COVID-19

Some Observations

Dave Davis Commentary, COVID-19, Policy, The Future Party

It is interesting to observe some of the things I predicted would happen have taken place. If we did a better job of protecting the elderly and others with underlying conditions, I said we could reopen the country without causing a massive death toll. Younger and healthier people may get the coronavirus in higher numbers, but very few would die. Most of the country has now been opening up. Protecting the vulnerable has been better. Also, people at risk and those close to them are more aware and have taken proper actions. Mask wearing other PPE use around the vulnerable has dramatically expanded. Even Gov. Cuomo now seems to recognize nursing homes must be protected. We still haven’t taken all the measures I proposed, but we have made progress. If better-targeted protections didn’t reduce mortality, then increasing confirmed cases would lead to increased deaths. This chart shows otherwise. Cases have significantly increased, but as I predicted, fatalities haven’t.

Early on, I also wondered why mask-wearing, especially where vulnerable people are present, wasn’t at least encouraged. Even though masks were widely worn in Asia where they had better outcomes, it wasn’t until April 3. The CDC reversed itself and favored masks. There was a shortage of medical gear, but the CDC in April encouraged homemade masks. Peop[e responded. Nothing prevented earlier adoption. This waffling by the authorities has led to needless controversy. Until now, our President seemed to resist wearing a mask. He should’ve set the right example. Can we all agree to wear a mask whenever you might be near an at-risk person? You may save your grandma.

Our failure to do targeted things to protect the at-risk early on has caused needless deaths. Now that more is being done, the results are evident. The better job we do protect the at-risk, the lower the number of deaths. That was always the choice. Not the false one of lives vs. the economy expounded by so many of our leaders.

n my posts at the time of the Ferguson, Mo in 2014 riots after the death of Michael Brown, I warned of the “Ferguson Effect.” If the police were placed in a no-win situation, they would be much less aggressive. This would result in rising crime and murder rates in lower-income areas. The statistics since have borne this out. Rather than recognizing more deprived regions anywhere in the world need more not less police presence, the police are demonized. Instead of striving for a workable community balance to improve the lives in higher crime areas, we have gone in the opposite direction. By disrespecting policing to the point of defunding, the predicable rise in minority deaths is already occurring. This will only get worse. We will see even more Blacks’ lives lost. We are endlessly told “Black Lives Matter,” but do they? To whom?

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I Was Wrong

Dave Davis Commentary, COVID-19, Policy, Uncategorized

We’ve all have seen the experts standing either with the president or appearing around the clock on TV. Supposedly, they’re enlightening us on the Coronavirus epidemic. I assumed most of them were epidemiologists. After all, epidemiology is the branch of medicine which deals with the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases and other factors relating to health. It sounds like the ones to be at the forefront of the present pandemic. Worse, I blamed them for the ill-considered lockdowns. It wasn’t till I saw an Oxford-style debate on Reason.com. I realized I was wrong. I received an invitation to view ” Did the Lockdowns Save Thousands of Lives?” a Soho Forum debate featuring Physician Marty Makary vs. epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski. The subject was of great interest as the journal “Nature” recently touted studies showing the lockdowns saved millions of lives. This seemed highly unlikely, and I was eager to see the proposition debated.

I have seen Dr. Makary on several TV programs giving his views on the pandemic as an expert guest commentator. Knut Wittkowski, the epidemiologist, was a mystery to me. I assumed he would be in the affirmative. After all, weren’t we told by those in his specialty lockdowns were essential? It turns out I was completely off base. He argued the negative. It wasn’t the only thing I was wrong about. It turns out the policy of lockdowns wasn’t promoted by all epidemiologists. For instance, there are none on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. What about Dr.Fauci? He’s an immunologist. It turns out epidemiologists played little or no role in the adoption of the lockdowns. Even Dr. Makary commented in the debate, it would’ve been better if more had been in the discussion. I just never also considered there would be few epidemiologists in a dialogue about an epidemic. I failed to take my own advice about jumping to conclusions. For that, I apologize. I knew I was really on the wrong track when Knut stated he wasn’t aware of an epidemiologist advocating quarantining well people. Blanket condemnations should always be avoided.

The debate was highly informative. It seemed to me Dr. Makary never fully supported the idea of lockdowns saving thousands of lives. Knut Wittkowski made a compelling and well-prepared argument in the negative. He really impressed me when the moderator extolled his credentials, and Wittkowski said, forget them and concentrate on his facts and data. Got to love a guy with that attitude. While Reason is a libertarian magazine, the negative won over the undecideds and prevailed by better than 2 to 1 margin. I strongly recommend watching the debate yourself. There were some of the technical glitches common to today’s remote programming, but both sides come through. You can find it on the Reason website under videos or on YouTube.

While I’m making recommendations, Amazon has reinstated “Unreported Truths about Covid-19 and Lockdowns”. The short book by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson is well worth the $2.99 kindle price. While much of the material will be familiar to readers of this blog, the book well organized and easy to read. I wish I had thought of putting a book out on the subject. I’m glad he did.

Speed Kills

Dave Davis Commentary, COVID-19, Policy, Uncategorized

Look before you leap. This idea has long been sage advice. Taking a little time to assess a situation before you take radical action can stop you from a significant mistake. A thorough exchange of ideas and information just might’ve made us hesitate before rushing off to Vietnam and the 2nd Iraq wars. Yet our modus operand lately has been just the opposite. We close down the country before we looked at what could happen from all angles. Many states never considered a more targeted approach. As I’ve pointed out, many people raised red flags about the models and data being relied on to lock down the world economy. Fear, not deliberative thought, ruled the day. Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt, Dr. Scott Atlas, and Dr. John Ioannidis were just some of the luminaries warning this was the wrong path. An army of online skeptics slicing and dicing the rationale for taking such drastic action joined in.

It’s just you never heard them at the time. Once the ruling politicians and the media hastily committed to the lockdown, they became hostile to any alternatives. The media never gave the skeptics much of a platform to inform the public of their doubts and alternatives. Deviating from the dominant solution found relentless attack. Sweden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were the subject of endless mockery. They were comparing Sweden unfavorably to their close smaller neighbors, Norway, and Denmark. Sweden actually falls in the middle of European outcomes with less drastic measures. The media predicted Florida would be a deathtrap for closing down late and opening up early. Early on, the hero of the hour was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The Media hailed the N.Y. governor as doing all the right things.

Act in haste, repent at leisure. The ignored skeptics are now looking prescient. Some governments are now admitting acting in haste. Norway’s prime minister Erna Solberg went on Norwegian television to make a startling admission. According to the Daily Telegraph, some, even most, of the stringent measures imposed in Norway’s lockdown now look like steps too far. “Was it necessary to close schools?” she mused. “Perhaps not.” She added, “I probably took many of the decisions out of fear” Even though Norway did well with the virus, it’s success came at too high a price. “Our assessment now that we could have achieved the same effects and avoided some of the adverse impacts by not locking down, but by instead keeping open but with infection control measures,” Camilla Stoltenberg, Norwegian Institute of Public Health Director-General.

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An Expanded “Dave’s Plan” Could Help

Dave Davis Commentary, COVID-19, Dave's Healthcare Plan, Policy, The Future Party, Uncategorized

Our government fumbled the lockdown leading to depression. Its actions have resulted in over 40 million jobs lost, and many businesses gone forever. Even after spending trillions, we have uneven results. We see long lines at food banks. Some are receiving aid, and some are still waiting. Many people receiving assistance are getting more than if they returned to work. Many people are losing or endangered of losing their health insurance along with their jobs. In a word, we have a mess.

It got me to thinking how much better off so many would benefit from a Personal Benefits Account (PBA). The bedrock of “Dave’s Plan” (Series on this site), the PBA combines your tax-favored savings plans with catastrophic health insurance. Each and everyone would be enrolled. By eliminating the paperwork associated with most medical claims, it would be cheaper and more efficient. It further lowers cost by virtually banishing credit risk. The very idea “pre-existing conditions would ultimately cease to exist. Big health problems are covered. It makes tax-favored savings available to every person. Everyone would have formed a connection to a financial institution. Run through the Internal Revenue System; it pulls existing programs into something workable and easy to use.

Most Americans have direct- deposit. The government already uses it to send people their social security, tax refunds, and EITC checks. Wouldn’t it be easier to combine all our safety-net programs into a single cash deposit? Under Dave’s Plan, everyone must file an income tax form. Once net income is determined, we can compute a safety net support payment. Just using a non-tax-sheltered account. Call it, “The Expanded Dave’s Plan.”

If we totaled all of our existing programs designed to help those down on their luck and the poor, it comes to a tidy sum. Food stamps(Snap), housing, EITC, job retraining, Tanf, and unemployment insurance are just some of the programs. What if we get rid of all of them and combine the money into a cash payment.s In the August 22, 2016 post “A Strong People” in my series on “The Long Journey to More” (Available on this Site), I noted the Cato Institute computed the programs a single mother qualified for would equal $2,000 a month cash payment in 2013. It’s ,of course more now. If your income falls below a certain point say through job loss or reduced hours it starts to kick in. You file an amendment to your return online. We should structure in a way they are high enough to sustain people bur low enough so as not to discourage anyone from working. The existence of so many income levels for different support programs means earning a few extra dollars may cost a recipient thousands. The is known as “the Poverty Trap.” Consolidating into one cash payment would avoid this disincentive.

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Getting Back on Track

Dave Davis Commentary, COVID-19, Policy, The Future Party

There are certain things we have to rely on the government to handle. Epidemics are near the top of the list. We place our trust that it will act in our best interest. Across the world, with few exceptions, this trust is misplaced. The government claims to be led by exceptional leaders backed up by elite experts. Together they will do the things individuals are unable to do for themselves. We provide the money they tell us they need, and they use it to protect us. Like with the military, we expect those involved with potential epidemics to have plans and the where-with-all to assess the situation in a timely fashion. Starting with its beginning in China and traveling across the globe, Covid-19 exposed much of the world’s leaders as moribund.

It started with President Xi’s Chinese Communist Party’s failure to follow international norms, allowing the disease to circle the globe. Ignoring the disease’s unique characteristics, a large number of nations adopted crushing lockdowns. To be sure, the epidemic was going to cause economic damage in certain areas, such as travel, hospitality, and live entertainment. These would remain hobbled until they could adjust. However, many Governments went much, much further. Economies came to a screeching halt. Like a car on a freeway that suddenly jams on the brakes, the pileups ensued.

Good generals look at each situation as unique. In the movies the “Desert Fox” and “Patton,” we see Rommel and Patton out front with their binoculars evaluating the actual situation. They made their plans on what they saw—no relying on preconceived ideas or past procedures. There was no waiting for subordinates’ reports. They realized every battle is singular.

Right from the beginning, some people looked at the actual Covid-19 data and drew up plans based on what was there. From Asia, through Italy and even New York, the data always said the same thing. This disease affected the elderly and those with underlying conditions. For healthy people under 60, it was no more dangerous than seasonal flu.

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