Here’s an excellent article over at First Things that sums up what I think about the shutdown.
It is hard sometimes to avoid confirmation bias and hindsight, but I was always inclined to think that the lockdown was an over-reaction. I was willing to go give all our leaders who made these decisions the benefit of the doubt, but my opinion started to harden the moment Trump extended the lockdown guidelines from 15 days to 45. I believe that the destruction of our economy will end up costing more lives than the Wuhan virus. Only time will tell if that’s correct.
Yet I remain optimistic that our economy will recover quickly, and that well before Election Day it will be clear that real growth, not just recovery, has resumed. I think there is potential for some things to be better on the other side, as Bill has discussed.
But we have to get this economy jump-started now. I am disappointed my governor didn’t reopen Texas two Fridays ago, instead of this Friday, but at least we’re moving forward now. I will be very curious to see how closely people stick to the guidelines and the phases. I suspect we’re about to see widespread civil disobedience.
6 replies on “Coronavirus Reality Check”
Laura, I just got word from our County that the Health Officer in charge of all of our lives will be reopening construction work in Santa Cruz this coming Monday. Like I said in our Zoom meeting, Santa Cruz county is like a cleanroom. 275,000 residents and 2 deaths. 100 or so confirmed cases. My company’s work is non essential, but our county modified the SIP orders 2 weeks ago to allow companies to ship products to customers to return to work if hygiene protocols are established, distancing is demonstrated and a continuation of those who ‘can’ tele-work continue to do so. One look at CA Hwy 1 along the coast and at the height of the SIP orders it used to be empty, now is 70% of typical traffic.
I think, at least in Central California, things are organically opening up. There is still the heavy handed “you can walk on the beach for essential exercise, but you can’t sit down, pop an umbrella, open the ice chest and have a group picnic. Masks are demanded to enter any store, hardware or grocery, Home Depot, Bank, etc. But people are moving, out and about and I just really see it opening up whether the government wants it or not.
That’s interesting. I thought construction was in the federal guidelines as essential. I don’t think it ever shut down here. It’s one of the reasons Home Depot and Lowe’s never closed.
There is a lot of criticism of the Texas governor’s plan, that it’s too little, starts too small, still sidelines too many businesses. I think your observation of your freeway is probably significant. The few times I’ve been out on one of our freeways, traffic has seemed to me to be almost normal, though I was never out during rush hour. I fully expect to see a lot of businesses that are still on the “forbidden” list to just quietly open up (with precautions as advised).
I really think people are just done with this.
Isn’t Santa Clara County where one of those first antibody studies was done? The one that was criticized for using FB to solicit volunteers?
It’s true. And the Stanford researchers who conducted that study were trashed by armchair and professional statisticians. I thought it was another datapoint in many showing how infection was much larger than first thought. But, no…they used FB to get volunteers, so Stanford bad.
Also of interest that Santa Cruz county, really a bedroom community for silicon valley, and a place to go to the beach when Santa Clara valley gets too hot in the summer, we share a common border and the one conduit is the winding Hwy 17 over the mountains. Santa Cruz is a low infection clean room, yet neighboring Santa Clara county is California’s hot zone. I still can’t understand why, except for ethnic demographics as a possible explanation.
I think one reason is population density. Santa Cruz sounds like a place where people can spread out and don’t live on top of each other.
SW Virginia is the same way. Our cases per 100,000 population is 50xs less than NYC and more than 10xs less than the population centers in Virginia. There is no reason we can’t get on with our lives.