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So when I last visited this blogging editor, I complained about people making accusations of \u201ceuthanasia\u201d towards others who worried about the economic impacts of our response to COVID-19.\u00a0 As time passes, I continue to worry, and my concerns increase, about the economic impact of our COVID response.<\/p>\n
You probably know the drill:\u00a0 projections of chaos in hospitals, of old folks being denied ventilators, of patients being triaged, and worse, are not coming to pass.\u00a0 Elective surgeries have been cancelled (and elective, by the way, means not just knee replacements but cancer biopsies and other medical treatments the postponement of which causes real harm to people) to clear out hospitals but they, in turn, are not clogged with patients, and we\u2019re varyingly told that this is because the worst is yet to come, or that this less-than-worst-case situation is due to the shut-down we\u2019re experiencing, and proof that it\u2019s saved lives \u2014 but it\u2019s also the case that the mathematical model being used to project deaths and hospitalizations is, well, a single model, which hasn\u2019t been scrutinized in a \u201cpeer review\u201d sort of manner, so we don\u2019t really know how valid it is.\u00a0 (Sorry for the lack of links in the above.\u00a0 But here\u2019s a link to the model everyone\u2019s talking about<\/a>, and the closest to a discussion of methodology is a paper in which they discuss their calculations<\/a>; it\u2019s all a black box which we are called on to trust, and this may be Standard Operating Procedures for this sort of forecasting and other academics may not have a robust culture of \u201cverifying others\u2019 calculations\u201d because of the push to do your own, novel work, but this matters a lot more than your generic data analysis.)<\/p>\n And of greater concern to me than the use of a model that hasn\u2019t been thoroughly scrutinized, is the fact that we have a government chock-full of Representatives and Senators who really have no idea how to respond to this.\u00a0 They are neither economists nor epidemiologists, but they are political ideologues.\u00a0 \u00a0The House version of the \u201cround 3\u201d bill,\u00a0abandoned in favor of the Senate CARES Act, included such choice items<\/a> as a \u201ccash for clunker aircraft,\u201d mandates for $15 per hour pay and employee-elected board members.\u00a0 The final version of the bill provided for 4 months of bonus unemployment benefits of $600\/week<\/a> (that\u2019s equivalent to $15 per hour), not \u201cup to one\u2019s prior salary\u201d but in addition to other benefits without regard for prior salary, so that very large numbers of people will \u201cearn\u201d more by remaining unemployed.\u00a0 I already saw an acquaintance vent on Facebook that her small business is at risk \u2014 due to lack of work and inability to pay employees, she had sent them home, but she needs to be able to rehire them, that is, put them back on the payroll even if they don\u2019t work, in order to qualify for the small-business loan forgiveness program.\u00a0 If they refuse to come back because they\u2019d rather collect the higher amount from the government, then she can\u2019t meet the \u201ckeep payroll unchanged\u201d requirement, she can\u2019t pay back the loan that is no longer forgiveable because she doesn\u2019t meet the requirements, and that\u2019s one more small business that folds.\u00a0 (To be honest, the only small sliver of a silver lining that I see in this is that the $600 per week benefit has so many undesirable impacts on the labor market that Congress is chastened and recognizes that its actions can have really awful consequences quite the opposite of their intentions.)<\/p>\n All of which brings me to a haircut \u2014 namely, that of Mayor Lightfoot<\/a>:<\/p>\n Mayor Lori Lightfoot defended getting a haircut over the weekend even though barbers and stylists were shut down under the state\u2019s stay-at-home order, saying she\u2019s the face of the city and the woman who cut her hair wore a mask.<\/p>\n Asked about photos on social media showing her with a stylist, Lightfoot acknowledged getting a haircut, then said the public cares more about other issues. . . .<\/p>\n In response to a follow-up question, she said, \u201cThe woman who cut my hair had a mask and gloves on so we are, I am practicing what I\u2019m preaching.\u201d . . . .<\/p>\n a visibly annoyed Lightfoot said, \u201cI\u2019m the public face of this city. I\u2019m on national media and I\u2019m out in the public eye.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut,\u201d Lightfoot said. \u201cI\u2019m not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Which causes a Facebook-friend who normally posts pictures of girls\u2019 nights out, to rant \u2014 because she is a hair stylist who is unable to work.<\/p>\n Because, of course, if it is safe and appropriate and \u201cpracticing what [she\u2019s] preaching\u201d for Lightfoot to get a haircut if the stylist has a mask and gloves (did Lightfoot wear a mask as well?), then why wouldn\u2019t it be safe and appropriate for my Facebook-friend to cut hair of those who are less politically powerful, taking the same precautions?<\/p>\n Which gets me to face masks.\u00a0 I\u2019d already given some to the staff at mom and dad\u2019s assisted living community, and a smattering of other people in the community (some for a local pediatrician and her staff, some for a friend who works in an \u201cessential business,\u201d some for grocery-store workers).\u00a0 Sunday night a friend gave me a sheet which had been downgraded from family use due to stains but was otherwise in good condition (as opposed to sheets in my household which get downgraded when they\u2019re so threadbare they wouldn\u2019t make for appropriate masks) and which, unlike the other fabric I had at hand, didn\u2019t have flowers or other \u201ccute\u201d designs, but was just a neutral grey, and I spent yesterday cutting and sewing and, well, I don\u2019t have any masks that are finished yet, but I have 8 that are nearly done, and another 12 ready-to-sew.<\/p>\n And my plan for these is not to add them to the collections various doctors\u2019 offices, retirement communities, and elsewhere, are undertaking \u2014 my intention is, when I have enough finished, to get these out to the community in some fashion, say, people in the city who have \u201cessential\u201d jobs and especially those who need to take mass transit to get there.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t quite figured this out yet, but I am increasingly convinced that the only way we get to the other side of the shut-down is through mask wearing \u2014 both insofar as routine public mask-wearing reduces transmission and because it convinces politicians that this is a potential path forward, if they see people doing so.\u00a0 At some point these masks would come from factories, but right now the focus is on producing items for medical use.\u00a0 To be honest, I\u2019m even concerned that if public fabric-face-mask wearing does not become the norm through home sewers, then the supplies made for healthcare workers, once that need is met through mass-produced products, are at risk of being discarded by hospitals and other insitutions who can\u2019t think beyond their first use and who are accustomed to everything being disposable.<\/p>\n When it comes down to it \u2014 I can write an article on retirement and hope for some readership, and that\u2019s coming later today, but I can\u2019t write an article saying \u201cmask-wearing by the general public, to the best of my understanding, offers the best hope as a path foward towards regaining some normalcy rather than a complete destruction of people\u2019s livelihoods\u201d and expect it to get particularly many readers.\u00a0 So I sew.\u00a0 Slowly and painfully, to be sure, with, it seems, endless struggles with getting the machine to work, and picking out seams when the tension unexpectedly goes haywire, and repeatedly looking for places I may have missed oiling, and adjustments I can make, but it\u2019s about the only meaningful thing I can do at the moment.<\/p>\n And with that, I open the comments up with the question:\u00a0 how are you being affected?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n P.S.\u00a0 For my own family, I was fortunate to get some Marvel-print fabric at Walmart while they still had 100% cotton in stock.\u00a0 And it was pretty much luck that it ended up with Iron Man at the center; my focus was getting as much from the fat quarter as possible.\u00a0 For the interested, I used the \u201cDeaconess<\/a>\u201d pattern but with ties rather than elastic and with a variation described in this video<\/a> which has a pocket to insert a filter rather than just relying on layers of fabric.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n own work<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So when I last visited this blogging editor, I complained about people making accusations of \u201ceuthanasia\u201d towards others who worried about the economic impacts of our response to COVID-19.\u00a0 As time passes, I continue to worry, and my concerns increase, about the economic impact of our COVID response. You probably know the drill:\u00a0 projections of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1418,1425],"class_list":["post-16774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coronavirus","tag-stimulus"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"fabric](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2020\/04\/Face-mask.jpg\")
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