Covid-19, or the Wuhan Flu, has changed our lives into some kind of Creeping Totalitarian Twilight Zone episode. Empty grocery store shelves, school, weddings and graduations cancelled, take-out food only. Unemployment claims reached a record 3.3 million claims last week, with even more expected this week. Most of us good, little patriots have been sequestered, voluntarily, in our homes for more than two weeks. Now, there is talk of a federally mandated shut down.
There has been talk about shutting down air travel around the edges for several weeks, but no one really took it seriously. And then, in today’s Covid-19 presser, Fox News’ John Roberts asked the question. He said flights are still going to hot spots and asked if that should stop. Yahoo News reported:
“We’re thinking about doing that, but at the same time we just, to start these airlines and to start this whole thing over again is very tough, John [Roberts, Fox News reporter]. It’s very tough,” Trump said. “And you have them going, in some cases, from hot spot to hot spot, if you noticed. Usually they’re hot spot to hot spot, very few flights, New York to Miami. But we’re certainly looking at it, but once you do that, you really are clamping down an industry that is desperately needed.”
President Trump admitted that he was considering a shut down on flights to and from hot spots in New York, Louisiana and Michigan.
Can you even imagine how many people would be thrown out of work by a move like that? It wouldn’t affect me because my loves are 250 miles away in Kentucky, but it’s not about me. There are 10.2 million people employed in the airline industry, according to Airline Benefits. Think about 10.2 million people being thrown out of work directly. And, that doesn’t include ancillary industries that would be affected. The cure is worse than the disease.
It’s a fact that Covid-19 is really, really contagious. There are over 200,000 infected and over 5000 deaths in the U.S.A. But, how many rights are we willing to have taken away from us to save lives.
Martha MacCallum of Fox News had an infectious diseases doctor by the name of Rishi Desai on her program who suggested a nationwide, federally mandated, two week shut down. In the video below, Dr. Desai appears at two minutes in:
Dr. Desai asserts that, as long as our sequester is voluntary, the disease will continue to spread. MacCallum mentions John Roberts’ air travel ban and Dr. Desai’s response is jaw-dropping. He says that we might find it “inspiring” to have a two week shut down. Yes, inspiring. Shut down air and rail travel and have the police driving around our neighborhoods making sure everyone is staying in their homes is not inspiring. That sounds like an Orwellian nightmare.
The doctor also mentions South Korea as a model. South Korea has done more testing, but they have a far smaller population. As Vox reported:
New daily confirmed cases there spiked to their highest level March 1 — at 730 per day — and then dropped off, reaching an average of just 92 new cases per day by March 30. (By comparison, the US had about the same number of reported new cases per day (777) on March 15 — and, as of March 30, had more than 18,000 new cases per day.)
To facilitate this massive undertaking, the country used GPS data from people’s phones (because your phone is better at remembering where you were and who you were near than you are). The approach raises privacy concerns, as Science pointed out, but it is also credited with helping to sharply curtail the country’s outbreak.
Yes, privacy concerns.
Notice one more thing. Dr. Desai prescribes a federally mandated, nationwide, shut down for two weeks, but that is just the beginning. He says that we cannot let up the pressure after two weeks. Do we extend for another week after that? Another two weeks? I cannot imagine that our country can withstand a two week shut down. In addition to the loss of income, the curve of the depression and anxiety would spike higher than the Covid-19 infections.
How many rights are we willing to throw away? The President is right to leave this to the individual states. Our Creeping Totalitarian Twilight Zone episode is killing us. The cure is worse than the disease.
Featured Image:
“DSC_0084” by RachidH is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
GWB says: He said flights are still going to hot spots and asked if that should stop.
Note: hot spots. Yes, those should have basically been shut down in the beginning.
One of the biggest problems with our current ‘handling’ of the situation is that we’re NOT quarantining, we’re putting the nation under house arrest. This is the totalitarian answer, not the medically smart answer.
Yes, we have a problem with determining who is actually sick. But even then, we should be quarantining those locations with actual problems (aka “hot spots”), and letting the rest of us keep things moving. Our medical resources should be flowing to the hot spots so they can maximize treatment.
But, yes, absolutely, they should have shut down the airports around Seattle, NYC, LA, and SF as soon as we knew the Chinese virus had escaped to our shores. A smart governor, an intelligent mayor, they would have shut down ingress and egress immediately and started asking for those resources to flow. Instead we got “Hey come to our beautiful, welcoming, inclusive, multicultural paradise of NYC and party with the Chinese here!”
After all, the virus can’t get up and walk to Indiana or West Virginia. It doesn’t waft on the Spring breeze from state to state. (Hell, the pollen in Virginia would kill it if it tried that.) It gets carried by human beings (and, evidently, cats?).
as long as our sequester is voluntary
Yes, the man has a totalitarian streak running through him. He also is, evidently, one of those people who will suffer no ill consequences from a shutdown. There’s plenty of those folks among the opining set. (Yes, he works for a medical education website, and worked before that for the CDC – who have a zero-tolerance mindset for disease. The man’s publications seem to be impressive. He’s also learning Mandarin. Huh.)
The President is right to leave this to the individual states.
And the states are often wrong in how they are handling it. But much better to have individual states be wrong than for the entire country to suffer under the ministrations of our national overlords.
GWB says: Oh, I should specify: You don’t have to entirely shut down the transportation. You merely insist on quarantine on arrival in or from “hot spots”. Two weeks of quarantine. Period. Or, you show medical evidence that you are not infected or are cured, and don’t carry any virus with you.
GWB says: Scott Johnson at Powerline asks it this way:
New York has 10 times more Wuhan virus cases per capita than the rest of the country. If banning travel from China made sense, why doesn’t it make sense to restrict the interstate travel of New Yorkers in some fashion?
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