Dakota Beacon

Today I visited with a friend who is dealing with some fairly serious health issues.  He was feeling fatalistic. The world is a pretty dark place right now. His being part of it is still important. Sometimes people need to hear that.  We need everyone right now.  

Every time we tune in to our news reports we hear silly, irresponsible, thoughtless and, yes, criminally selfish college students (and a few others) who aren’t too concerned about coronavirus.  “Everybody’s gonna die sometime anyway.” “I’m not worried about it.”  “It’s really messing up my spring break plans.” “It’s a real bummer. We’re going to go out and party and get drunk, though.”  “No, I’m not worried - I’m not in a high-risk group.” So they’re invincible. It doesn’t matter if they go home and the kid next door is recovering from cancer, so she’s at risk, or the lady who lives downstairs is pregnant, so she’s at risk.  Maybe she will just have to have her child and then die, leaving it orphaned. Because some kid is “not in the high-risk group” and infected her at the gas pump or the grocery store. Their behavior is putting us at risk for something possibly even worse - martial law.

It is difficult to manage voluntary quarantining.  This is why we are threatened with martial law (did anyone out there see the forcible removal of Chinese citizens in Wuhan from their homes and incarcerating them in “hospitals”?).  Italian doctors now tell us that they have been ordered not to use ventilators on any patient over 60 years old.  We don’t consider that “old” anymore, do we? And in Britain, Boris Johnson is pulling his hair out because the people will not stay out of the subways or off of the buses and trams.  Well, they need to work. No one really believes he will be sick until he is sick. And then it is too late. He will have spread the disease beyond himself to friends, family, co-workers, students, clients and customers, the bus driver, the postman, the clerk.  But until he is sick his biggest concern is that of a well person - how will I pay my bills if I don’t have a job? And, of course, if people are “sheltering in place” the economy will suffocate. A restaurant can’t stay open if no one eats there, a store cannot stay open if no one shops there.  

I wrote again last Saturday about the need and the facility of providing a safety net by having a no-interest federal loan to lenders whether for homes, investments, cars, equipment, appliances or just because, and then having a moratorium on collecting payments on these loans.  It would then be possible to adjust the rest of the structure - rents, for example, so as to keep the economy buoyed up until the danger is past and people can go back to work. I amended that today - it should include the same protection for credit and store card debt. The idea is to protect us all from financial ruin and the social and economic fallout from that which will act like nuclear fallout on our economy after the end of the pandemic.  

A very good reason for applying this solution is that it will have the effect of encouraging people to stay home until we can contain the spread of the disease and give our medical facilities and providers a chance to catch up with it.  This is the great fear. We have the London scenario - people going to work and socializing as usual - feeding the Italian scenario - no ventilators (or really any medical care) for anyone over 60. We can choose a different route. There is likely to be a second wave or a recurrence of this in the fall.  That is typical of a virus - who knows what this one will do. But if we make this protection last for 12 months with the option to extend it for another set period of time, we can convince people to wait out the critical period when this can be controlled. Please take a look at my article from last Saturday if you haven’t already, and please forward it to everyone you know.  If it spreads like the virus, someone somewhere might take it to the president or a key member of Congress for action. It could save our homes, our businesses, our future, our republic, a lot of money, and maybe even some lives.  

http://dakotabeacon.com/entry/sally_morris_an_urgent_message_to_congress_and_the_administration/

In the meantime, we owe thanks to Israel and Teva Pharmaceuticals, because they are donating a large amount of chloroquine drugs to us to be used in treatment of this virus.  This medication, an anti-malarial drug, has been showing promise of effectiveness against this virus in combination with an antibiotic.  Another reason to remember our friendly relations with that nation, our only ally in the Middle East. Perhaps by the time we are able to end the quarantine situation we will have bought ourselves enough time to defeat the disease.  

Who knows?  Maybe by the end of summer this will be history and we will be well on our way to a stronger economy than ever.  China wanted to harm us.  The only way to prevent this is to succeed in spite of their efforts to ruin our economy.  When this is all over with and coronavirus takes its place in the history books we can deal with them.  As I said to my friend, this is really not a time to give up and give in to despair. Those who need us depend on our being there.  And we need to keep looking forward, not at the ground.  

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