Guest Post by The Zman
Imagine you are engaged in a fight against the alien battle cruiser Briggs, off the Cochran nebula, and you are informed of a civilian vessel in the area. It is in distress and unless something is done to rescue the passengers, they will all die. If you disengage from the battle to save the people on the passenger ship Steve Sailer, you will most certainly be destroyed or captured by the Briggs. If you remain in combat with the Briggs, you will win, but the Steve Sailer will be lost.
Clearly, the intent of the problem is not to test the ability of the captain to solve a problem of fact, but rather one of morality. The choice is to sacrifice yourself, your crew and your ship, the John Derbyshire, in order to save a passenger ship full of people. Or, you let those people die and continue on to defeat the alien enemy. There’s no puzzle to be solved or information to be discovered. The challenge is to arrive at the correct moral decision given the described parameters.
The moral answer is obvious. You and the Briggs are moral actors. Presumably, you are a positive actor and the Briggs is a negative actor. Otherwise, what would be the point of engaging in battle with the Briggs? The Sailer is morally neutral. It could be full of future Hitlers for all you know. You have no way to evaluate fully its moral position, so it does not have one. The only logical answer is to continue to engage the Briggs and let the Sailer perish. It is the only way to ensure a morally positive outcome.
That familiar, but fictional, scenario is useful in thinking about what our rulers should be doing in the current crisis. The coronavirus epidemic has created a scenario for the rulers that has no right answer. There’s no heroic 30-something women in a lab about to formulate a vaccine for the Chinese Flu. There’s no handsome germ detective hunting down the mad scientist that created it. The choice is either bring civilization to a halt for as long as it takes or let the virus run its course.
Now, the “flatten the curve” people will claim there is a third choice, which allows for the virus to run its course more slowly, giving health services more time and resources to treat the sick. This will also buy time for a potential vaccine. There are variations on this, but that is the general idea. We can only evaluate this option, however, once the initial options are fully evaluated. To assume both are unacceptable is to violate the parameters of the problem, so we will evaluate this option last.
The first choice is to do nothing and let the virus run its course. It’s not exactly doing nothing, but public awareness assumes people will assess their risk tolerance and take whatever measures they think make sense. In this scenario, the rulers simply inform the public about the basic ways in which to avoid the contagion and perhaps put resources into the healthcare system. The underlying assumption, however, is that everyone that could get the virus will get the virus over the next year.
What does that mean, as a practical matter? Some experts are saying 50-70% of people will get the virus and up to 5% will die. This is not based in much, other than wild speculation. We have no examples that are similar or facts on the ground to suggest these numbers are probable. Every year the influenza virus infects about 10% of the public, using no precautions against it. Many more people get the common cold each year, but the number that actually get it is unknown.
The fact is, we don’t have an example of a serious contagion, one that kills with any significance, that infects 70% of the public. The Black Plague probably infected 40% of the people of Europe. The Spanish Flu is the best comparison to the Chinese Flu and it infected about 20% of the public. Swine Flu infected about 10% of the people. It is a really good comparison with the Spanish Flu, as both were H1N1 and both killed younger people, which is always a more serious concern.
We actually have a good test of the infectiousness of this particular virus. The Diamond Princess cruise ship was infected and remained in lock-down for two weeks. The people on the ship were allowed to mingle and party while they waited to be set free. The final numbers were 700 infected out of 3,500. That’s 20%. That figure seems to turn up a lot when examining the infection numbers of deadly viruses. Again, the Spanish Flu seemed to hit about 20% of people world-wide and in the US.
Now, we have some parameters to evaluate the first option. The infection rate is probably going to be about 20%, like similar viruses, but it could be the first universally infectious virus in the history of the planet. Everyone gets it. The death rate, based on current data, could be as low as one percent or as high as 3.4 percent. Those experts say the ensuing collapse of the health care system will lift the number to 5%, even though we have no evidence to support that claim.
There you are. The first answer for the ruler in this position is that somewhere between 20% and 100% of his people get the virus and between one percent and five percent will die from it. In the United States, it means between 600,000 deaths over the course of a year to a high of 16.5 million deaths over the course of the year. Here you see why the rulers are panicking about what to do. No one wants to allow millions to die from a virus, no matter what the cost of saving them.
Now, it must be emphasized that all of our experience with this virus and similar virus outbreaks points to the low-end estimate being the worst-case scenario. Other than the Black Death in the Middle Ages, we have nothing worse than those low-end estimates of infection and death. A lot of people really want to believe the high end is plausible, but that’s what it is, a desire to believe. In reality, the worst-case scenario from this virus for the United States is a million additional deaths.
Now, what about the other option? We can quarantine the nation in an effort to slow or even stop the spread of the virus. It means closing down most business, forcing people to stay home and preventing gatherings of people. Whether this is even feasible is a good question on its own. Getting people to stay off the roads in a snow storm is impossible, so this option looks like a fantasy, more than reality. On the other hand, this is more serious. Maybe enough cooperate to make it work.
What does that mean, as a practical matter? First off, it means the economy plunges into an unprecedented depression. We have no examples of what happens when you simply stop almost all economic activity. The stock market will be closed, financial systems will be closed. The use of money could very well cease. Either people hoard cash like they hoard food or it simply becomes worthless in a world where no one is working and all commerce has come to a halt.
In such a scenario, there are two ways forward. One is civil unrest that topples over local authority and perhaps the national government. The other is the imposition of martial law and a takeover of the essential services by the state. Your food market becomes a food distribution center where you get your allotted supplies. That sounds absurd, but how else can you feed 300 million people when the economy has been shut down by a quarantine? There is no other option.
Let’s pretend there is some magical version of this shutdown that both halts the spread and keeps portions of the economy up and running, such that food and essentials are distributed, but we enter a depression. The last depression was a 10% contraction of the economy over a year and 30% over three years. We still talk about that even today as it led to the second industrial war of the century. What happens when the economy contract 50% in a year? No one has any idea.
There are real consequences to an economic collapse. Essential medicines stop being produced and essential services cease to exist. A shortage of insulin would threaten millions in a month. The collapse would take the health care system with it, so millions would be at risk right away. The risk of civil unrest would threaten untold millions, mostly from local police. We simply have no idea what such a collapse would do in terms of death and destruction, because it is unimaginably horrible.
There you have the parameters of the problem. Now, the flatten the curve folks would have you believe that a long vacation of playing video games and watching Netflix will allow us to avoid the stark choices in front of us. Sure, the economy will take a hit, but it will come back just as soon as the virus is slowed down and the miracle cure is ready for human use in a year or two. In reality, they are just wishing away the problem in the hope of violating the parameters of the problem.
That’s why the talk of flattening the curve is actually more dangerous than facing the reality of the situation. The end result will be worse than picking one option or the other, because you end up getting both. No quarantine can last more than a couple of weeks, because people will never obey it, the state can’t enforce it and the society could never afford it. That means we get the full brunt of the bug, plus the full brunt of the effort to shutter civil life for an extended period.
Getting back to the fictional space battle, the right decision is ultimately the one to have the most certain morally positive outcome. The captain of the Derbyshire defeats the alien ship and goes on to be a positive force in the universe. In this case, putting all efforts into maintaining the civil life of the people has a clear set of costs. We can plan for a million deaths. We cannot plan for the unknown economic cost of collapse.
The great Russian leader Joseph Stalin allegedly said “a single death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic.” Whether he said it or not is hard to know, but it is both true and something Stalin likely would have grasped. When a ruler is faced with this sort of problem, it is not about saving one life. It is about preserving a people and what makes them a people. A million deaths from the Chinese Flu is terrible, but it pales in comparison to the costs of preventing it.
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This is the most succinct argument I have read for letting the virus run its course as people return to normal daily activities. But the PTB has already set the course for abject failure. It remains to be seen how many of us go down the drain.
I guess if you’re on the battle cruiser and not on the passenger ship, then good for you. I think I’m on the passenger ship and I’m gonna arm this motherfucker.
My sentiments exactly. It should run its course.
“We have no examples of what happens when you simply stop almost all economic activity.”
do we need any?
I have read the Black Plague killed 30-40% of the people in Europe.
And it returned a few times, every 30 years or so, because the ones who survived had developed antibodies and couldn’t get infected a second time, but the next-born generation was unprotected again.
That tells me the infection rate must have been 80-90% (there are always a few who avoid out of dumb luck, and a few who have built-in resistance/immunity.)
Also, in my understanding we were on a course for an unprecedented depression anyways, the virus only hastened the onset a bit…
Hard to argue.
I’m waiting to see which urban area descends into chaos first. There’s no reasoning with the FSA and they couldn’t understand this situation if you did it with puppets and crayons.
Way too many variables to even hazard a guess as to how this is going to play out.
My guess, NYC or somewhere in South Florida. Admin’s guess: Philly. Await the chimpouts!! Be armed when travelling about my friends.
They had those monkeys that were used to tourist freebies now fighting over scraps of food. In time, they will be on somebody’s menu.
I think the cruise ship was a floating laboratory. They may have introduced a variable or two on the subsequent cruise ships. A crisis is too good to waste, and there was no way they were going to waste an opportunity to see how long it would take for a certain number of people in a small area to get infected.
“Essential medicines stop being produced”
may I point out that this will include SSRIs – mood-controlling drugs. recently 35 of the last 36 mass (publicized) mass shootings were by individuals on or just coming off of SSRIs. apparently .01 of the population are on them, and when the dosage is suddenly interrupted there is a .1 chance that the individual will turn homicidal. so, in every village town and city, divide the population by 1000 and that is about how many people will go semi-intelligently postal.
You’re correct, gman. That’s one thing I worry about.
‘It is about preserving a people and what makes them a people.’
Bullshit.
If ‘they’ were truly concerned about the preservation of ‘a people’, ‘they’ wouldn’t promote ‘diversity’. And the rest.
It’s based on the available data. It’s the exact opposite of wild speculation, and is based on what has happened elsewhere over the past two months. As of Sunday, the CFR in the US is about 12.5% – and this can be predicted go up significantly if the medical system is overwhelmed. That is just what the numbers indicate. Some people can’t deal with this.
The numbers don’t care about your feelings.
Nationwide lockdown/quarantine?
Never going to happen because of one inescapable fact, feeding 330 million people is not possible.
That is one billion meals per day.
NFW is that ever going to happen.
Even if they existed, they could not be distributed.
I guess all the homeless are on lockdown as well? Well, on the corner?
That is why there are so many professional deniers. It just doesn’t make sense to shut down an entire country and all industries to combat a health problem that doesn’t have a track record of killing 100% of the population.
Perhaps they know something we don’t. Something scared our normally fearless leader. Trump was adamant that the US was safe from infection. He even let unexamined, symptom-free people fly in from countries suffering an epidemic outbreak.
Why would anybody care if only 20% of the people who got infected dropped dead? Unless the virus really does kill on the second infection. This puts a crimp into any plans to let the virus run its course. Once 70% of the population has been infected, the survivors are simply walking wounded, they are very susceptible to re-infection and death.
Although we don’t hear much about that now. When it was China’s problem, the media was eager to publicize amazing claims that the virus could infect people through the skin, that it was highly contagious, that it attacked the lungs and could cause a victim to drown in his own blood.
Today, all we hear is that we should wash our hands and stay away from sick people. May the odds, such as they are, always be with us. Trump blew the starting horn and it was off to the races. Store shelves were cleared of paper rolls, paper towels, canned meat, tuna, eggs, bread, etc.
People ask, how can we afford to endanger the businesses and industries that are the backbone of our economy? It sounds like a country imitating Epstein. Jeffry didn’t have to die, many criminals choose to live even if it is behind bars. He still had money and access to women. In the same sense, it sounds crazy for an entire country to put its very existence on the line.
Unless Trump learned that he might be the next Stalin, responsible for the death of more than 20 million Americans. He could out match Stalin and Mao. The accidental POTUS would become the accidental Pol Pot. There would be no economy to salvage. If one sparrow does not a Spring make, neither would 100 million lesbians and soy boys make a country.
It doesn’t matter now how many die of Captain Trips, because the economy is fk’d. I’ve read accounts of what would happen when the economic bubble finally pops and some of the stories are from TBP. It sounded gruesome and that was without the flu. I heard that lack of confidence of the currency is what causes hyper inflation and if that’s true, then the pumping of trillions of $$ continually into every facet of our society will be disastrous.
They’re talking about sending us $1K to help with expenses for the next month. What about the next month and the next? Will they just keep it up until the $$ is no good and we go to a command and control Soviet styled economy?
As an added bonus, the Section 8 crowd will burn the cities. I knew sporty times were coming, but man 0′ man, this happened quick. I’m overweight, old, with a very bad back and have COPD. So I have to assume that my planned summer vacation to Yellowstone is out and my sudden demise courtesy of pneumonia or bullets is a pretty good possibility. Damn, I wish I could’ve seen Yellowstone.
Pack your bags and go to Yellowstone right now, if it’s open.
“I’m overweight, old, with a very bad back and have COPD.”
Ain’t that America? – David Bowie
Offered as consolation: Yellowstone is greatly over-rated among the USA’s natural wonders.
I saw it as a youngster decades ago, and have never wanted to go back.
If you seek the thrill of geyser viewing, just open a fire hydrant.
In my 2nd article on COVID-19, I wrote the reaction to Coronavirus had “wreaked more carnage globally than the virus itself.”
In the 3rd COVID-19 article a potential Mad Max scenario was referenced as potentially playing out in accordance to “proportionate accelerating / corresponding mortality factors” because “the global grid won’t collapse gracefully“.
And in my 4th COVID-19 article I wrote the following:
Indeed. It would take a miracle to avoid the consequences of what has already happened. Currently, we are flying on the fumes of the good ole days. However, we still have much for which to be grateful and these gratitudes will diminish or expand subject to our acceptance of what has happened, what is happening, and what will soon happen.
We didn’t deal the cards so all we can do is play our best hand – even if the deck is stacked. What else can be done? It is what it is but it may not be all there is. There may be more.
The American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, faith looks up”. Was he right? Or not? If not, in sum or part?
As I wrote in my 3rd COVID-19 article:
(Doug / Uncola) – posting Unonymously to avoid being spammed
“a watershed societal sea change – similar to 911®.”
I don’t know why I didn’t see the connection. I mean, I said it was a watershed moment back when I adopted the 1/20 moniker but I had no idea what it all meant. Wow!
The problem with this argument is that the passenger ship has votes.
The old people don’t want to die – and politicians are mostly old people. They’re going to self preserve and preserve their friends and allies.
Moreover, there is no battle cruiser. This is a euphemism for total power – which doesn’t exist.
So nice try, but a fail.
This is a generational issue which the people in power are the old generation.