So much is going on…
There are so many things going on right now that it’s hard to keep them straight.
The world is going to hell, the economy is crashing. Bodies are piling up in New York City, and the death toll across the nation is over 60,000. Worldwide, it passed 220,000.
Yet, there are signs the worst of it is over, and warnings that the virus will be coming back in the fall.
Our government is going on a spending spree that has made some millionaires a lot richer, saved an airline industry that people may no longer need, and we all wonder what the next Congress will do about the rest of the financial mess.
Lots of us think the President is an idiot. Yet he still has strong support from a lot of people — maybe a third of the country. And, they watch the news they like (just like we do) and they think we are the idiots.
So, I am going to tell you how this all came about. How we got to where we are, and how to get out of it.
Who am I to have all the answers? Well, I am a journalist. Or, I was one until I retired a few years ago.
Interesting question, though. Retired doctors are still called doctor. Retired judges are still called judge. Convicts released from prison are still viewed as criminals. So, can you someday stop being a former reporter, or are you always considered a journalist?
Or, as President Trump might call me, an unemployed dispenser of fake news.
But, I digress.
What is happening to nearly everyone — liberal, conservative, Democrat and Republican alike — is that we have lost our sense of perspective, and are violating an important rule of logic.
What rule? Let me tell you. In short, we have fallen victim to false dichotomies. Many false dichotomies.
Huh?
Let me explain. But, first, a definition. And thank you, Google, for providing one. “A dichotomy is a set of two mutually exclusive, jointly exhaustive alternatives.”
Huh, again.
It means that people have the remarkable ability to hold two ideas in their head at the same time, even when those ideas contradict each other. And both the ideas are extreme. Want an example? — I think the government has too much power, and they should leave me alone. Don’t you dare cut my Social Security.
Or how about these. You need a good education to get ahead in life. It doesn’t matter what you know. It’s who you know.
Get the point?
Politicians like dichotomies. They always put themselves on the side of right, and their opponents on the side of wrong. You have to open the economy, or people will lose their homes. You have to keep the country shut down, or the virus will kill thousands more.
Just pick a side. It doesn’t matter which one. Sadly, both those things are true. And, you can’t have one without the other. The more you relax health standards, the more people will be able to go to work, and the more people will get sick. It’s sad but true.
Now, some more cold hard truths. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread across the world. It got here from China, from Europe, from international tourists and from business travelers, from college students and from our own vacationers.
For a lot of people, the symptoms are mild or at least easy to manage, things like a mild fever. Because they have never been tested, we don’t know this for sure. And it is because so many people have only mild symptoms, it has spread massively.
The consequences for the unlucky people who do not have mild cases are really bad. We know of 220,000 cases in the U.S. so far — the numbers are updated daily — and about 62,000 deaths.
But, again, we haven’t tested everyone who died, and we certainly haven’t tested the families and friends of the victims who sought out medical care.
Even if we had enough tests to check out everyone — they’re talking about a million tests for a nation of 330 million — we would have to check some people every day, just to make sure they haven’t caught the disease before they go to work in a hospital.
We know closing down much of modern life, keeping people six feet away from anyone else, wearing a mask and washing our hands a lot has resulted in slowing down the rate of infection.
We also know it has been expensive. Hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to businesses, workers and seemingly any firm or group that has good lobbyists, lawyers and accountants.
Now, there is a great demand building up to open up the country again, to get business moving, to get back to normal. And, we still don’t have nearly enough tests to check out what happens when we do it.
What we do have are hospital beds and respirators, and undertakers.
So, what to do? Should people go through their life savings, then lose their home because they are out of work? Is that the price we pay for keeping our nation closed down, or should we do all we can — a very expensive alternative — to slow down the spread of the disease. Let’s open up as fast as we can. Let’s do it in states or counties where there hasn’t been an outbreak of the disease. That way, people will die. But, a lot of them will die somewhere else. Is that the price we are willing to pay?
Well, guess what. You have to do both. Our nation will do it. Every nation will do it. And we will all pay the price.
And, if you use a false dichotomies — like President Trump and a lot of his supporters — you will be paying twice as much, and get a lot less for it. Sadly, some people in the media have been doing the same thing. They should know better.
What do I mean? Well, when someone in public office says we have to keep the economic and social shut-down going, they reflexively ask “what about the people who need to work?”
When those office holders talk about bringing people back to work, some reporters automatically ask “what about public health?”
Do it once, and maybe you have a point. Do it every interview, and it gets old really quickly.
Now, time for some hope. But, first, some unpleasant facts.
There currently is no cure for coronavirus. There is currently no mass testing for it. And, it is very efficient in spreading. The best guess from scientists is that we will have to live with the threat for another year or longer.
Still, there are things we can do, and things we will do. We have already started to do better, and things are getting better, although frustratingly slowly.
So, why am I hopeful?
Well, this disease has pointed out some real flaws in our economy and the way we do things. It will no longer be a virtue to squeeze every last cent of profit from a company for fear it will be bought up by a hedge fund and ignore any long-range planning.
We are already starting to ask fundamental questions like “why are we supporting all those farmers and none of those restaurant workers?”
People who have been living on the edges — you know, the ones who live paycheck to paycheck — are starting to realize that isn’t good enough any more. And, they will have long memories, and vote against any politician who refuses to help them get things like health insurance and a living wage. Not just the one politician, mind you, but their whole party. Over and over again.
We are also getting a good look at ourselves. Are we the kind of person who hoards 30 six-packs of toilet paper when there are long lines of people waiting to buy just one?
On the other hand, we are beginning to understand all those relatives we made fun of for so many years because they kept beans and pasta and cans of soup in their pantry, just in case.
And, I suspect that the people who listen to cable and think this is all a hoax may be getting a little smarter. It’s fine to yell you want your job back and to open up your state. You can even be from a state in the middle of the country and think coronavirus is just a disease of the east and west coasts.
But, suddenly, you have no baseball and no basketball. At least none that you will be able to see in person. And if you make things or sell things or do anything else for a living, you are probably coming to realize that most of your customers are hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Those farm products have to be sent to cities where a lot of people have lost their jobs, and opening up your state won’t change that. Or, hey, maybe you work in the tourist industry and you need big crowds in the summer to get through the year.
Guess where those planeloads of tourists will be coming from. Not many people from Iowa regularly go on vacation to North Dakota.
