It is horrendous that today everything becomes political.
The pundits — on both the Right and the Left — are using the crisis to divide us — yet again.
Pundits promote extremes: “Don’t wear a mask!” or “Wear a mask, always!”
Neither makes sense. Extremes don’t make sense.
I wear a mask when I go to a store. I don’t wear one when I am out kayaking, or going for a walk — there’s nobody around, so why wear a mask?!
The author wrote, “while standing up to local governments scrambling to save lives”
Another divide. The fact is, the Right is angry that they are being put out of work, and experiencing real suffering as a result. That is a legitimate concern, but acting like there is no threat is idiotic. There is a threat.
Meanwhile the Left wants everyone to shelter in place, until there is no virus left. That way “we are all safe” — but if we do that, the economy will collapse. I expect that when those people go to the food store and it is permanently closed, and their electricity goes off, they will change their mind. The harm from collapsing the economy is incalculable. We can’t shelter in place too long — it would be collective suicide.
The problem is one of cost/benefit. An extreme does not work: “All shelter in place”, or “All go back to work”. Those don’t make sense.
We need nuanced policy, informed by scientific statistical data: Based on who has died so far, can we construct accurate profiles of who is vulnerable? Or not? If so, then those people should shelter, and everyone else should go back to work. But if we cannot construct such profiles — if dying from the virus is like Russian Roulette — then we are all at risk, and that justifies a higher bar for our safety in going back to work.
But the bar is not infinitely high: at some point, even if the consequence is 3% of the population dying, the devastation of collapsing the economy — and the starvation and homelessness that would result — would be worse. It might even precipitate war.
We need data. The news media is not providing the data that we need to know. Is the data there? I don’t know, but I know that extremes don’t work.
