People, a small minority, took to the streets,
protesting, demanding that the governors open up the states so that they can go
back to work, get a haircut, drink at the local bar, or eat in a local
restaurant. You can’t blame them for being frustrated. Thirty-nine million
people are out of work. Once stable businesses, especially the small ones, are
closing for good. Hospitals are going broke. Families are lining up by the
thousands at food banks because they have no money for food. Many people want
to get back to the synagogue, the temple, the mosque, or the church.
The governors capitulated. The foolishness
began immediately, the conundrum wrapped in the enigma thing. The beaches were
overcrowded. Bars were jammed. People lined up to enter the malls. Barbers
operated without masks. Old people walked the streets without masks. People
protested against wearing masks. Late-night cable news fretted about the
scourge of the virus while another channel called it a hoax.
At the same time seventy percent, roughly, of
people are worried that we are trying to open the country too fast and that we
will have another outbreak, which might be worse than the current epidemic. The
President is urging states to open up quickly, in defiance of his own
guidelines and those of the CDC. David Brooks pointed out in a recent article
in the NYT that the people are making the decision about opening, not the
government. And yet …
Governor Cuomo of New York recently spoke about
what he called the rule-of-one. The epidemic in the US started with one person
who had contacted the virus. In his state, the outbreak started when one
infected person, in New Rochelle, attended a small birthday party. As a result
thousands of people have died.
Most of the states that are opening up quickly
are still experiencing increases in infections and a rising number of deaths. The
numbers are published every morning by Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource
Center. New York is starting to see a rapid decline in cases and deaths. If you
exclude New York’s numbers, the number of new cases and deaths is rising in
almost every state. The rule of one …
It only takes one person to start the infection
process. One infected person in a nursing home can cause massive numbers of deaths.
One infected person in a meat processing plant can cause massive outbreaks and
many deaths. One person, asymptomatic, in a restaurant can cause many deaths.
Standard mitigation techniques have worked for
centuries when an unknown virus breaks out: separate people, identify those
with whom they have come in contact, and quarantine them as well, and test a
large sampling to identify who carries the virus and where outbreaks may occur..
It is simple, and it is effective. Why do so many, though still a minority,
refuse to adhere to simple efforts to reduce deaths and provide for the common
good?
Failure of the system didn’t happen overnight.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been the gold standard
to which the world’s governments relied upon to lead the charge against
pandemics. In the last decade or so, politics crept into the management of the
agency, reducing its credibility. The current administration is exacerbating
that situation, directing its output and advice. Cable news outlets with
specific agendas have helped divide the nation along political fault lines to
the point, unbelievable to most, that strongly held beliefs about the virus
outbreak are conditioned by one’s political persuasion. One poll after another
points out the divide between Republicans and Democrats. The diasporas from
rural areas to large cities and to the coasts in recent years have increased
the distance between educated elites and fly-over states where too many
experience and feel the forces of being left behind.
It is also many administrations at the federal
and state levels that failed to provide adequate financing for research,
planning, and material stockpiling. Our scientists knew the pandemic was coming
months before it hit us hard. We were not prepared; the administration refused
to believe the experts, and it tried to convince people that the problem would
be over in a matter of days. And the days went on and on; one more person
infected another, and they infected others, and the others infected many more.
The rule of one …
When a pandemic hits a country it doesn’t
infect only people of one political persuasion, or the people led by governors
of one political party, or educated vs. less educated. It goes after anyone in
its path. When it hits, it is a health issue, it is not a political issue. It
is not reality TV. It is the job of the federal government to implement a
national response, to have a national strategy, to implement best practices.
The current administration has done the opposite to a fare-thee-well. There
still is no national strategy, the states are left to do as they please and to
compete with each other for vital supplies, and scientific recommendations are
declared unacceptable.
The nation has been slow to test people for the
virus. Test kits were and are in short supply and reagents needed to do the
test were and are unavailable. The administration at first discouraged testing
in large numbers. On May 15, 2020, in Allentown, PA, while visiting the Owens
& Minor distribution center, the President said, “Don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world. But why?
Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test you
find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing we would have
very few cases.” We are getting better at testing, but we lag too many
countries when you look at the number of tests per capita. Remember the rule of
one!
So does any of this matter? Does our insistence
on self-indulgence make a difference? To most of us, the answer is a loud yes.
To others, not so much. As of today, however, the data shows that it is
important.
The United States has about 4.25% of the
world’s population, but we have 28% of the world’s deaths attributable to the
COVID-19 virus. The US, with all its money, with all its scientists, with all
its communication systems, with its history of stepping up the plate in times
of crisis surely can do better.
Remember the rule of one!
