Coronavirus Realities

Trump, having previously said the economic shutdown could last till August, now wants a return to normalcy much sooner. (Much sooner than medical experts recommend.)

Actually we’re only just beginning to see how bad things are. The Economist’s latest issue (as usual) provides much clarity.

COVID-19 is very contagious, and the containment measures look too little too late because the virus is already very widespread. The swiftly rising number of reported cases is likely just the tip of an iceberg. Many infected people don’t show symptoms right away, if ever, but meantime can infect others.

Our efforts might, in a couple of weeks, appear to bend the curve down. But the problem is that a majority of the population won’t have been infected, hence won’t have developed immunity, and the virus won’t have disappeared from the landscape. This means that after Trump declares victory and restrictive measures are relaxed, the virus will likely spike back up — necessitating a reimposition of restrictions. “This on-off cycle,” says The Economist, “must be repeated until either the disease has worked through the population or there is a vaccine which could be months away, if one works at all.”

This virus, while new, is not a fundamentally different creature from others of its ilk, so in principle previous methods to create vaccines should succeed. But before then, most of our population could contract the illness. As we know, most would have only minor symptoms, or none. But even a death rate below 1% could still be expected to kill a million or two.

Of course, besides a vaccine, a medicine to treat the illness would change everything. While some candidates are being tested, we don’t have a treatment yet.

Note that — barring the virus’s complete eradication (practically impossible) — the more effective a shutdown is in preventing infections, the worse will be the second wave, after the relaxation, because the virus will have so many potential new victims without immunity. The Imperial College in London built a set of models (reported by The Economist) showing this effect after five months of restrictions. If they included schools, the second wave is even more severe. (China may soon be putting this to the test.) Governments need to be candid about this prospect, instead of encouraging us to imagine the whole thing will just go away in due course.

I have argued that we really have no choice but to accept severe economic pain to avoid a nightmare scenario of a health system unable to handle a flood of illnesses so that many thousands die simply from lack of care. That’s starting to look likely despite our best efforts. And, says The Economist, “the bitter truth is that [those efforts] may be economically unsustainable. After a few iterations governments might not have the capacity to carry businesses and consumers. Ordinary people might not tolerate the upheaval. The cost of repeated isolation, measured by mental well-being and the long-term health of the rest of the population, might not justify it.”

An agonizing dilemma. But The Economist also says it can be mitigated by a massive testing regime and use of technology to trace contacts and identify who really needs quarantining. As South Korea and China have done.

Trump keeps patting himself on the back for his early restrictions on travel from China and, later, Europe. That may indeed have helped slow the virus’s spread. However, it was already underway before the travel bans, so it was delusional to think they solved the problem. What was really needed was what South Korea did — again, massive testing, right away.

But even to this day, we’re still not doing that. Still only starting to ramp up toward it.

As The Economist’s “Lexington” columnist (on American affairs) writes, this testing inadequacy at least partly owes to the Trump administration’s “decision to scrap the NSC’s dedicated pandemic unit” (established under Obama).

He also points to its “sticking with a faulty viral test when the WHO could have provided a working alternative.” (As South Korea used. The tests mostly in use here now, still way too few, also don’t give results for up to ten days — almost useless in this fast-moving pandemic.) Lexington also points to overall White House dysfunctionality, and concludes: “a stunning catalog of failure.”

Add in Trump’s fountain of false and misleading information, which delayed most Americans’ taking the problem seriously. Last Wednesday he belatedly invoked the Defense Production Act, enabling government to require industries to produce stuff needed in an emergency. We’re desperately short on respirators and protective gear. But just signing an order, with Trump’s posturing flamboyance, actually produces nothing, absent follow-through. And it is absent. Trump seems to imagine he’ll nevertheless make the needed items magically appear.

Trump (never able to admit error) now claims he knew very early this would be a pandemic. Contradicting his own previous statements. And begging the question: if he knew so early, why was our response, particularly on testing, so dilatory?

The harsh truth: South Korea’s infection began exactly the same time as ours. Had we done what South Korea did, we might have avoided the need for economic restrictions as extreme as those now in force, which may well fail anyway. And avoided literally trillions in costs and losses and untold human suffering. And of course a vast number of deaths soon to occur.

Trump bears terrible blame for this catastrophe. As do Americans who voted for such a person.

If you ever fantasized about some disease that would somehow disproportionately take out Republicans, here it is. They do tend to be much older on average. But moreover, many Trump fans who took on board his early pooh-poohing of the virus still treat it less seriously than even he does now; thus are more likely to expose themselves to infection and death.

On the other hand, this thing is bollixing up voting, and Republicans will take advantage to make casting ballots harder — especially for Democrats. We must be vigilant lest our democracy be another casualty of COVID-19.