The View from Right Field

Solving the Covid-19 Crisis with Proposals You Would Have Made Anyway

As our leaders suggest solutions for the problems caused by Covid-19, it is fascinating how many of the proposals are ideas those leaders would have suggested without Covid-19.  Texas is saying abortion clinics aren’t essential businesses, while New Jersey says that gun shops aren’t essential.  And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested retroactively repealing the SALT deductibility limit for 2018 and 2019 as a way to get more disposable income to people.¹

Overall, I think the proposals you might want to give the most thought to are ones made by people who would not have suggested those ideas before Covid-19 but who think they may be appropriate now.
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¹ I suppose it would give money to people, though almost of it to rich people.
UPDATE (3/31/20 12:24 am): I deleted footnote 2, which I decided was not in keeping with the spirit of my post of March 23, 2020.

We Need More Capacity in the Medical System. And It’s Going to Cost Money.

It is clear we need more capacity in the medical system.  More rooms; more ICU units; more equipment.  On hand and ready to use.  If you cut things too close, you may not have enough in an emergency or a pandemic.  

But if we want more capacity, it is going to cost money, and somebody is going to have to pay for it.  We don’t have to argue about that now.  Other things are more important at this point.  But we are going to have to discuss it in the future; when this is over.  Because more won’t be free.

We Didn’t Ask Our Parents About World War II – Or Our Grandparents About the Spanish Flu

As our parents in the Greatest Generation have died, we have berated ourselves for not asking them what it was like during World War II.  Not just our fathers, who went to war, but also our mothers, who stayed at home.¹ 

But as coronavirus/Covid-19 spreads, I am feeling another missed opportunity:  Not only did we fail to ask our parents about what it was like during World War II, we didn’t ask our grandparents or great-grandparents what it was like during World War I² and the Spanish Flu.   The Spanish Flu is estimated to have killed 50 million people around the world from January 1918 to December 1920, including 675,000 in the United States.  The former was double the number of deaths in World War I.  The latter was more than five times the number of deaths the United States suffered in the war. 

New Zealand: The Lucky Country in Politics – Follow-Up

A follow-up on yesterday’s post: With New Zealand now under lockdown, the New Zealand Parliament cannot meet for the next four-plus weeks.  So, the Parliament, which has a Labour-led majority, is setting up a special select committee to follow and examine the government’s performance while Parliament cannot meet.  It is expected the committee will meet by video conference three times a week.  The committee will be chaired by – the leader of the opposition National Party.  With a national election scheduled for September.  A lucky country, indeed.
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Note: Once again, I am simultaneously posting this on both of my blogs.

Once Again, New Zealand is The Lucky Country – In Politics

[This is being simultaneously posted on my other website, too: A Different New Zealand]

In December 2016, I wrote a post entitled “New Zealand: The Lucky Country – In Politics”.¹  Well, it is still true.  New Zealand has closed its borders and will be instituting a shelter-at-home order Wednesday at 11:59 pm, New Zealand time.  But what makes them a “lucky country” is two things.

One, the Labour-led government’s plan seems pretty decent, and they now seem to be doing it reasonably well.^2,3  Two, in the words of The Spinoff, a New Zealand website:

Helping Each Other, Not Blaming Each Other

For the next few weeks or months (as long as necessary), I am going to pin this post at the top of my blog to remind me of something I tweeted yesterday:

“As we get thru this, we must all remember that mistakes will be made. Things will be done that shouldn’t have been. Things will be left undone that should have been done. But helping each other is more important than blaming each other.”

Government Leaders Need to Emphasize That, While Some of Us Stay at Home, Others of Us Need to Go to Work

As more and more shelter-at-home and shutdown orders are issued, the emphasis in the orders is how we need to stay at home, isolate ourselves, and dramatically reduce our contacts with other people to slow the spread of the coronavirus.  All of which is well and good.  But at the same time, the orders exclude grocery stores, drug stores, etc.  And we are assured that we don’t need to hoard because those stores will be open.

But what I have not seen are statements of how important it is for workers in those stores to go to work; i.e., while the rest of us protect ourselves by reducing contacts, we need them need to keep exposing themselves to all the contacts that their jobs require. 

Social Distancing – And Thanking Those Who Are Doing the Jobs That Let the Rest of Us Do It

We are being told to social distance.  Not just to stay away from sick people but to decrease the number of all people we come into contact with.  Society as a whole needs to increase its social distance.  And the reasons make sense, as can be seen in this article: “Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to ‘flatten the curve.’”  If we decrease the average number of social contacts we have, we slow down the spread of coronavirus. 

Which means that everybody who can increase their social distancing should do so.  Events and get-togethers that are not critical should not happen.

But there are things that are essential.  Food stores, doctors’ offices, drug stores.  They need to be open, and we need people to work in them.  And we need to thank the people who are doing the jobs that need to be done – while the rest of us increase our social distancing so the average social distance increases, and we all get through this together.

Blogging Through the Coronavirus

I probably won’t be blogging as much in the next few weeks, though with social distancing, etc., I may have more time.  Also, in whatever comments I make on current events, I will limit my criticisms to ones that are potentially useful, as opposed to ripping on people for being stupid or dumb or whatever (though there is a lot of that going on at all levels).

In looking at information on the coronavirus, one thought might be to limit what you look at to smart, thoughtful people.  That may cut down on your fear and will save you a lot of time.  Two people I would suggest following on Twitter.  First, and perhaps most important, because this guy knows what he is talking about: Scott Gottlieb, MD, director of the FDA from 2017 to 2019 (@ScottGottliebMD).  Second, Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo).
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UPDATE (3/15/20 11:05 am): Corrected the link to Megan McArdle.  Once again, it's @asymmetricinfo.

Coronavirus. Europe Travel Ban. What Kind of a Country Do We Want to Be?

On Wednesday evening, I tweeted my thoughts about President Trump’s address to the nation on the coronavirus situation.  What I’d like to do here is look at his address, and the ban on travel from Europe (technically, the Schengen zone), from a different point of view.

The Economist publishes an annual installment of “The World If” articles.  The articles are about things that could happen in the future (or might have happened in the past), some good, some bad, and what might be (or have been) the consequences.  Alternate history articles, in a manner of speaking.  One of the articles in 2017 was about the risk that the United States, and other countries, face from a prolonged loss of electricity.  It’s low risk, but if it happens … wow.  Here are some excerpts from the article:

“On March 13th 1989 a surge of energy from the sun, from a ‘coronal mass ejection’, had a startling impact on Canada.  Within 92 seconds, the resulting geomagnetic storm took down Quebec’s electricity grid for nine hours.  It could have been worse.  On July 23rd 2012 particles from a much larger solar ejection blew across the orbital path of Earth, missing it by days.  Had it hit America, the resulting geomagnetic storm would have destroyed perhaps a quarter of high-voltage transformers ….