Why the Remedy May Be Worse Than the Disease

From Dennis Prager:

The current consensus favors near-total social isolation, or "social distancing," as it is now called. The thinking is that we must shut down the Western world to prevent the exponential growth of the virus. If we don't, our hospital systems will be overwhelmed. Many thousands, maybe more, would die, as doctors have to make grisly triage decisions as to who gets care and who doesn't. 

This latter scenario is reported to have already happened in Italy. Though there is no longer an exponential growth in the United States, they may otherwise be right. 

Is this thinking correct? 

The truth is we don't know. 

We have no idea how many people carry the COVID-19 coronavirus. Therefore, the rates of either critical illness or death are completely unknown. Perhaps millions of people have the virus and nothing serious develops, in which case we would have rates of death similar to (or even below) the flu virus. 

On the other hand, perhaps not many people carry the virus, but the rates of illness demanding intensive care and of death are much greater than those of the flu. We can only be certain that shutting down virtually every part of society will result in a large number of people economically ruined, life savings depleted, decades of work building a restaurant or some other small business destroyed. 

As if that were not bad enough, the ancillary effects would include increased depression and divorce and other personal tragedies. The effects of closing schools for weeks or months will include family chaos, vast numbers of bored young people, health care providers who will have to stay home and more. Yet young people are the least likely people to become ill from the virus. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released this statement regarding closing schools: 

"Available modeling data indicate ... that other mitigation efforts (e.g., handwashing, home isolation) have more impact on both spread of disease and health care measures. In other countries, those places who (sic) closed school (e.g., Hong Kong) have not had more success in reducing spread than those that did not (e.g., Singapore)." 

But the longer-term ripple effects are potentially far worse. Economic disasters rarely remain only economic disasters. To give a particularly dramatic example, the Nazis came to power because of economics more than any other single reason, including Germany's defeat in World War I, the Versailles Treaty or anti-Semitism. Nazi success at the polls was almost entirely related to the Weimar economy. 

Communist parties don't fare well in robust economies, but they're very tempting when people are in dire economic straits. 

Only God knows what economic dislocation the shutting down of American and other Western economies will lead to. I am not predicting a Nazi or communist ascendancy, but economic and political disaster may be as likely, or even more likely, than a health disaster. 

But here is a prediction: 

If the government can order society to cease functioning, from restaurants and other businesses to schools, due to a possible health disaster, it is highly likely that a Democratic president and Congress will similarly declare emergency and assert authoritarian rule in order to prevent what they consider the even greater "existential threat" to human life posed by global warming. 

The dam has been broken. Maybe it was necessary. But when dams break, flooding follows.