(Bill Moloney, Terry Donze) USofA - US economic self-immolation over Covid-19

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May 14, 2020

US economic self-immolation over Covid-19 defies history and logic Bill Moloney In the last century the United States experienced three very serious influenza pandemics—1968, 1957, and most devastatingly 1918—yet in none of these instances were the American people subjected to anything remotely l ike the draconian lockdowns imposed over the last three months.

Inevitably this raises the question of "Why was the response to the current pandemic so different Writing in the Wall St. Journal— "The Media vs. Flatten the Curve" (April 28, 2020)—Holman Jenkins offered some insight and instructive comparisons. Adjusted for today's U.S. population, he says, the 1957 pandemic "killed the equivalent of 230,000 Americans today and 1968's 165,000".

While noting that Americans took steps to counter these two pandemics, he states they were "nothing like indiscriminate lockdowns" such as those today by which "we destroy our economy and the livelihoods of millions of people".

Jenkins concludes that much of the present overreaction is attributable to a poorly informed media, which constantly make "many incoherent points" while at the same time being unable to offer serious "multivariate" reporting or analysis which could offer illuminating comparisons drawn from our history or the experience of other nations.

One example of a useful but little remarked comparative is the pandemic of 1918, which prior to vaccines or antibiotics to treat secondary infections killed 675,000 Americans. Yet amidst this devastation the American economy continued at full throttle propelling the Allies to a decisive victory in World War I. The current number of U.S. deaths (May 9, 2020) from Coronavirus is 78,216, which calculates to 240.3 deaths per one million of population (327,096,265 in 2018).

While we cannot know the final U.S. pandemic death toll for 2020, we can say with great confidence it will not approach the levels of the 1918 pandemic which killed 1

6,368 Americans per million of population (106.5 million in 1920). The death rate back then, in other words, was 25 times worse than what we’re now experiencing.

Another WSJ writer—Joseph Sternberg—detects yet another reason for faulty media analysis, namely political bias. In "A Coronavirus Reckoning for the Left" (April 9, 2020) he examines the hardening debate between "Open the Country Now" and "Keep It Locked Down" by describing the curious responses to Sweden's "more modest approach to the Covid-19 pandemic— keeping schools and restaurants open while restricting visits to retirement homes".

Sternberg observes that "those most enthusiastically cheering on Sweden's experiment...hail from the political right" while "the left in most of the world has been intensely critical of Sweden's experiment".

With the U.S. Dept of Labor reporting 33.5 million Americans seeking unemployment benefits in the last seven weeks and the April unemployment rate soaring to 14.7%—the highest level since the Great Depression—and countless businesses collapsing or declaring bankruptcy, there is an urgent imperative to end the destructive "Openers" vs. "Lockdowners" debate by finding a reasoned middle ground that can save our economy and restore the lives of the tens of millions who depend on it.

Hope for such an intelligent compromise is offered by Professor Graham Allison, a founder and longtime head of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of several studies focusing on government decision-making in times of crisis.

In "We Can Protect the Vulnerable and Reopen the Economy" (The Hill, April 29, 2020) Allison offers some insightful statistically-based perspectives on how best to respond to our rapidly expanding national crisis.

Closely examining data on the first 58,000 Covid-19 deaths, Allison shows that 80% of them (about 46,000) occurred among Americans over 65 (15% of U.S. population). The remaining 12,000 deaths occurred among the 85% of the population under 65 (about 278 million people).

By contrast, Allison notes, that among the 200 million Americans under 45 there were fewer than 1000 deaths, and fewer than 100 among those under 25.

Allison's conclusion is that since there is a "big threat to a small percentage of our population and a small threat to the overwhelming majority," we should therefore organize our reopening strategies accordingly.

That would mean finding ways of giving intensified protections to the truly vulnerable, while burdening the great majority of Americans only in a manner realistically reflecting their much lower risk factors.

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For millions of Americans whose lives have been ruined—many permanently—it is an immense tragedy that both politicians and media have been so slow to make similar observations and reach the common sense conclusions that could have avoided so much suffering.

History will not be kind to them.

William Moloney, Ph.D., is a Fellow in Conservative Thought at Colorado Christian University 's Centennial Institute and a former Colorado Commissioner of Education. He studied at Oxford and the University of London.

Headlines about COVID-19 impact on regional economies -

UN News: COVID-19 to cause biggest economic contraction ever in Latin America & Caribbean (April 21, 2020)

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Center for Global Development: The Economic Impact of COVID-19 around the World: A Round-Up of the Most Recent Analysis (April 17, 2020)

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Rand Corporation: Economic Consequences of COVID-19 in the Middle East: Implications for U.S. National Security (April 1, 2020)

When we educate children with values and respect for others, then we will have useful people for humanity.

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