What CORVID-19 might teach us

There are lessons to be learned from this pandemic. For example, now that lots of people have had experience working from home there is the real question of why companies should expect all of their workers to lose so much time and money – sometimes two hours or more – commuting in to a central place, when they can work just as well from home. Not to mention the climate effects, air pollution and infrastructure load that all that unnecessary traffic imposes. And why should companies spend all that money maintaining expensive office space? As many people have discovered, they often get much more done working from home because there are not all the distractions of the office – such as people just stopping by one’s desk to interrupt one’s work.

There are a few companies thinking about a halfway measure – opening distributed local offices closer to people’s homes to reduce commuting (and in less expensive office space), all linked electronically.

Of course, not everyone can do their work from home. There are lots of jobs – in labs, assembly lines, warehouses, restaurants, barber shops, stores, etc - that require hands-on presence. But there are also lots of jobs that could be just as well done remotely. People would have to learn to work from home, and perhaps re-arrange their homes and home life a bit to optimize the effort, but it might well be worth the effort.

And then there is the question of whether really all that business travel is worth the cost, the climate effects, and the wasted time. Why waste a whole day or two and a lot of money travelling to a meeting that could be done just as well in a videoconference? Senior executives would have to find some other way to feel important other than travelling all the time in business or first class and eating out on a big expense account.

The college experience might also be re-thought. Those well-off children who go to college for the parties, the fraternities, the sports and the climbing walls may still spend the money for the experience. But really, except for lab courses almost all college courses can be taught as well online, and for much, much, much less cost to the student. That would put a lot of superfluous college deans and administrators out of work.  I could image a college undergraduate experience with perhaps only one or two semesters on campus, just for the lab courses, and the rest online.

Then there is the issue of travelling long distances to see friends in other cities. With videoconferencing one can meet any friend anywhere in the world anytime one wants to, without the expense and hassle of travelling. Yes, I know it’s not quite the same thing as being there, but we have learned through this pandemic how easy it is to stay connected to distant friends in this new interconnected age.

There are lessons we ought to take away from this experience.

To reopen or not reopen, that is the question

There is a lively debate now about when to reopen the economy from its CORVID-19 lockdown. Of course this issue has taken on partisan political overtones in a heated election year, which doesn’t help promote rational dispassionate discussion. Since Trump proposed reopening soon, that meant a segment of the population automatically thought it was a crazy idea. And then there is the fact that the political elites and their media allies who are all for keeping us closed down haven’t lost their own jobs – they are still getting a paycheck, their businesses and jobs aren’t in danger of being lost for good, they can still pay their mortgages – so they aren’t feeling the pain (or even desperation) that much of the rest of the population is feeling.

There are those who argue that CORVID-19 is really no worse than a bad influenza. That certainly is not true. As a physician friend pointed out, the annual influenza doesn’t kill hundreds of doctors and nurses and health workers. Certainly, a significant proportion of those infected show no or very mild symptoms, but those who get the more serious cases report it is far worse than the annual flu. On the other hand, is it really bad enough that we needed to shut down the entire economy?

For some perspective, CORVID-19 in the US, thus far, exhibits a mortality rate of about 160 per million population. All causes of death in the US, as of last year, exhibits a mortality rate of about 8,639 per million, so thus far, CORVID-19 accounts for something like 2% of deaths in the US, less, so far, than a bad influenza year. More than that, almost all the deaths are among the old and those with serious health problems, some of whom would have died of other causes soon anyway. New York statistics show only 4.5% of deaths among those aged 0-45, and most of those had serious pre-existing health issues. Estimates of the real mortality rate are hard to come by, because we still have no idea of the total number of people who have been infected, but there is growing evidence that we have badly overestimated the mortality rate. And indeed, the dire predictions of some of the early epidemiological models that drove public policy seem in retrospect to have seriously overestimated the death rates. The Army has dismantled most of the emergency field hospitals it assembled in various US cities, most of which were never used.

Certainly we ought to protect that vulnerable segment of the population (certainly, because that segment includes me!), but does that really mean we have to put most of the young and middle-aged out of work?

On the other side of the equation is the issue of just how much damage the shutdowns are doing to the economy. The Dept of Labor estimates current unemployment at about 16%, and predicts that by the end of the month it could reach as high as 30%. For perspective, in the worst depths of the Great Depression of 1929, unemployment was between 20% and 25%. As of last week 26.5 million people had filed for unemployment insurance – that’s 1 out of every 6 workers in the US. And most businesses are still hanging on, drawing on their cash reserves – when they finally run out of money and close for good the unemployment figures will spike even higher.

For some non-Trump supporting arguments for opening up sooner rather than later (though probably still with social distancing restrictions), see John Hinderaker’s article here, and much more supporting data about his model at his website here.  Hinderaker is a prominent economist at the Univ of Chicago, and sometime Head Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He is no outlier.

Also see Dr. John Ioannidis’ recent article The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News in the Wall Street Journal. Ioannidis is also no slouch. Holder of the C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention, Professor of Medicine, of Epidemiology and Population Health, and co-Director, Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford, he is among the most-referenced scientists in his field. He is getting a lot of flak for questioning the prevailing wisdom about shutdowns, but he makes a good case that we have over-reacted.

  

I have no idea where I come down on this issue, but it is certainly clear that there are valid arguments on both sides. The idea that we ought to reopen sooner rather than later is not just some wild right-wing nutty idea – it deserves to be seriously considered. And perhaps by at least some people who aren’t financially insulated from the drastic effects of the current shutdown.

Recommended: The Economy Will Reopen Sooner Than You Think

For those who don't know what a "Hobson's choice" is, it refers to a 16th century livery stable owner in Cambridge, England, who had the rule that a prospective customer could either rent the horse in the stall nearest the door or not rent any horse. (That was to prevent everyone from always renting his best horses and thus overusing them). A Hobson's choice, then, is to either take the option offered or get nothing.

I mention this as a prelude to recommending the recent article The Economy Will Reopen Sooner Than You Think in The American Spectator.  The author argues that widespread reliable testing is not likely to be available soon, whatever politicians promise, so waiting for its appearance before reopening the economy is simply unrealistic. We are faced, he argues, with a real Hobson's choice - re-open the economy and face the consequences or sink the economy for good. His reasoning is thoughtful and cogent, and I haven't really done it justice with my short summary above, so I recommend reading the whole article.

The blame game

The mainstream media is having a field day blaming President Trump for America’s CORVID-19 fiasco. And Trump certainly has been a font of misinformation and vacillation throughout this event, but in fact just about EVERYBODY at the federal level has performed poorly during this pandemic. The FDA and CDC have slowed things down with bureaucratic inefficiency. It’s the FDA who won’t let Midwest ethanol producers use their perfectly good alcohol to make hand sanitizer, simply because it hasn’t passed some arcane rule.  It’s the CDC who insisted on using their own flawed test kits rather than using the well-tested World Health Organization kits. It the Navy that fired a perfectly good officer just because he embarrassed some of the top brass who were dragging their feet.

The World Health Organization insists it isn’t favoring the Chinese, even though they threw Taiwan out of the organization at China’s behest, and under pressure from China downplayed the pandemic for a couple of months to cover for China.

And although Trump was indeed a little slow recognizing the dangers, so were the leaders of most of the rest of the world’s nations, and a few still are in denial.

And then there is the media, who now are excoriating Trump for not closing down the nation soon enough, even though just a couple of months ago they were accusing him of overreacting and overstating the threat for political reasons.  Indeed, when he (wisely, in retrospect) barred travelers from China to the US at the end of January they labeled him racist and xenophobic.

So yes, Trump isn’t the ideal leader for this crisis, but no one else in the federal government, the political parties, or the media is looking very good either. There is more than enough blame to go around. Fortunately, the federal government has limited powers here and at least some of the state governors seem to have good heads on their shoulders. It makes a good argument for preserving the power of the states.

Media hypocrisy

I'm old and cynical enough that I really don’t expect the mainstream media to be unbiased and fair, and especially not in an election year. But I must say I am amazed at the level of hypocrisy exhibited around the recent sexual assault accusation against Joe Biden by a former staffer, Tara Reade.

Now such accusations, coming decades after the fact, with no witnesses or corroborating evidence, ought to be viewed with some skepticism, especially if they conveniently just happen to emerge just in time to impact an upcoming election. Yes, it may have happened. But then, it may not have. It's her word against his. And I notice that the mainstream press is trying its best to ignore the whole accusation.

Funny, though, when almost the same thing happened to a recent Supreme Court nominee, who happened to be a conservative, the press was all over it, absolutely convinced that the accusation was true even though the alleged victim couldn’t remember the year or location of the assault, and the supposed witnesses remembered no such event.  And in fact, Joe Biden himself asserted positively and publicly that such victims should always be believed.  I wonder if he still feels that way?

And then what?

Garret Hardin, in his excellent 1985 book Filters Against Folly, How to Survive despite Economists, Ecologists, and the Merely Eloquent, proposed that one should ask three basic questions about any proposal: (1) do the ideas make sense? (2) do the numbers add up? (3) and then what? Let’s apply this to the current pandemic.

The idea (1) is that we all practice social distancing (close schools and businesses) to reduce the rate of infection to something that the health care system can manage.

We know some of the numbers (2). We know the capacity of the health care systems (number of ICU beds, number of ventilators, number of doctors and nurses, etc). We are beginning to get some idea of the infection statistics (of identified cases, ~80% are mild, ~20% are severe enough to require hospitalization, and of that 20% about half require a ventilator for a week or two, and the majority of patients on a ventilator don’t survive.).  We also know that some significant proportion of cases (current estimates range from 20% to 80%) show no symptoms but are nevertheless infectious. We also know that the vast majority of fatalities are among those aged 60 or more and/or who are suffering from health problems (that includes about 60% or more of Americans, if one counts obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease, all identified as risk factors for CORVID-19), though some younger people die as well.

So what does this mean? There will be a first infection peak, probably arriving for most hot spots like New York City, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, etc, with the next few weeks – say by no later than the end of May. After that models predict the infection rate will decrease, at least for those locations that are practicing effective social distancing.  Suppose by the end of that peak – say by mid-summer – we have (worst case) identified 1 million cases in the US. And suppose the number of unidentified cases is (worst case) ten times that – another 10 million cases. We then have about 11 million people who have recovered from the virus and are (we hope) immune, at least for a while.  But there are about 327 million in the US, so that means only about 3% of the population is now immune.

So now let’s ask the “and then what?” (3) question. We open up businesses again so that the economy doesn’t simply crash into a major depression, though perhaps with as much social distancing as possible. Since only (best case) 3% of the population is immune, we will almost certainly get a resurgence of infections. More than that, it will still be highly unsafe for people 60 and older, or the 60% or more of the population with health problems, to be in public, exposed to the substantial number of people who are infectious even though they show no symptoms.

In essence that means either (a) the current lockdown will need to continue, at least intermittently, until such time as we (hopefully) have an effective vaccine widely available, which under the best possible case is still at least 12-18 months from now, but more likely 2-3 or more years from now., or (b) we have the permanently restructure store layouts and services to enforce effective social distancing permanently. That presents substantial challenges for things like theaters, schools, churches, sports arenas, and restaurants, as well as for close-up and personal services like medical exams and procedures, barbers and hairdressers, nail salons, massage therapists, and the like.

It’s time to begin to think seriously about the “and then what?” question.