REALITY BASED EDUCATOR ANSWERS THE FOLKS WHO WANT TO OPEN UP

Guest blogger Reality Based Educator has responded at my request to the commenters who want us to open up the country. RBE used to write the Perdido Street School blog, the best combination: education, labor, politics blog around. These days you can find him on Twitter. He doesn't hold back.

I live by the rule that Americans are the dumbest people on the planet and you'll never go broke betting on how stupid they are.

Take this question of when the United States should end social distancing measures and fully "re-open" the economy.

Protests are bubbling up all over America, from New York, where a few dozen stood in the rain with signs like "Our Rights Are Essential!" while not socially distancing or wearing masks (though many carried umbrellas because apparently drizzle is quite harmful to them), to Orange County, California, where an estimated 2,500 chanted "No Newsom!" and demanded the governor reopen the beaches.

One thing you'll notice at these rallies is that there seems to be a good amount of overlap between the MAGA crowd and the "Re-Open America!" crowd, with a nice contingent of neo-Nazis and Michigan militia members carrying guns thrown in for good measure.

That's not a surprise, really, because many (though not all) of the "Re-Open America!" calls are coming from wingnuts and Republicans scared witless that the economic consequences of the social distancing measures are not only going to bring defeat to Trump in November, they're going to devastate the GOP at all levels.

Well, all I can say is, they should have thought about all of that BEFORE Covid19 hit the nation with a broadside, when China had shut down Hubei Province (approximately 60 million people) with extraordinary measures and the Diamond Princess cruise ship was seeing exponential growth of positive Covid19 cases off the coast of Japan and the Lombardy section of Italy was starting to see its hospitals overrun with patients and its morgues overrun with Covid19 dead.

But instead, the Trump administration, and many winger supporters, downplayed the seriousness of the outbreak, claimed it was "contained...pretty close to airtight" as Trump advisor Larry Kudlow said on TV, and would "miraculously disappear by April," as Donald Trump himself said during a TV appearance.

But Covid19 didn't miraculously disappear by April.

Instead, here we are on May 4, with the country STILL not having peaked with Covid19 cases or deaths, even though we've had many states shut down since mid-to-late March.

There was an expectation that social distancing measures would help the country see a peak and then decrease in cases and deaths, as has happened in other countries, but instead case numbers and deaths are still rising in at least 20 states around the country.

In fact, if you take the NYC Tri-State area, which has seen a peak and then a sharp decrease in deaths, hospitalizations and case numbers out of the count, the U.S. hasn't flattened its curve at all.

Clearly something is wrong with how we are handling this crisis.

Yet I see wingers passing around some Hill column from Dr. Scott Atlas, a doctor and member of the Hoover Institute (you know, the think tank started by that fine president who made a depression into the Great Depression because he held fast to his libertarian views on the economy) as a blueprint for reopening.

The gist of the piece is that it's time to reopen, social distancing measures are doing more harm than good and we can protect those most at risk while still restarting the economy and recovering from the worst of the downturn.

Here's the problem with that - it's not true.

The NY Times today reported that the Trump administration's own internal numbers show they believe a peak won't come until June 1, when the United States will experience 3,000 deaths from Covid19-related conditions a day (the current daily total is a little under 2,000 a day right now, based on a three day rolling average.)

Let's do the math on that, shall we?

3,000 deaths a day becomes 90,000 deaths a month.

That assumes that the 3,000 deaths a day remains steady because the rate hits a plateau, but let's be optimistic, let's say once the peak is hit, the rate decreases quickly to 2,500 by mid-June and 2,000 by late June.

You're STILL looking at somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 deaths a month, and, given that states are reopening now and not continuing social distancing measures to any great extent, there's no reason to think that a June 1 peak will see a rapid decrease off that peak.

The country currently has 68,326 deaths (per Johns Hopkins, 3:45 PM on 5/4)

Add in the 1,900 a day we're getting into a June peak + the 3,000 deaths a day at the peak + the 2000+ a day we're getting on the way down from the peak  and you're looking at hundreds of thousands dead even BEFORE cold/flu season in fall, when the second wave is expected to hit (as it did w/ Spanish Flu in 1918.)

And even if we get even more optimistic and say that these new internal Trump administration prognostications are wildly inaccurate and unvetted (as a Trump spokesperson said in response to the the Times story), the model the Trump administration likes to publicly tout for its numbers, the IHME model, just raised its estimates for Covid19 deaths through August to 134,475.

The Trumpies like to rely on the IHME model because it appears to have an optimism bias and has consistently under-counted death counts as a result but when even the most optimistic of models which Trump administration officials have been touting has raised its projections, tell me again why reopening is such a good idea given the worst isn't over yet?

The guy who wrote The Hill piece relies on the talking point that most people who get Covid19 won't die from it, just those who are most at risk - like older people and people with underlying conditions. He says we can protect those people and STILL open the economy for the rest.

But he fails to tell readers that dying from Covid19 isn't the only risk to people who get it. So is permanent lung damage, heart damage, kidney/liver damage and stroke risk.

See here 

And here 

And here 

Covid-19 does MAJOR damage to some people without underlying conditions who aren't in high risk groups - and doctors have no idea why.

Also, it's not like you just recover and it's all over.

You get a serious case, it takes weeks to recover, it's on a continuum, with symptoms going from bad to better to bad again, and you have to be hoping during that Day 5 to Day 10 period that the symptoms don't go from bad to REALLY bad, because that's when many end up on the ventilators.

As for the idea that we can protect the old and people with underlying conditions (obesity, asthma, diabetes, etc) by socially distancing "healthy" people from them while we run our full economy, has Dr. Atlas gotten a look at this country lately?

42.4% of adults in this country are obese.

That's from the CDC.

That's an awful lot of people with an underlying condition, isn't it?

And even if you're willing to write off the old and the fat and the diabetic and the asthmatic cuz' hey, they're just gonna have to sacrifice for the rest of us, there is a good number of people who aren't old or fat or diabetic or asthmatic who get Covid19 and end up really, really sick.

Anecdotally, you get the Ironman triathlete who almost dies from this or the Broadway actor/dancer who has his leg amputated because doctors couldn't control the Covid19-related clots that were forming or the 39-year old DJ with no underlying conditions who dies from it.

So, just because you're not old, fat, diabetic, asthmatic, etc., don't assume that if you get Covid19, it's assured that you just recover and it's all over.

You get a serious case, it can take weeks to recover or you can end up like the Ironman triathlete, Broadway actor/dancer or healthy 39-year old DJ.

To bring it back full circle, I'm under no illusion that wingers can be convinced that reopening the economy is more harmful to the country than continuing the social distancing measures, but quite frankly, even if every governor re-opened every part of her/his state's economy tomorrow, the economy is not going back to normal.

People are scared to go out in numbers like they used to and do things like they used to before this - you see that from Texas and Georgia, with the restaurants, bars, retail, etc. reopening, but people not exactly flocking to them.

You also see that in the polling.

So, reopen all you want, even though the country hasn't seen its first-wave Covid19 peak yet, even though the Trump administration expects the peak to bring 3,000 deaths a day and just ordered 100,000 body bags to get ready for the expected surge in deaths around the country, people aren't going to return the economy to normal anyway.

What people want is to feel safe, to know that if they contract Covid19, there is a drug that will mitigate the worst of the symptoms, that if they go to work or the mall, they can be reasonably assured that they are not coming in contact with positive cases, which means having the testing and contact tracing in place to quickly fence in localized outbreaks as they happen.

You want to reopen the economy, wingers - then get THOSE things done and you can and people will happily follow along.

But of course the Trump administration did NOTHING to prepare for the outbreak despite having been told by the intelligence services as early as November that this was coming here and it was going to be bad, so they've instead decided "Screw it, we need to reopen even though we're putting many people at risk and almost certainly worsening the outbreak by keeping the peak/plateau going on long past it should be..."

And the wingnuts on Fox News/talk radio and at the Hoover Institute are happy to give them cover, but you'll notice that they're doing it from the socially distanced-safety of their own homes via webcam.


Don't be a dumb American - don't listen to them.