By Donald A. Loucks, TEM
Submitted 29 April, 2020
We are now seeing the COVID-19 pandemic evolve into something much more far reaching than an imported Chinese virus.
To sum it up, we see empty hospital beds as well as massive – and growing -- unemployment. In Texas the reported unemployment is climbing past 1.4 million. As of the writing, 663 people have died from COVID-19 in Texas.
That translates to 2,112 jobs lost per death. It also translates into the “collateral” deaths by suicide and drug overdose due to depression.
Betsy McAughey addressed this aspect of the pandemic in RealClear Politics: “Every 1% hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3% increase in drug overdose deaths and a 0.99% increase in suicides according to data provided by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the medical journal Lancet. These are facts based on experience, not models. If unemployment hits 32%, some 77,000 Americans are likely to die from suicide and drug overdoses as a result of layoffs. Scientists call these fatalities deaths of despair”.
We have heard the Liberals’ cry of “If it will save one life…” Please apply that to the above paragraph.
It is also becoming clear that the initial calculations regarding infection and mortality were very wrong. It is an unfortunate fact of statistical life that if there is a lag in the acquisition of data collection, then the more error there will be in the predictions.
Initially, the mortality projections were predicting a very mild infection and mortality rate. Suddenly, it appeared that things were going south very quickly with 30-plus nursing home patients dying from COVID-19 in the same facility.
Then the hotspots came to light: New York, Seattle, New Orleans, etc., and near panic set in. Field hospitals were set-up in Central Park. Hospital ships docked in New York and Los Angeles. Orders for “social distancing” were issued as well as house arrest, oops, shelter in place.
Then the patients flooded the hospitals.
Not!
USNS Comfort left New York after never having more than 20 patients on board at any one time. The curve seems to have been flattened.
This is where leadership should come in, but doesn’t. The Nation’s governors have been given recommendations from the Federal Government to protect their citizens. It now becomes clear that one-size-fits-all is not working for the several states. New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, for example, have serious problems due to the commuter infection from China the entire previous year. Expecting North Dakota (with an extremely low infection rate) to follow suit would be economically devastating and unneeded.
Certainly, some states should be treated much differently than others. Our Nation’s economy must be repaired immediately. A medical axiom holds true in this case: The cure should not be more harmful than the disease.
Here is the latest statistical whammy: Research in Los Angeles reports that the infection rate – those who have or have had COVID-19 – is too low by a factor of 28 to 55 TIMES higher than the confirmed cases. As announced by Los Angeles County Health Director Barbara Ferrer, “That estimate is 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported to the county by the time of the study in early April.” That sound bad, right?
No. It means that the mortality rate is far, far lower than was initially predicted. Many people are getting the highly contagious virus, but few are actually sickened. This means that not everyone is in danger of dying from COVID-19, but some are very much at risk and should be protected such as elderly, diabetics, obese, etc.
The decision must now be made to open the economy without destroying it by spending our way into irrecoverable debt.
Spending trillions of dollars we don’t have will not cure the economy; employment will.
References
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/13/shutdown_could_kill_more_americans_than_covid-19_142934.html
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/early-antibody-testing-indicates-far-more-covid-19-cases-lower-mortality-rate/2349275/