A Journal of the Plague Year

This lockdown and this virus scare has gone on too long. People are getting cranky. There was supposed to be a happy ending by now.

So much for the newfound sense of unity, the sense that we are all in this together, humanity against a common enemy. Now everyone is looking for scapegoats.

I don’t see much wrong with scapegoating the government of China. I don’t see much wrong with scapegoating the WHO. Only that it is a distraction from the task at hand.

But I think it’s wrong to scapegoat the experts, or the various governments, or Donald Trump, for calling for the shutdown.

Yes, the virus seems less deadly than we thought. But they did not know that when they shut things down. Caution seems wise in the face of the unknown; the downside was too terrible.

People point to Sweden, which has not locked down, and seems to be doing well. Reasonably well, true, but who knew it would?

And after all, compare Sweden’s death toll to date with those of similar, neighbouring countries. Sweden has a death rate of 213 per million. Denmark has 70 per million. Norway has 37 per million. Finland has 32 per million. Not locking down seems to have cost Sweden five times as many deaths to date. The US as of today lists 52,217 total deaths. No lockdown makes that 260,000. That’s double the number of Americans who died in World War 1, and counting. Was the US lockdown worth saving 200,000 lives? Was the Canadian lockdown worth saving about 20,000?

But the real risk was of something worse. The experience of Italy and Spain was of health care systems being overwhelmed, and people dying without care. The essential thing, the reason for the lockdown, was to prevent that. Without care, for coronavirus or for other illnesses generally, how high might that death toll have gone?

Now, granted, it is time to start opening things back up. It is a grievous shame that we do not yet have an effective treatment, but we cannot afford to stay closed down much longer. That is just what American governments, and some governments elsewhere, are about to do.

Some are blaming the medical experts, for giving us false information about the effectiveness of masks, for getting their predictions of deaths and respirator use wrong. I have argued elsewhere that they have in fact been perfectly consistent on face masks. On deaths and respirator use, they could not perform magic; people think science is magical. They were mostly guessing, like all of us, based on many unknowns.

On the left, there is a manic urge to scapegoat Trump. Early on in the spread of the virus, he was blamed for taking the threat too seriously; now he is blamed for not taking it seriously enough from the start. In a couple of weeks, as the virus proves less deadly, or effective treatments are found, he will no doubt be blamed again for taking it too seriously.

He seems to have cleverly played on this: first announcing he as president had total power to end the lockdown, evoking hysterical protests. That was an obvious ploy, something provocative he had no reason to say. But the media and the left immediately fell for it. They began objecting loudly that Trump was trying to grab power away from the states. Then Trump announced that individual governors would decide. This is surely what he wanted to do all along: national plans like this do not materialize in a day or two. It seems the most sensible approach, given the basic premise of reopening piecemeal. And best of all, Trump avoids all electoral blame for either opening up too early, killing people, or staying shut too late, wrecking the local economy. Why take that heat if you can farm it out to the governors?

Had he started with this position, there would have been howls of protest, that he was abdicating responsibility. Now nobody can object.

Trump may not be that smart, but he is at least twice as smart as his critics.

The current furor is that Trump casually asked at a press conference about using disinfectants internally. He perhaps misspoke—by definition, “disinfectant” means something not used internally. But what sane person would care?

Testing by the US Department of Homeland Security now shows the virus is sensitive to heat, humidity, and sunlight. This explains why Australia and New Zealand have done so well; why Southeast Asia, right next to China and underdeveloped, has done so much better than Europe. This also means we should get a significant abatement of the epidemic within the next few months, here in the heavily populated Northern Hemisphere. We can perhaps augment this by putting UV lighting in public places.

We have until October or so to build up a testing and quarantine regimen, perhaps more effective treatments, perhaps even a vaccine. Our testing, at least, is getting much better very fast, and this alone could make all the difference.