TIme to Start Things Up

We have dutifully followed the recommendations for older people to stay at home mainly and to keep their distance when going out.  I have encouraged others to do the same. I thought and still think that as an epidemic of a contagious disease from a new virus with unknown characteristics, lethality, and susceptibility to treatment  spread in this country, it was appropriate to give the experts in public health the benefit of the doubt and to do as they said while realizing that with so much not known, we might be overreacting.

Now I think it is time to open the country back up, and for most people to return to normal life – carefully, incrementally, and at different rates in different places. The dire and frightening things predicted by officials and projected in the early models have not happened.   The stated objective of preventing exponential growth in the number of infections – flattening the curve -  has been met.  Results of random tests indicate that such a high percentage of people carry the virus  - often without having been noticeably sick - that the disease’s actual rate of mortality is likely far lower overall than earlier guessed.    Meanwhile the damage to the economy and to people’s lives from the shutdown is serious, growing, and in some cases disastrous. 

We also have more data about  levels  of risk among various types of people. Though things still are not as clear as one would like, the risk of serious harm from covid 19 seems to be small for healthy people under sixty five or so.  Statistics indicate that older people and people in chronically and seriously  bad health have more to worry about and probably should be careful longer. (I don’t know how much that applies to healthy, active older people. I have not seen  enough data on that and plan to be careful until I do.) Inmates of nursing homes, almost all of whom are both old and in bad health, have a lot to worry about. I expect things will need to done differently at nursing homes until a vaccine or some proven, reliable treatments are on the market.

One of the most unpleasant things coming out of the shutdown is what it has shown about the character and desires of some politicians and their public relations flacks in the traditional media. Many Democrats seem to be enjoying this and yearning for their "new normal" in ways that ought to make the rest of us  wary and a little worried. ( I do not mean their  liking a damaged economy because they hope it will hurt Trump. That is just ordinary slimy politics. This is something worse.)  From banning the purchase of vegetable seeds to calling on people to become police informers against their neighbors  to spying on citizens with drones to threatening to close  churches that hold unapproved services permanently to policing  gatherings of relatives in private homes, leftist officials are using  emergency powers in ways that are arbitrary, often idiotic, frequently unconstitutional, and sometimes downright scary.  One hopes  residents of places such as Michigan and New York will be able to make their civil masters  back down quickly after  this blow over. I also hope that people will remember  how much the officials relished bullying them and pushing them around  - often for no good reason -   and do something about it in future elections.