It’s said that one of the strengths of our federal system is
that the individual states can serve as independent laboratories for new ideas
which will be tested out and compared with results in other states. It’s
reported that 3 states, Georgia, Oklahoma and Alaska, plan very shortly to
allow more aggressive commercial opening. Efforts to dissuade Georgia governor
Brian Kemp, including from the President himself, have not so far changed his
mind.
Slowly but surely the evidence is coming in that Covid19 is
for the great majority of those it infects an inconsequential or very mild
problem. In addition, antibody testing is showing that it is far more
widespread in the population than we had supposed. To be sure, what turns out
to be a relatively small minority of those infected develop severe illness. As
of now management has been mostly just supportive. However in the daily medical
reports I read online information is coming in from doctors and researchers
almost by the hour on the illness’s specific pathophysiology, that is, how it
affects the body to do its damage, key points that will likely gradually produce
more helpful treatment, above and beyond drugs that attack the virus itself.
Our social distancing efforts have apparently slowed down
the contagion enough to give the medical community a breather, primarily in the
population-dense urban areas where the illness was intense. But it does not rid
us of the virus or change the nature of the illness. Dr. Fauci, in last night’s
Task Force report, expressed his certainty that the virus, even though slowed,
would be back in the winter. In fact, it seems clear that the strategy of
simply slowing the virus’s spread actually ensures persistence of the virus,
and eventual continued illness in the vulnerable, by preventing development of even
more general immunity in the population.
In considering how to proceed at this point we must balance the
recommendations of the public health officials against the effects of major increasing
unemployment, which if sustained too long may have a cascading effect due to
business failure resulting in more unemployment. This is essentially what
happened after the stock market crash in 1929. The bad effects of sustained high
unemployment are well documented and are myriad. These include increases in
depression, with substantial increased death from suicide, drug and alcohol
addiction and poor physical health. Crime and social unrest increase. Social
services can help for a while but, as the demand for governmental social
service increases, available funds from taxation sources decreases.
So, suppose, as Governor Kemp and his two other colleagues
have decided, we take a more liberal attitude with our commercial restrictions
and intensify efforts to protect the vulnerable who we now are fairly well able
to identify. Could this cause a more generalized immunity which might starve
out the virus. If we continue with the present more cautious restrictions the
virus will presumably linger on, and, as Dr. Fauci has described, return intermittently,
and continue to strike the vulnerable. In thinking about this scenario there is
the concern that the virus could mutate and recur as does the influenza virus,
but as in the SARS pandemic of 2003, the virus of which was a close cousin to our
present problem (and which incidentally also started in China), there was no recurrence.
This does not appear to be the tendency of coronaviruses.
In Sweden they are taking the less restrictive approach and
it seems to be working out. If Governor Kemp sticks to his guns, as Mr. Trump
is fond of saying, we’ll see what happens.
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