MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-11-13 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] =?utf-8?q?Joe_Biden=E2=80=99s_Lockdown_Lobby?=
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wsj.com
Opinion | Joe Biden’s Lockdown Lobby
The Editorial Board
6-7 minutes
Did you enjoy the days at home from mid-March to May? The 22 million
lost jobs, the shuttered storefronts, the neighborhood shops out of
business, the kids unable to attend school, and the near economic
depression? Well, congratulations, a reprise may be coming your way if
Joe Biden heeds his Covid-19 advisory team.
We’ve told you about Ezekiel Emanuel, the advisory committee member who
wanted new lockdowns during the summer flare-up in the Sunbelt states.
Lucky for the country that his only power then was appearing on MSNBC.
Then there’s Michael Osterholm, also a member of the Biden Covid
committee, who now wants a new nationwide lockdown for as many as six
weeks. Dr. Osterholm is director of the Center for Infectious Disease
Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. CNBC quoted him as
suggesting that we are about to enter “Covid hell” and the government
should lock everyone up as we await a vaccine.
“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost
wages for individual workers for losses to small companies to
medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do
all of that,” Dr. Osterholm said, according to Yahoo Finance. “If we did
that, then we could lock down for four to six weeks.”
Lockdowns are the good doctor’s household remedy. In August he and
Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari argued for harsher
lockdowns. “The problem with the March-to-May lockdown was that it was
not uniformly stringent across the country. For example, Minnesota
deemed 78 percent of its workers essential,” the duo wrote in the New
York Times. “To be effective, the lockdown has to be as comprehensive
and strict as possible.”
Did they learn anything from the spring and events since? Lockdowns
don’t crush the virus. They merely delay its spread until the lockdowns
end. Targeted restrictions on people and businesses may be needed in an
emergency in some locations to prevent hospitals from being
overrun—though even then the government can surge medical resources, as
is now happening in El Paso.
The costs of severe lockdowns are horrendous. The U.S. is still
recovering from the spring catastrophe when the jobless rate surged in
two months to 14.7%, the highest since the Great Depression. Tens of
thousands of businesses closed and many will never reopen.
The human cost is even worse. A quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds have
reported suicidal thoughts and increased substance abuse. Half of them
reported symptoms consistent with a depressive disorder, according to a
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey in June. Some 13% of
Americans said they started or increased substance use to cope with the
pandemic.
Dr. Osterholm seems to think all of this harm can be alleviated if the
government writes another giant check. But the feds have already
appropriated nearly $3 trillion, the Federal Reserve is adding hundreds
of billions, and the federal debt is now 100% of GDP and rising. Will $3
trillion more do it, or will we need $10 trillion?
***
This awful advice arrives as the economy continues to recover from the
first shutdowns. Third-quarter growth was a record 33.1% and the fourth
quarter has started strong. Continuing jobless claims fell again in
Thursday’s weekly report by another 436,000, and new claims by 48,000.
The U.S. has recovered more than half of the jobs it lost, and the
jobless rate has fallen to 6.9%. Where would we be now if we’d have
taken Dr. Osterholm’s advice in August, or Dr. Emanuel’s in June?
Covid cases are accelerating, to a worrying degree in some places.
Hospitalizations are rising, and deaths will follow, though many fewer
per infection than in the spring thanks to clinical advances in treating
the disease. But we should have learned by now that the best response to
these surges is to protect the vulnerable, maintain social-distance
protocols and wear masks when in close quarters indoors while getting on
as much as possible with normal life, education and commerce.
The Biden team would have more credibility on lockdowns if they and Mr.
Biden were more consistent in their Covid admonitions. But they stayed
silent about last weekend’s public celebrations over Mr. Biden’s
declaration of victory, and we don’t recall their warnings during the
summer racial-justice protests. No wonder so many Americans ignore Covid
warnings when they see this double standard.
The problem with Mr. Biden’s advisory committee is that its members are
part of the conformist Covid clerisy who think that lockdowns dictated
from on high are good for the little people. He ought to diversify his
advice by calling in the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration on
the alternative policy of “focused protection.”
On current trend Mr. Biden will inherit a recovering economy and a
pipeline of better Covid therapies and likely vaccines. His job will be
to extend this progress, not to send the country back into the despond
of April. If he does return to lockdowns, he’ll own the economic and
public-health consequences.
WSJ Opinion: The Case For Stopping the Covid-19 Lockdowns
0:00 / 7:13
4:24
WSJ Opinion: The Case For Stopping the Covid-19 Lockdowns
WSJ Opinion: The Case For Stopping the Covid-19 Lockdowns
Wonder Land: Leading epidemiologists have come together to write "The
Great Barrington Declaration," which urges a “Focused Protection”
strategy in managing the coronavirus, and has already been signed by
thousands of scientists. Images: Getty Composite: Mark Kelly
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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