to alleviate things by Fall (note, there's no proof whatsoever that anything currently out there as a medicine does anything on this bug). So I think the current course of opening things up as we head from Spring to Summer makes sense, although I also think the pace at which we do it is critical.
But note also that all this does is "flatten the curve". The real idea is that we flatten it flat enough that most of us or a lot of us get "herd immunity" via vaccines. Also, by flattening it, we hope to avoid swamping emergency services, and it seems we've largely done that except in big cities.
Of course, big cities are where the disease is really prevalent in a desperate sort of way, or in other areas where there are dense crowded conditions. That all says something about living conditions, but we'll save that for some other day.
We are also really hoping, as a society, and a species, that we'll flatten the curve out of existence. While herd immunity is the acknowledged goal, a secondary hope, and not a completely unrealistic one, is we flatten the disease down to completely manageable. We've done that with other viruses and there's sort of an unspoken hope that's the case here. It seems to be the hope of the Chinese, whose population is so vast that they can't possibly avoid new spikes if that can't be achieved and their economy can't possibly endure that. That will destroy their economy no matter what the Chinese attempt to do to address it. And it is the nearly spoken hope that the Prime Minister of New Zealand expressed the other day and seems to be their now acknowledged strategy.
But what if the doctor who spoke on Meet The Press this past week is correct. I quoted that item here:
Then what?
I frankly don't know. I guess our economy could be shut down again in the Fall and probably would be, and I guess that can be justified, and maybe is moreover mandatory from an ethical prospective.
But it literally cannot be done indefinitely.
Or can it?
Shutting things down was basically what was done for the 18/19 Flu, to the extent that they could be. World War One, of course, kept things from shutting completely down. But there were repeated local quarantines again and again. And at least into 1920, as we've seen from our 1920 entries here.
Maybe that's the new normal.
4 comments:
I'm happy you found my post thought provoking. It's definitely a serious time that deserves serious thought. Where have you found information on business closures during the 18-19 flu?
Thanks for commenting. As noted in my comment on your article, your writing is excellent.
Regarding your question on business closures, I'll detail that but first note the following article by University of Wyoming professor Phil Roberts which deals with the 18/19 Pandemic in Wyoming. I wouldn't say that it goes into detail on quarantines in depth, but it does address them and somewhat goes into closures:
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/1918-flu-pandemic-sweeps-wyoming
Going on, I basically got my information the same way Roberts secured his, period newspapers. I've long had an interest in the Spanish flu (my mother was named after an aunt of hers who died of it) and started looking into it in depth due to its association with Camp Funston, Kansas. More recently I sort of ran across it newspaper wise as this blog started tracking the Punitive Expedition daily in 2016, as a day by day century retrospective. When that started, I started checking the century old newspapers daily, which meant the century old newspapers in Wyoming. You can find them here:
https://newspapers.wyo.gov/
There are also, I should note, other newspapers available on the Library of Congress website.
The Punitive Expedition rolled right into World War One, time wise, so I kept on doing that to complete what seemed like the story I'd started following and have kept doing so into 1920 to fully complete it. I'll likely stop doing that at the end of this year which will of course complete the centennial for 1920.
Anyhow, when we rolled into 1918 and the flu picked up, contrary to what people often claim, it was very heavily reported on and it remained reported on all the way through 1919 and even into 1920. Indeed, local responses to the flu were reported in those old papers, including quarantines.
More recently, as our state (which hasn't had a shelter in place order but rather an extensive targeted quarantine) has dealt with COVID 19, there's been some reporting on what was done with the earlier pandemic. The Keemmerer newspaper, for example, recently ran an article that reported: (see next comment due to size limitation)
Continuation:
"As precautionary measures, the health officials sanctioned the cancellation of all parties and the closure of churches, movie houses and theaters – anywhere that large groups of people congregated together.
Most people took these sanctions to heart, but there was no penalty for not doing so. It wouldn’t be until the crisis got worse that the recommendations would become orders.
In the meantime, doctors made recommendations that might sound familiar: If you are sick, stay home in bed, stay at least five feet from people, cover your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing, and stay away from people who are noticeably ill. Droplets from coughing, sneezing, talking and laughing were the source of the disease’s spread. There was an immediate effort to ban public spitting on sidewalks, stairs and streetcars.
Some folk wisdom crept into the papers as well: Refrain from wearing tight clothes and shoes, keep cool while walking and warm while sleeping. These had little effect on the disease, but some, such as warnings not to use public towels or drinking cups, seem like common sense today. One thing neither professionals nor good Samaritans mentioned was to wash your hands, especially after caring for a sick family member.
On Oct. 8, the Spanish Flu arrived in Cheyenne. At first, only 10 people were stricken with the disease. Not taking any chances, Superintendent A.L. Jessup followed health officials’ recommendations and closed the city’s schools Oct. 9. He asked parents to keep their children close to home and not let them loiter in the neighborhoods, something parents were reluctant to do. Pool halls and saloons remained open, although loitering in the depot lobby was banned.
On Oct. 10, the cases in Cheyenne sprang up to 50 persons. In response, all libraries and club reading rooms closed. Civic organizations cancelled meetings. To prevent loitering, cigar stores were ordered to pull their seats or box them up. Soda fountains had to remove their chairs and stools. On Oct. 11, Gov. Frank Houx ordered all saloons, pool halls, Red Cross work rooms and night schools across the state closed. By public order, all funerals would be private family affairs.
By Oct. 15, the increasing count of flu cases jumped by 100 in less than 48 hours. Police chased children off the streets, while doctors pleaded with restaurants to change the worst of their habits."
I'll note some of these, as it is an interesting topic, on a new post I'll put up today.
One thing to note is that, as I mentioned in this article but not particularly clearly, that the country really couldn't shut down completely due World War One. As an example of that (which might appear in the book Yanks, but I can't completely recall if it was there or elsewhere that I read it), Pershing refused a request to slow troop shipments to France in response to the Pandemic, so things associated with the war, which were a lot of things, kept on keeping on.
The new semi related thread:
https://lexanteinternet.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-1918-flu-pandemic-sweeps-wyoming.html
(And thanks for your comments which inspired posting it).
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