I like sports and I listen pretty regularly to Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo on Sirius Sports Radio. When the Ivy League became the first sports league to cancel their basketball tournaments because of the COVID-19 novel corona virus, the Mad Dog and the rest of the sports junkies around the country went ape shit. A few days later, the Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike Dewine, announced that his state would not be hosting their two regional NCAA tournaments in Cleveland and Cincinnati. And after that all of the dominoes fell, pro basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey, tennis, all college sports for men and women alike — hell, even golf.
In order to get a little perspective, Russo invited John M. Barry, the author of the bestselling book, “The Great Influenza – The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic In History”, to be his guest and they verbally duked it out for an hour. By the end of the show, the Mad Dog had done a one-eighty and turned from proud denier to a full-on “shut it all down” believer.
But after a commercial break, Russo said the following, which now sounds quite prophetic. “I may not know much about the flu, but I know what makes people tick. And I’m going to tell you right now that we can lock this country completely down. It will be hard, but we can do it. But after about a month, people are going to be broke and hungry, and the threat of getting sick will take a back seat to the need for most folks to get back to work. People will have to buy food and pay their mortgage, and if that means putting their lives on the line, then so be it. I’m not saying this makes sense, or that it’s the right course of action, but it is what it is. You mark my words.”
Well, here we are, just about a month into the lockdown and people are starting to get antsy. There are more people on the roads, the parks and trails are packed, and the Home Depots are jammed with people buying mulch and flowers. Hostile protests are popping up like viral civil disobedience. It’s springtime in America and people want out. Some are just bored and tired of sitting in their homes, but a lot of people need to work so they can pay the bills. And it’s not coincidental that the people screaming the loudest for the country to be reopened tend to be the poor and under-educated.
The popular line which probably frames this dilemma best was coined by some ratchethead on FOX News: “The cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease.” At first blush, the admonition sounds worthy of serious consideration.
We see obvious examples of terrible cures all the time, like the 19-year war in the Middle East as the cure for the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
But even if this bumper sticker warning is true in the case of COVID-19, it doesn’t adequately address the fact that the choice can spell death. Meaning, if we don’t quarantine, then many people will die. That’s a cold blooded fact. Being hungry, running out of money, being depressed and alone — while all terrible — are not usually deadly. And more importantly, at what point does your right or desire to work and provide for your family, empower you to kill me or my friends and family? That’s pretty much how Andrew Cuomo,the Governor of New York, a leader who I really respect, put it the other day to a questioner at his daily press conference.
But can’t the lockdown also lead to death? How many people who have been found dead in their homes died from the virus because they had no food, or an illness made it impossible for them to get out for help, or they were abandoned because they had no one to look out for them, or they couldn’t afford the medication that kept them alive? And if the lockdown ultimately leads to a total world economic meltdown, aren’t a lot of people going to die in the ensuing chaos?
So, in order to decide whether to keep locking down or go back to work, we need some honest-to-god numbers to guide us. And what we have is a mishmash of data that can tell us whatever we want to hear. China locked the people of Wuhan in their apartments for 76 days. Sweden didn’t do squat. Lots of people died in both countries. Who’s right?
Well, it stands to reason that without comprehensive testing, we are underestimating the number of people carrying the virus. But by how much? We are now over three months into this pandemic and we still can’t answer the two fundamental questions that should guide our proper course of action.
- How many people have been infected?
- What is the mortality rate of this virus?
As John P.A. Ioannidis, a respected Stanford doctor recently wrote: “… reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%. That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.”
We are making incredibly important risk/reward decisions based on scientific best guesses. Sure, we should absolutely err on the side of caution because, unlike the common flu, COVID-19 is often transmitted by people who don’t seem to be sick, so you don’t know who might be infectious, and that’s really scary. And we all have collectively agreed to let the powers that be make insurance actuarial decisions about our lives and our livelihoods. But let’s be clear about a couple of things:
- There isn’t going to be a FDA approved vaccine for another year.
- The virus is going to come back in the Fall again.
So, ahh, what’s the game plan? Are we going to huddle in our homes forever? What if you can catch the virus more than once? What if it keeps morphing like the common flu? What if there is no cure?
I think the Mad Dog was right. Before long, we are just going to say, “Fuck it!” We will exercise as much caution as possible as we try and get on with our lives the best we can. Many people are going to die. It’s definitely going to suck. But when all is said and done — and I’m really not trying to be flip here — I’m betting most Americans can’t live without football.
