Eclectic Topics During the Time of Corona-virus: How the Mint Tastes Mintier and Other Food for Thought
This is a simple - and not the best but relatively okay - overview of measures the various Hapsburg states (one state but lots of name changes) took to counter the Plague from spreading into their domains during their extremely long history bordering the Ottoman empire which was frequently rife with it. I think that it is especially interesting now as a topic to think about what we should be doing going forward and should have done before now to counter pandemics and I think it can lead to some important questions we need to be asking like who is this quarantine really for and what do we want to do about any of this?
Right now we have two problems going on and while there was a brief bump of rally around the president he is incompetent and the far left and right very quickly dismantlement any groundswell of national unity in partisan politics and mass stupidity or hair splitting. If you have reached this point and are wondering where the "surveillance" is going to come in, it isn't, at least not if you use any definition of surveillance that actually comes up in a dictionary. If you're wondering why, circle back to the hair splitting comment, generally speaking there isn't any massive increase in the surveillance state at the moment and there have been no expansions on the USA PATRIOT act because of Corona so while that stuff may be important there are bigger fish to fry that we're not frying and that is worth looking at, especially if this blog intends to have any future use. Because what people think is just as, if not more, historically relevant or important quite often.
The two problems are, the recession, and the pandemic, which statistically speaking may kill upwards of 2 million Americans if we need to reach heard immunity to curb it rather than coming up with a cure, treatment, or vaccine, before that happens. Now here is where we can finally begin asking the important questions and not doing so because they are supposedly partisan or just sticking to some party line argument without giving it due thought really shouldn't be acceptable. The questions are threefold; firstly, which of the two is the bigger issue; secondly, what do we want to do about both or either of them; thirdly, who is this quarantine really for in the first place?
Now when it comes to all of these things everyone is entitled to their own opinion and mine should by no means be taken as anything more than that. With that in mind, the thought of prioritizing the economy over the pandemic makes me uncomfortable because one directly impacts human life while the other only does so indirectly. When it comes to what we should do I personally think that answering who the quarantine is really for is important for my answer because I think asking whether it is something worth doing is a serious question. As I see it there are two extremely valid arguments against it and only one good one against it plus a massive amount of moral baggage. The arguments for it I think are pretty straightforward; firstly, that the timeline for a vaccine, even while fast tracked, is longer than the time it would take to develop herd immunity, even with a quarantine; secondly, that even if everyone doesn't listen to the CDC's 1% fatality rate assumption and goes with the worst evident rate of 3% that still means that 97% of Americans aren't going to die from it and don't really have to quarantine put of that fear anyways. Something which is especially true since that fatality rate is made up mostly of the old, imuno-compromised, and those with respiratory issues who may very well get it anyways as we climb over a mountain of dead towards heard immunity. At the end of the day the reason its so infectious is specifically because this isn't something like Ebola and the fatality rate is so low and so ultimately who this quarantine is really for is the 1-2% of Americans who statistically would die from it if we don't quarantine because we won't flatten the curve and ultimately they will be triaged out in favor of all the things that regularly kill people, or make them sick, and those with higher chances of living. Let me reiterate to make myself explicitly clear for charities sake, this quarantine is for the 1-2% of Americans who are old, imuno-compromised, or have respiratory difficulties. Now with that in mind what do we do about the two problems? Well the economy is still in free-fall and ultimately no matter what the fed does nothing is going to stop that until we really hit rock bottom or people go back to work so while there are many options the Fed could take the best all involve dealing with Corona in some way. Now that leaves us with two options and the brain dead middle ground we're running right now: The first option, and the one I prefer, is a more akin to that of the Austrian empire, complete martial law enforced by the national guard of each state (for legal constitutional reasons and because I don't trust Trump - he can order the national guard to do it but then he's not in charge - yes I know not all states have state guards and not all state guards are independent but as a branch of the military the national guard is the only one really allowed to do this kind of thing and would be under the provisional command of each states Governor not Trump so I wouldn't worry too much about dictatorship burn down the Reichstag style) where we fully quarantine enforced by military force eliminate the thing hard core really quickly and drastically and get back to our lives. The next best option after that, as far as I can see it, is essentially to just sacrifice that 1-2% to their own devices and quarantine measures and we all get on with our lives and get the economy back going again because ultimately unless something changes were going to heard immunity not science our way out of this one, they may very well die in that process anyways, and it has the best chance of saving the worst of the economic damage which has a far greater chance of doing greater harm to a greater number of people, seeing as most Americans really don't have enough money saved up to deal with this (or you know the federal government could at the very least halt all loan payments during the duration of the crises and just stick those extra weeks or months on as an extension at the end of the loan instead of this stupid 3 month freeze where people are losing their jobs or can't work and are then expected to pay that three months and the forth in three months). The third "option" isn't one at all, it isn't a hard core enforced quarantine that would actually stop this, or an actual action to save what we can of the economy and make this as harmful as possible for the 97% of other Americans but rather its a patchwork attempt to flatten the curve which not only isn't working, will continue not to work, but isn't buying enough time to develop a vaccine instead of reaching heard immunity but has the upside of letting a bunch of people point fingers at each other, act like complete idiots, and carry no moral baggage whatsoever.
Now we all know option 3 is whats happening and going to happen and while I think there will always be situations where hard decisions need to be made and that in an ideal world the president wouldn't be an amoeba and would be the one to step up to the plate with clear leadership, seeing as its their job... this is something we should at least think about as wall street makes off like bandits, and we sacrifice the economy and let that happen while we're too busy pointing fingers for the sake of not carrying any moral baggage over the deaths of 1-2% of the population we aren't preventing anyways...