I suggested earlier that when the stock market, the one piece of data that Donald Trump really cares about and pays attention to, drops below the level that it was at when Trump took office, he would do something stupid in an effort to try and bring it up again. That point was reached on Friday when the index closed at 19,182 and after stewing over it over the weekend, yesterday in the daily press conference, he suggested that he is considering loosening the guidelines on the movement of people at the end of the 15-day that began on Monday the 16th, causing consternation among health care professionals.
He and his economic advisor Larry Kudlow are trying out a new slogan to justify this move, that “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” In other words, boosting the economy (which in his mind is synonymous with the stock market) is more important than saving lives.
The extraordinary scene on Capitol Hill came as Trump expressed an openness to scaling back his efforts to combat contagion. Writing in capital letters in a tweet late on Sunday, the US president said: “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. At the end of the 15-day period” – of White House guidelines to enforce physical distancing and other measures which began on 16 March – “we will make a decision as to which way we want to go.”
Vice-President Mike Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus taskforce, said earlier in the day the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would issue guidance on Monday meant to allow people already exposed to the coronavirus to return to work sooner.
…The shift in tone could foreshadow a clash between a White House alarmed by economic paralysis in an election year and public health experts urging caution. The US now has more than 39,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and more than 400 deaths.
Other health experts have echoed these concerns.
Observers noted that the head of NIH’s infectious diseases unit Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has had to correct Trump’s erroneous statements multiple times, was not invited by him to attend yesterday’s briefing. Trump is also saying this on the very same day that his own Surgeon General is warning that this week things are going to get bad.
US Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Monday gave a stark warning about the escalating coronavirus crisis, saying, “I want America to understand — this week, it’s gonna get bad.”
“As the nation’s doctor, I’m here to help America understand where we need to respond to this,” Adams told the “Today” show, saying that “every single second counts” in the fight against the pandemic.
“And right now there are not enough people out there who are taking this seriously,” he warned, pointing to people still getting together in parks and on beaches.
…“It means everyone needs to be taking the right steps right now. And that means stay at home.”
This article lays out in unvarnished terms the ugly cost-benefit thinking of Trump, who is being egged on by the Wall Street Journal editorial board and some senators.
How many lives is the world economy worth? That’s not a trite oversimplification. It is an open question being raised by President Donald Trump.
He is itching to scale back on social distancing as soon as possible and openly wondering if this is all worth it. The all-caps was his in a tweet Sunday: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”
…At the bottom of Trump’s tweet is a terrible calculus: How many lives is the economy worth? One thing we know, thanks to the groundbreaking work of husband-and-wife economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case: economic hopelessness kills people, too.
Trump made clear Monday that his preference is to open the country back up regardless of what doctors tell him. He said the shutdown will cause problems like suicides, and complained that the economy had been blazing before the virus hit.
…The Wall Street Journal, for instance, has become increasingly critical of the economic clampdown: “… no society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its overall economic health,” the Journal wrote in an editorial last week. “Even America’s resources to fight a viral plague aren’t limitless—and they will become more limited by the day as individuals lose jobs, businesses close, and American prosperity gives way to poverty.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, questioned lockdown last week, arguing we don’t shut down roadways because people die in traffic accidents.
That led Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, to point out that the alternative is a lot of people dying. “I don’t think with any moral conscience you could say, ‘Why don’t we just let it rip and happen and let X percent of the people die,'” Fauci said.
Trump is using a hypothetical possible rise in suicides if the shutdown continues to make it look as if he is concerned about saving lives when we know he does not care about it. Suicide is undoubtedly a serious problem for people who will face economic and health hardships because of this shutdown. But relaxing the guidelines also carries with it the risk of a second wave of infections.
I am not sure if wiser heads will be able to prevail upon Trump to not relax the rules. Sadly, whether they succeed or not may well depend on what the stock market does this week, rather than on the judgment of epidemiologists and other experts on dealing with pandemics.
Given the differences in population, the US appears to be just a few days behind the UK. Although given the lack of testing in the US, you could be a bit ahead.
But if your government doesn’t act now, in two weeks you’ll have thousands dead, and overflowing hospitals. And a couple of weeks after that you’ll have tens of thousands, and overflowing mortuaries.
The UK government is finally taking the actions it probably should have taken last week. I just hope that enough business and individuals follow the instructions and slow the transmission of the disease enough.
I’ve been working from home since yesterday.
Someone’s got to say it: if Dr. Trump tells people they can go back to work and shopping while all the real doctors say we shouldn’t, only his loyal sycophants will believe him while the rest of us will stay hunkered down. If it wasn’t for the collateral damage to our health care workers, that might not lead to bad outcomes — unfortunately, though, our heroic doctors will continue to put themselves on the front lines, even to save the terminally stupid. This does seem as if it could be building toward a moment when social Darwinism and politics intersect, though.
His bone spurs are acting up again.
A lot of people won’t have much choice, on account of needing to keep their jobs.
You could have correctly said “Trump is itching to do something dangerously stupid” at any moment throughout his entire life. But this is about much more than one person like Trump or just a few others. The ordinary, mundane, run-of-the-mill (but also terrifying) headline this time is that capitalists of all stripes are okay with murder and destruction for the sake of capitalism. They don’t usually put it so bluntly, and this isn’t quite the normal way that biological weapons have been used to conduct class warfare. But leaving details like that aside, the basic story hasn’t changed.
A serious question related to this. Which was worse, the 1918 flu, or the Great Depression? The 1918 flu was a bit worse than the current pandemic, with somewhat higher mortality rates and a greatly disproportionate effect on 25-30-year-olds. And if we do succeed in containing this with a lockdown, can we continue to contain it after the lockdown is lifted? China might tell us fairly soon. A vaccine probably isn’t coming for a while. If we need to maintain the lockdown for, say, 1-1.5 years, how many people will be homeless, how many poor kids won’t get an education, how many single parents will be unable to provide for their families? What is the practical limit on how long we can lock down?
If things had gone very differently in the US since January, we wouldn’t need a total lockdown like they had in China. (To be clear, we haven’t gone that far, and the ridiculous question on the table now is whether we’ll give up even on the weaker measures that we are taking.)
South Korea is a good model, but they were quick about testing loads of people and isolating the problem, as well as starting with a healthcare system the works for everyone. They did a whole lot of things right that we didn’t. We have shot ourselves in the foot. You can try to heal the wound, but what you can’t do is unshoot yourself.
We can relax things somewhat well before a vaccine is available, once we’ve gotten testing up to a reasonable level and once it’s not growing/spreading so rapidly all over the place. Right now, it’s like we’re a blindfolded person who’s trying to catch a cloud with an old fishing net.
Maybe it’s not what you intended, but your question seems to assume that, while all of this plays out, we’ll do nothing for ordinary people to ensure they will have homes, can get educations, can provide for their families, etc. That certainly doesn’t need to be our strategy, and that’s not what the progressive members of Congress are proposing.
“he is considering loosening the guidelines”
At least this one is easy -- the more people get ill and eventually die, the more the stock market will drop. Even Donald the Clown will get this. In the meantime he remains as amusing as always (though of course I have the advantage of not living in the USA).
“the ugly cost-benefit thinking of Trump”
Same remedy (only to be applied to Donald the Clown and his collaborators). Loosiening the guidelines will immensely raise the costs for the entire nation.
@PaulD: “The UK government is finally taking the actions it probably should have taken last week.”
Count yourself lucky. The Dutch government is bumping two-three weeks behind.
@ 6 tbrandt
. If we need to maintain the lockdown for, say, 1-1.5 years, how many people will be homeless, how many poor kids won’t get an education, how many single parents will be unable to provide for their families?
Close to none if you get the income support and social policies correct. The USA has the resources; it is strictly an allocation problem.
You might have to kill a few hundred or a couple of thousand politicians and capitalists but most of them are old anyway, right?
@consciousnessrazor
The poor typically get screwed the worst in any crisis, so that is my baseline assumption (that our response will be wholly inadequate for someone just getting by, especially if they have dependents). I hope I am wrong.
@jrkideau
I am very skeptical that we can do education well without open schools (you could argue that we don’t do it that well with open schools either, but that’s a different problem). For the politicians and capitalists, that’s a miracle of the current crisis. Unlike in a financial crisis or a war, the politicians and capitalists themselves are vulnerable. Especially the politicians, who aren’t jetting off to secret bunkers. It means we have a slim chance of actually getting something positive out of this.
Even if Pres. Chump convinces people to go back to work early, what does he think will happen to the economy when we end up with possibly millions dead and/or physically damaged? How does that help the economy? With all the crippled and broken families resulting, even Congress couldn’t appropriate enough money to do more than keep these families afloat. With little demand, jobs disappear, demand falls even more, and we’re caught in a perhaps fatal downward spiral, and we’ll drag the world down with us. The End.
@consciousness razor (#7)
That is also not what conservative members of Congress are proposing, but it is what they seem to intend.
Not strange that Dr. Fauci vanished from the lineup. There was an interview with him that made Trump look bad.
@tbrandt(#6):
The reason that the 1918 flu seems worse is because most of the world still has the beds needed for people who require hospital care due to getting infected with COVID-19 (and that kind of care is way better, even in poor countries, then what was available in 1918). The moment the need for triage kicks in 10% (well 12% based on what is happening in Italy) of the people getting the virus will die. This means that just in the US alone the projected number of deaths is 20 million to 30 million. The 1918 flu killed 1 in 18 people (100 million dead on a world population of 1.8 billion). COVID-19 is slated to kill 1 in 16.5 at the lower bound once triage is needed.
At the current rate that cases in the US increase (30% more new cases then the day before) the triage point is 2 to 3 weeks from now. Even with the measures taken to combat spread the best case is that the measures reduce the speed of spreading. That is fairly significant on it’s own, halving the increase of new cases (15%) means the number of new cases doubles every 5 days and doesn’t increase with a 3.72 multiplier every 5 days. Which means another 11 to 18 days to prepare for the point where triage is needed.
@mnb0(#8):
It is worse with the Dutch government. Even after that debacle of people basically ignoring the suggestion of not grouping together since they now have free time and the weather is nice, they think that enough people in the country are not misbehaving self entitled egoistical (wo)manchildren (see for example the teenager who went what do I care I won’t die to this) that the government can ask the population to solve the issues on their own instead of putting their foot down and sending everyone to their bedroom until they learn to behave.
@WhoCares
Citation needed. I agree that this will be bad, but I think that the consensus for the proportion requiring hospitalization is much lower once mild, often-undetected infections are taken into account. Penn Medicine’s predictive tool default is now a hospitalization rate of 2.5% and an ICU rate of about 1%:
https://github.com/CodeForPhilly/chime/issues/221
If we have to aggressively triage, maybe half of the hospitalizations and most of the ICU patients die (as a wild guess); this would be consistent with a case fatality rate of 1-2%, or maybe 1-3 million deaths in the US assuming half the population becomes infected. That’s still very bad of course!