#1 I am inclined to believe COVID-19 is for serious.<\/strong><\/h3>\nIt can be tough to decipher the reality behind news out of China.\u00a0 Frankly it\u2019s tough to decipher the reality behind any click-provoking, ad-selling story picked up by the modern media.\u00a0 But here is something fairly rare: China, South Korea, Japan, Iran, and Italy\u00a0all<\/em> went into freak-out mode once a critical number of local COVID-19 cases emerged.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s a pretty diverse slice of geopolitics right there.\u00a0 Five different economic, social, and governmental cultures.\u00a0 Matching reactions.\u00a0 That tells me something is afoot.<\/p>\n
In terms of statistics, of the early-outbreaking nations my money is on South Korea for the most reliable figures.\u00a0 My hypothesis is that South Korea had the strongest motivation to test early and often; it has a modern medical system and a relatively healthy populace; and in terms of the reputation of the government for open, democratic livin\u2019, it\u2019s not China or Iran.<\/p>\n
Ditto Italy and Japan on the latter two criteria, but I have a sneaking suspicion both those nations were taken more by surprise, whereas it seems to me<\/em>, looking at this issue\u00a0from my armchair as a person who hasn\u2019t looked closely at international foreign policy in many, many years,<\/em> South Korea saw this coming.<\/p>\nSo I\u2019m guessing our best early numbers for patterns of infection, morbidity, and mortality are whatever we see in South Korea.<\/p>\n
#2 Quarantine works.<\/strong><\/h3>\nFrom\u00a0Disease Control Priorities: Improving Health and Reducing Poverty<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\nThe practice of quarantine began in the fourteenth century in response to the Black Death and continues today (Mackowiak and Sehdev 2002<\/a>). Quarantine and social distancing (such as the prohibition of mass gatherings) during the 1918 influenza pandemic reduced spread and mortality rates, particularly when implemented in the early stages of the pandemic (Bootsma and Ferguson 2007<\/a>;\u00a0Hollingsworth, Ferguson, and Anderson 2006<\/a>). During SARS and Ebola outbreaks, health agencies and hospitals limited disease spread by isolating symptomatic patients, quarantining patient contacts, and improving hospital infection control practices (Cohen and others 2016<\/a>;\u00a0Twu and others 2003<\/a>). During the 2003 SARS pandemic, none of the health care workers in hospitals in Hong Kong SAR, China, who reported appropriate and consistent use of masks, gloves, gowns, and hand washing (as recommended under droplet and contact precautions) were infected (Seto and others 2003<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\nFor an illness like COVID-19, which seems likely to become endemic, the chief benefit of quarantine is\u00a0slowing<\/em> the spread of\u00a0 infection.\u00a0 This matters because everyone benefits if you can avoid overwhelming your healthcare system. From the same source:<\/p>\nWhen pandemics cause large morbidity and mortality spikes, they are much more likely to overwhelm health systems. Overwhelmed health systems and other indirect effects may contribute to a 2.3-fold increase in all-cause mortality during pandemics, although attribution of the causative agent is difficult (Simonsen and others 2013<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\nSlowing the spread of disease has many potential benefits:<\/p>\n
\n- Shortages of medicines and supplies are lessened because manufacturers can hope to keep pace with increased demand if the incidence of infections and complications is spread out over time.<\/li>\n
- Healthcare workers not only therefore have better access to protective equipment, they can also\u00a0stay healthier<\/em> if they are not overworked.<\/li>\n
- Later-affected localities have more time to learn about the course of the disease and ideal treatments and precautions.\u00a0 There is more time to train healthcare and public safety workers.<\/li>\n
- The depth of assistance for an affected community or affected persons within a community is far greater if not everyone is overwhelmed by the illness at the same time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
So while quarantine and self-isolation measures have significant social and economic costs, those costs may be well worth enduring.<\/p>\n
#3 Human beings are not omniscient.<\/strong><\/h3>\nThis is why the insurance industry exists.<\/p>\n
I live in hurricane country.\u00a0 Year after year we face the constant questioning of whether the most recent storm brewing in the Atlantic is gonna be the next Hugo or Andrew or Katrina.\u00a0 And if so, where\u2019s it going to hit?\u00a0 Who\u2019s it going to hurt?<\/p>\n
For state governments, there\u2019s a fine balance between failing to act and getting slammed by casualties versus over-reacting too often and becoming the Governor Who Cried Wolf.\u00a0 This is not easy.<\/p>\n
In the face of an Ebola or a SARS or a COVID-19, the natural course of prudence is to watch attentively, be a little\u00a0too<\/em> careful at first, and gradually relax precautions as the coast clears.<\/p>\nRegardless of whether a given disease proves to be the next bubonic plague or the next round of sniffles, even if we do everything exactly right, there are economic costs to widespread illness.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at what\u2019s going down with COVID-19.<\/p>\n
#4 Economic statistics are imperfect measures.<\/strong><\/h3>\nWe need to distinguish between types of economic loss.\u00a0 Parsing all this out is complex, so don\u2019t get all huffy in the next few paragraphs.<\/p>\n
Some preliminaries:<\/p>\n
\n- Figures like GDP<\/a> or Unemployment measure monetized transactions on the legal market.\u00a0 That means that any work that is unpaid, or that is paid for but not reported, doesn\u2019t get \u201ccounted.\u201d This will matter in a second.<\/li>\n
- Not every quantified economic activity is an equal measure of wealth-generation.\u00a0 If you spend money building a house where there previously was none, that expense represents an increase in wealth quite different from if you spend the same amount of money replacing a house just destroyed in a fire.\u00a0 Both are work.\u00a0 Both represent the creation of wealth.\u00a0 But in the one case you are wealthier than before; in the other you are only replacing wealth that was destroyed.<\/li>\n
- Numbers like stock market valuations are measures of expectations; only indirectly do they measure prosperity.\u00a0 However, because many people and institutions depend on stock market investments to fund long-term savings, there is fallout from market downturns.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
So if we look at COVID-19, some of the effects of quarantine have no impact on the real wealth of human beings.\u00a0 Let\u2019s begin with a red dinosaur.<\/p>\n
![\"Me](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/421\/2020\/02\/IMG_20200228_131717339-e1582914103514-225x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn the photo, which is a communal Lenten penance of unknown duration<\/a>, I am holding a small plush toy made in Lianyungang, China<\/a>. My daughter spied these at Aldi a year ago, regretted never purchasing one, and this year when they showed up again on the Valentine\u2019s impulse-buy shelves she splurged.\u00a0 In fact she eventually bought up the entire stock of leftover dinosaurs in our community and bestowed them on friends, family, and willing buyers, thus creating a Dinosaur Club.\u00a0 At 99 cents a piece, she thereby added<\/a> a solid twelve bucks to GDP.<\/p>\nQuarantine measures have since shut down certain Chinese manufacturers.\u00a0 In terms of human flourishing, the loss of red plush dinosaurs is a non-happening.\u00a0 We the dinosaur-custodians are no better or worse off owning an accounted-for plush toy versus owning, say, a sock puppet created at home from salvaged scraps.<\/p>\n
In contrast, the loss of basic medicine, essential supplies, and certain durable goods due to quarantine shut-downs is indeed a direct loss of genuine wealth in the form of goods that measurably add to human flourishing in a tangible way.<\/p>\n
In the same way, in terms of human well-being for the consumer, it does not matter if one purchases dinner out or makes it at home, if both meals are equally nutritious \u2014 even though one will register a much higher number on economic indicators than the other.<\/p>\n
That \u201cfor the consumer\u201d\u00a0 qualification is of course the big problem with quarantine. For the supplier, the loss of sales hits home hard.<\/p>\n
#5 Quarantine puts people out of work who can\u2019t afford to be out of work.<\/strong><\/h3>\nThe owner of a massive business selling luxury goods or services (and yes, that red dinosaur is a luxury good \u2014 it fills a want, not a need; the needs it does fill could as easily be met through a rag doll and a big hug from a friend) is unlikely to sustain any long term damage if his or her business is run well.\u00a0 Yes, there will be a hit to profits.\u00a0 But for the owners of large businesses maintaining adequate cash reserves, there will be plenty of opportunity to rake in the millions or billions some other year.\u00a0 It\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n
Who gets hurt when the luxury-economy gets shut down? Employees and marginal business-owners.\u00a0 Low-wage factory, retail, and service-industry workers are unlikely to have the savings necessary to simply not work for weeks on end, and are unlikely to be able to work from home.\u00a0 Small business owners living week-to-week on scant revenues, including many farmers, are in the same boat.<\/p>\n
So although quarantine is\u00a0overall<\/em> better for the health and well-being of everyone, it also creates instant-poverty for wage-earners and certain entrepreneurs who are kept from working or who lose their customer base.<\/p>\n#6 What this means is you have to go into Advanced Rerum Novarum<\/em><\/a>\u00a0Mode.<\/strong><\/h3>\nTemporary disruptions call for temporary measures of charity above and beyond the usual, preferred, free-market solutions.<\/p>\n
At the most local level, if you have the money to prep for quarantine<\/a>, you need to be ready to assist those who can\u2019t afford to do so.\u00a0 If your local foodbank is in fact prepared to deliver goods to clients under quarantine, that\u2019s a good destination for cash donations.\u00a0 Otherwise, it behooves us to simply\u00a0expect<\/em> that there will be a need to\u00a0directly feed your less-wealthy neighbors<\/em> in a situation where your apartment complex or subdivision is put on lockdown.<\/p>\nRegionally, health care providers can put in place free or sliding-scale screening and treatment stations.\u00a0 Hospitals can\u00a0choose to waive<\/em> bills for patients who cannot afford treatment and need it (and additionally they can set aside the usual over-pricing rigamarole<\/a> that characterizes American healthcare for those who do have the ability to pay).<\/p>\nAt the state and federal level, bankruptcy, criminal, and civil laws can be reformed to take into account both the temporary hit from emergency quarantine measures and the longterm regulatory biases that unduly penalize the poor.<\/p>\n
#7 The Church will not lack for work.<\/strong><\/h3>\nI\u2019m cynical.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t noticed state and federal governments being super-effective at protecting the poor thus far, and I doubt Coronavirus is going to change that.\u00a0 I predict we\u2019ll see a few grand gestures, some of them genuinely helpful, but for the most part the priority of our rulers will remain with keeping the servant-class just hale enough to continue churning out the services.<\/p>\n
Thus, no matter how much we imagine the government will save us, the Church will still have to fill in the gaps.\u00a0 The need for practical assistance through crisis situations<\/a> is only going to grow.<\/p>\nFor a financially-solvent upper middle class family, quarantine may require some digging into emergency savings.\u00a0 Not a big deal. That\u2019s why we have emergency savings.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a pretty diverse slice of geopolitics right there.\u00a0 Five different economic, social, and governmental cultures.\u00a0 Matching reactions.\u00a0 That tells me something is afoot.<\/p>\n
In terms of statistics, of the early-outbreaking nations my money is on South Korea for the most reliable figures.\u00a0 My hypothesis is that South Korea had the strongest motivation to test early and often; it has a modern medical system and a relatively healthy populace; and in terms of the reputation of the government for open, democratic livin\u2019, it\u2019s not China or Iran.<\/p>\n
Ditto Italy and Japan on the latter two criteria, but I have a sneaking suspicion both those nations were taken more by surprise, whereas it seems to me<\/em>, looking at this issue\u00a0from my armchair as a person who hasn\u2019t looked closely at international foreign policy in many, many years,<\/em> South Korea saw this coming.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m guessing our best early numbers for patterns of infection, morbidity, and mortality are whatever we see in South Korea.<\/p>\n From\u00a0Disease Control Priorities: Improving Health and Reducing Poverty<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n The practice of quarantine began in the fourteenth century in response to the Black Death and continues today (Mackowiak and Sehdev 2002<\/a>). Quarantine and social distancing (such as the prohibition of mass gatherings) during the 1918 influenza pandemic reduced spread and mortality rates, particularly when implemented in the early stages of the pandemic (Bootsma and Ferguson 2007<\/a>;\u00a0Hollingsworth, Ferguson, and Anderson 2006<\/a>). During SARS and Ebola outbreaks, health agencies and hospitals limited disease spread by isolating symptomatic patients, quarantining patient contacts, and improving hospital infection control practices (Cohen and others 2016<\/a>;\u00a0Twu and others 2003<\/a>). During the 2003 SARS pandemic, none of the health care workers in hospitals in Hong Kong SAR, China, who reported appropriate and consistent use of masks, gloves, gowns, and hand washing (as recommended under droplet and contact precautions) were infected (Seto and others 2003<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For an illness like COVID-19, which seems likely to become endemic, the chief benefit of quarantine is\u00a0slowing<\/em> the spread of\u00a0 infection.\u00a0 This matters because everyone benefits if you can avoid overwhelming your healthcare system. From the same source:<\/p>\n When pandemics cause large morbidity and mortality spikes, they are much more likely to overwhelm health systems. Overwhelmed health systems and other indirect effects may contribute to a 2.3-fold increase in all-cause mortality during pandemics, although attribution of the causative agent is difficult (Simonsen and others 2013<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Slowing the spread of disease has many potential benefits:<\/p>\n So while quarantine and self-isolation measures have significant social and economic costs, those costs may be well worth enduring.<\/p>\n This is why the insurance industry exists.<\/p>\n I live in hurricane country.\u00a0 Year after year we face the constant questioning of whether the most recent storm brewing in the Atlantic is gonna be the next Hugo or Andrew or Katrina.\u00a0 And if so, where\u2019s it going to hit?\u00a0 Who\u2019s it going to hurt?<\/p>\n For state governments, there\u2019s a fine balance between failing to act and getting slammed by casualties versus over-reacting too often and becoming the Governor Who Cried Wolf.\u00a0 This is not easy.<\/p>\n In the face of an Ebola or a SARS or a COVID-19, the natural course of prudence is to watch attentively, be a little\u00a0too<\/em> careful at first, and gradually relax precautions as the coast clears.<\/p>\n Regardless of whether a given disease proves to be the next bubonic plague or the next round of sniffles, even if we do everything exactly right, there are economic costs to widespread illness.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at what\u2019s going down with COVID-19.<\/p>\n We need to distinguish between types of economic loss.\u00a0 Parsing all this out is complex, so don\u2019t get all huffy in the next few paragraphs.<\/p>\n Some preliminaries:<\/p>\n So if we look at COVID-19, some of the effects of quarantine have no impact on the real wealth of human beings.\u00a0 Let\u2019s begin with a red dinosaur.<\/p>\n In the photo, which is a communal Lenten penance of unknown duration<\/a>, I am holding a small plush toy made in Lianyungang, China<\/a>. My daughter spied these at Aldi a year ago, regretted never purchasing one, and this year when they showed up again on the Valentine\u2019s impulse-buy shelves she splurged.\u00a0 In fact she eventually bought up the entire stock of leftover dinosaurs in our community and bestowed them on friends, family, and willing buyers, thus creating a Dinosaur Club.\u00a0 At 99 cents a piece, she thereby added<\/a> a solid twelve bucks to GDP.<\/p>\n Quarantine measures have since shut down certain Chinese manufacturers.\u00a0 In terms of human flourishing, the loss of red plush dinosaurs is a non-happening.\u00a0 We the dinosaur-custodians are no better or worse off owning an accounted-for plush toy versus owning, say, a sock puppet created at home from salvaged scraps.<\/p>\n In contrast, the loss of basic medicine, essential supplies, and certain durable goods due to quarantine shut-downs is indeed a direct loss of genuine wealth in the form of goods that measurably add to human flourishing in a tangible way.<\/p>\n In the same way, in terms of human well-being for the consumer, it does not matter if one purchases dinner out or makes it at home, if both meals are equally nutritious \u2014 even though one will register a much higher number on economic indicators than the other.<\/p>\n That \u201cfor the consumer\u201d\u00a0 qualification is of course the big problem with quarantine. For the supplier, the loss of sales hits home hard.<\/p>\n The owner of a massive business selling luxury goods or services (and yes, that red dinosaur is a luxury good \u2014 it fills a want, not a need; the needs it does fill could as easily be met through a rag doll and a big hug from a friend) is unlikely to sustain any long term damage if his or her business is run well.\u00a0 Yes, there will be a hit to profits.\u00a0 But for the owners of large businesses maintaining adequate cash reserves, there will be plenty of opportunity to rake in the millions or billions some other year.\u00a0 It\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n Who gets hurt when the luxury-economy gets shut down? Employees and marginal business-owners.\u00a0 Low-wage factory, retail, and service-industry workers are unlikely to have the savings necessary to simply not work for weeks on end, and are unlikely to be able to work from home.\u00a0 Small business owners living week-to-week on scant revenues, including many farmers, are in the same boat.<\/p>\n So although quarantine is\u00a0overall<\/em> better for the health and well-being of everyone, it also creates instant-poverty for wage-earners and certain entrepreneurs who are kept from working or who lose their customer base.<\/p>\n Temporary disruptions call for temporary measures of charity above and beyond the usual, preferred, free-market solutions.<\/p>\n At the most local level, if you have the money to prep for quarantine<\/a>, you need to be ready to assist those who can\u2019t afford to do so.\u00a0 If your local foodbank is in fact prepared to deliver goods to clients under quarantine, that\u2019s a good destination for cash donations.\u00a0 Otherwise, it behooves us to simply\u00a0expect<\/em> that there will be a need to\u00a0directly feed your less-wealthy neighbors<\/em> in a situation where your apartment complex or subdivision is put on lockdown.<\/p>\n Regionally, health care providers can put in place free or sliding-scale screening and treatment stations.\u00a0 Hospitals can\u00a0choose to waive<\/em> bills for patients who cannot afford treatment and need it (and additionally they can set aside the usual over-pricing rigamarole<\/a> that characterizes American healthcare for those who do have the ability to pay).<\/p>\n At the state and federal level, bankruptcy, criminal, and civil laws can be reformed to take into account both the temporary hit from emergency quarantine measures and the longterm regulatory biases that unduly penalize the poor.<\/p>\n I\u2019m cynical.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t noticed state and federal governments being super-effective at protecting the poor thus far, and I doubt Coronavirus is going to change that.\u00a0 I predict we\u2019ll see a few grand gestures, some of them genuinely helpful, but for the most part the priority of our rulers will remain with keeping the servant-class just hale enough to continue churning out the services.<\/p>\n Thus, no matter how much we imagine the government will save us, the Church will still have to fill in the gaps.\u00a0 The need for practical assistance through crisis situations<\/a> is only going to grow.<\/p>\n For a financially-solvent upper middle class family, quarantine may require some digging into emergency savings.\u00a0 Not a big deal. That\u2019s why we have emergency savings.<\/p>\n#2 Quarantine works.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n
#3 Human beings are not omniscient.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
#4 Economic statistics are imperfect measures.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n
<\/a><\/p>\n#5 Quarantine puts people out of work who can\u2019t afford to be out of work.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
#6 What this means is you have to go into Advanced Rerum Novarum<\/em><\/a>\u00a0Mode.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
#7 The Church will not lack for work.<\/strong><\/h3>\n