Hysterical shut-down reactions to coronavirus will destroy the American economy — consider Utilitarianism instead

© 2020 Peter Free

 

18 March 2020

 

 

Today, I'll irritate people on purpose

 

I am increasingly annoyed by society-damaging overreactions to COVID-19's spread.

 

Yes, some people (maybe lot'sa folk) "gonna" die.

 

What else is new?

 

What is all the "pretend that we care" Government hoopla actually about?

 

 

A foundational fact — most authorities and most populations are acting as if . . .

 

. . . this pandemic will only last a few weeks. They're wrong.

 

On epidemiological grounds it is easy to demonstrate that COVID-19 is probably going to be circulating in some version of (probably mutated) virulence, perhaps "forever".

 

And very likely, based on currently available tentative evidence, it is not going to slack off in warm weather as much as influenza does.

 

As a result, overly wide public health-defending reactions — which have been predominantly imposed only after the virus escaped from the barn — are wrong-headed. They very harmfully shut down too much of the working world.

 

Recall that the most critically important people in the world are not the people at the top of the heap. The most important workers are those in the mid to low socioeconomic ranks, who keep the humanity afloat with their hands-on, in-place (generally lowly paid) labor.

 

Virtually all of these "keep the wheels moving" people have to engage with their bodies, in physical environments filled with other people. There is no other way to get the labor and production done.

 

"Working from home" is fantasy for most of humanity.

 

And going without a paycheck is also a life-damaging event of great magnitude.

 

 

So — let's consider being more realistically proportionate in our thinking

 

Utilitarian considerations regarding public health policy and COVID-19 follow.

 

 

First — mortality realities of SARS-CoV-2

 

SARS-CoV-2 is mainly killing old and already sick people.

 

We still lack statistical data to come up with reasonable overall, as well as age and comorbidity-specific, estimates of mortality and harm.

 

If we cannot estimate reasonably accurate rates of death and harm across the whole population, how do we know how threatening this pandemic actually is?

 

The death toll, so far, is — admittedly after government interventions — startlingly below that which ordinary influenza reaps on an annual basis. And unlike COVID, flu kills people of all ages in noticeable proportions.

 

Ron Paul recently wrote something eminently reasonable in this regard:

 

 

Governments love crises because when the people are fearful they are more willing to give up freedoms for promises that the government will take care of them.

 

After 9/11, for example, Americans accepted the near-total destruction of their civil liberties in the PATRIOT Act’s hollow promises of security.

 

On Face the Nation, Fauci did his best to further damage an already tanking economy by stating, “Right now, personally, myself, I wouldn’t go to a restaurant.”

 

He has pushed for closing the entire country down for 14 days.

 

Over what? A virus that has thus far killed just over 5,000 worldwide and less than 100 in the United States?

 

By contrast, tuberculosis, an old disease not much discussed these days, killed nearly 1.6 million people in 2017. Where’s the panic over this?

 

© 2020 Ron Paul, The Coronavirus Hoax, Unz Review (16 March 2020)

 

 

Second — consider the utility argument against smothering Economy and Education

 

If coronavirus is killing already mainly "useless" old people (like me) and "un-fittest" others:

 

 

why would one wreck the economy-sustaining lives

 

of the overwhelming majority

 

of the healthy and productive population —

 

just to support us used-up folk?

 

 

If we know that kids are almost entirely immune to bad outcomes, why should we ban them from going to school?

 

The only argument that we hear (in answer to this question) comes from the people, who justify completely emptying the planet's streets, businesses and plazas for weeks because — "We don't want Grandma and Already Ill Fred to croak".

 

Does this make proportionate utilitarian social and economic sense?

 

Probably not.

 

Not even according to supposedly humanity-preserving arguments.

 

For example, during this planet's many wars, no one ever has really given a preventive "shit" about killing off tens of millions of people in the peak of their fertilely productive youth.

 

Nor does anyone really care about the hundreds of thousands (to sometimes millions) of people that influenza (by way of non-tuberculosis example) routinely kills.

 

Thus, the current Save the Old People argument is largely bogus.

 

And given that many among "leadership" and "elites" are elderly Boomers, maybe this Save Old and Sick Folk rationale is self-serving.

 

I say all this as a vulnerable old person myself.

 

I don't want younger and fitter Americans having to suffer impoverishment — with its consequent very major struggles — on my sorry, depleted account.

 

I bet that a high proportion of other old people feel the same way.

 

Don't sink the Humanity Ship against our frail bones.

 

 

Third — might it be better just to isolate oldsters and the unfit?

 

We could additionally create sensible (published) Intensive Care Unit priority admission lists that make utilitarian sense.

 

Thus, restrict ICU care (during the pandemic) to fitter people, meaning those who still have contributions to make to economy and society.

 

Intensivists do this every day, under less stressful circumstances. The public just doesn't know it.

 

And if we want to ban things, let's "ban" the frightened people — who have only trivial symptoms and no comorbidities — who waste medical providers' time by insisting on being tested and treated.

 

A major component of the burden on the health care system comes from this group. Including from those who do have COVID, but are suffering from only ordinary respiratory symptoms.

 

 

Fourth — regarding health care providers

 

The burden on health care providers is aggravated by their exhaustion in the face having to deal with so many fear-based, unreasonable demands. Many of these come accompanied by virus-spewing faces.

 

Fatigue weakens medical providers' immune systems. They fall ill, and probably more seriously sick, than they would otherwise.

 

This, too, is the result of bad health policy.

 

If I were King of the World, I would be focused on protecting medical providers and their supporting staffs, at the rest of the public's expense.

 

Lose the human medical infrastructure, and the whole ship sinks.

 

Let's get our priorities sensibly straight.

 

 

The moral? — It is time, I think, to get a grip (on ourselves) regarding SARS-CoV-2

 

What is coming down the Economic Pike, at the moment — with rabidly massive isolation policies left in place — is an economic depression that will make 2008, and perhaps even the Great Depression, look mild in comparison.

 

 

Note

 

Here, I am not talking about the Financial Sector.

 

You know, those Plutocratic Parasites — who combine a complete lack of usefulness with varied forms of pillaging leeching that skims profit from other people's work.

 

Look for this group, which includes most of the American Corporate Establishment, to whine for bailouts, even as we speak.

 

 

The problem, for the rest of us, is that the United States is completely unprepared to install economic safety nets that are sufficient to avoid Depression Era results.

 

Currently, some government types are floating the idea that "doling" $1,000 per month would be enough. What gild-gated estates are these impractically minded politicians living in?

 

I can already hear cries of "socialist" and "communist thinking" with regard to what would actually be necessary to support people's livelihoods that will be lost to the rippling effects of mandatory shut-downs.

 

Containment and hysterical levels of "flattening the patient curve" would have been proportionately responsible, only if they had taken place weeks ago. Unfortunately, the United States slept right through a three to four month preparation period.

 

Now, our arguably hysterical shut-down responses are just creating panic and shuttering businesses — many perhaps forever — for unpersuasive statistical and policy reasons.

 

Arguably worse, successfully "flattening the curve" just moves the curve of potential COVID patients, who are not yet immune, into the future. Where, in a few months, we will just have to go through all of this again.

 

What sense does that make?

 

Medical reality indicates that herd immunity will probably partially protect populations in the future. Slowing the development of herd immunity down, by massively crushing the economy now, just doubles the overall societal and life-injuring economic harm.

 

And the best (current) way to protect medical providers is to keep them from having to interact with masses of selfishly and foolishly overreacting patients — as well as from people, who are (realistically speaking) destined for death anyway.

 

 

In that last comment, you can read my aversion to the expensive excesses that American Medicine goes to, just to keep people like me tottering around for unseemly lengths of resource-depleting time.

 

 

In the future, perhaps, this Pandemic Episode will persuade the American Public to hold Government accountable for actually protecting the nation's medical and biological security.

 

Had Government done what should have been done about pandemic and biological warfare protection years ago — especially in view of its extortionate excess regarding feigned "national security" requirements — virtually none of this would now be happening.