The Coronavirus Crisis, and why we no longer have the luxury of ignoring science and voting emotion.

No, this is not another basic COVID-19 article. Not in the sense one might expect. This isn’t another bundle of safety tips, nor an update on current numbers regarding the virus’s exponential spread. This is not a political piece in the sense of vitriol. This is an urgent communique to all of those millions of Americans who have been awoken rudely by the abrupt reality of the past few days. This is a hard jolt to those still asleep. This is a plea for you to remain awake.

In that spirit, it would be prudent, first, to briefly touch upon the severity of the current pandemic. Why are the steps that Americans and their leaders are taking so important? Engineer Tomas Pueyo has put together an astoundingly comprehensive piece on the subject, outlining some of the numbers. Keeping in mind that infection and death rates vary by country and circumstance, Pueyo found that that countries with overwhelmed health systems are likely to have about a 3% — 5% fatality rate. This matters to us, because it is indisputable that the United States has a healthcare system that is poised to be overwhelmed.

As outlined in the New York Times, there are only 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people in this country. With regard to Intensive Care beds, we have only about 45,000 of them. In even a moderate outbreak, we would require about 200,000 such beds, at once. More alarming, while the best treatment for this coronavirus is to place severely ill patients on ventilators, In a situation similar to the ’57, ’68, or 1918 flu epidemics, the United States would require 64,000–750,000 ventilators for COVID-19 patients alone. We currently only have 160,000; and of those, many of them are already in use for patients with other serious ailments.

The scarier thing is, this isn’t the flu. The flu spreads over the course of 8 months, much slower than COVID-19 is capable of spreading. There is a reason why Italy is overwhelmed, with healthcare workers dying, funerals prohibited so that loved ones are being systematically cremated, and doctors having to choose who lives and who dies based on the limited supply of medical equipment. Even though the death rate makes it tempting to underplay what we face, consider this: at a death rate of 2% (even lower than Pueyo’s figure), and assuming 100 million become infected in the United States (lower than the CDC’s worst case scenario 160 million, and about 1 in 3 Americans), we would lose almost 2,000,000 lives.

This number doesn’t even account for the deaths of people with other emergencies who would miss out on proper care because of the lack of medical equipment and ICU beds. For comparison’s sake: The United States lost 418 thousand lives in World War 2, just over 58 thousand in Vietnam, 620 thousand lives during the Civil War, and 2,996 on 9/11. And many of those situations occurred over a period of years. People are perishing from COVID-19 within weeks. Swine flu, the epidemic that swept through the United States in 2009 had a much lower death rate of only .02%, so while 60 million Americans were infected, we lost only 12 thousand. If 60 million Americans were to be infected with this Novel Coronavirus, that figure would be closer to 1.2 million. Note that there are over 6 times more active cases in the U.S. as of March 17 than there were just a week prior. There are also more deaths than recoveries since the pandemic has hit our shores.

Amount of U.S. infections as of March 10th

In one week, the number of infected has increased to 6 times as many

Again, none of this is to fear monger, nor to belabor the risk we face. The above information has been provided to illustrate that the steps currently being undertaken, primarily at the direction of the scientists and doctors; those guiding Federal, State, and local governments, are vitally necessary to avert the above nightmare. The thing about an exponential spread is: it seems distant and slow moving, until it hits you fast and all at once.

Because of an American tendency to fail to take problems seriously and to constantly fight over where the empirical baseline is, we were grossly underprepared for this. With even the President initially calling it a political hoax, we came dangerously close to taking none of these vital actions at all. Thank god, for once, we sprang awake. This tragedy may nonetheless still hit us relatively hard, but because we are moving decisivly at the direction of those best equipped to keep us informed, that possibility is becoming less likely. That is, unless the few still sleeping don’t snap the hell out of it.

Let’s face it: Compared with most of human history up to this point, modern Americans have not had to face many of the horrors that people have had to deal with since we evolved and set foot outside of Eden. People used to be drawn and quartered: a cruel method of death wherein one was, still alive, disemboweled, removed of his sex organs which were then burned in front of him, and then decapitated. There was chattel slavery in previous American centuries, where men and women were huddled like livestock into the bowels of filthy ships for months across the Atlantic before becoming the property of another. The earliest colonists suffered through famine and death over winter. Native Americans were marched brutally from their homelands and genocidally massacred by force and disease. Eunuchs had their genitals chopped off as little children and if they didn't’ bleed to death, spent their lives as servants. The Nazi’s massacred millions of Jews during the holocaust after stripping them of their property and citizenship, and that was not even that long ago, nor culturally distant. And let us not forgot all of the modern suffering around the world today: Child soldiers in the Congo are forced to murder and are brutally raped before the age of 13. Over 2 billion people do not have adequate access to clean drinking water, and over 4 billion do not have access to proper sanitation, according to the United Nations. Yet, in modern America we complain if we don’t get a single-family home on a quiet suburban street fast enough. We throw a fit if our internet is running too slow, or if the flight to our cheap vacation, subsidized on the backs of impoverished locals, is delayed for an hour. We preach tirelessly about economic justice via cell phones manufactured using components provided through children laboring for pennies and scraps of food.

We are sheltered hypocrites.

But what does any of that have to do with COVID-19? Well, it’s simple: Aside from the small percentage amongst us who have actually been deployed to warzones, or who have volunteered or worked in tumultuous situations like the 9/11 first responders, most of us have never been exposed to the harsh realities and suffering prevelant throughout human society. Of course there is the sporadic true tragedy on a large scale: Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, random mass shootings; but those still seem like distant fictions to most who don’t have to grapple with their true horror. Even with the current crisis, many want to pretend its some fictional film, played on repeat on a cable news network rather than something they too, have to take seriously.

This privileged reality has made Americans into a society of people who do not understand the need for pragmatism. We seem to lack the propensity to recognize the severity of big problems and to solve them. Many consistently take for granted the wealth we possess, both in the sense of materiality and in the sense of advanced knowledge and resources. Almost all falsely think they have the luxury of ignoring science and conflict as it suits them; of voting primarily based on visceral reaction and identity. Rather than adjust viewpoints as new data flows inward, many fabricate data outward in order to manufacture and justify viewpoints. Objective reality has become malleable; real issues in a constant state of impasse.

Not until an existential threat, so universal and so indiscriminant comes along, do we finally pause and look to our doctors and scientists for answers and a way forward. Now, suddenly the smartest and most knowledgeable amongst us are guiding us through this surreal state of affairs; with businesses shuttered, curfews imposed, and objectively verifiable factual data guiding us toward a tangible solution. Suddenly, we are capable of pausing life for a moment, putting our collective efforts together, and trying to tackle a legitimate problem without some predetermined and staked out posture to suit our emotional and comfort-based dispositions.

Many have looked to immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, an expert in Public Health, and head of the NIH, to lead America through the current crisis.

How many other problems could be solved if we reacted the same way to them? What if, instead of putting our passions aside, or allowing them to predominate, we simply took them into consideration as but one aspect of our collective decisions? What if we ackowledged that our own passions may directly conflict with the problem-solver beside us, but that we must, as a necessity, get beyond that?

Gun violence in this country for instance, seems to only become an issue worth discussion in the days directly following a random massacre at a school, concert, or church. Even then, rather than having any objectively rational dialogue about the tragedy, the political vultures begin circling overhead. Wretched in their ways, their propaganda is predictable: If the shooter subscribed to Islamic extremism, right-wing war hawks will stress the need for more xenophobia and war; if the shooter subscribed to white supremacy, social justice advocates will stress that the shooter is the very common product of a widespread societal racism alone; if the shooter was an immigrant, racists will claim we need to close the borders. Yet none of these groups ever pause to find the true common denominator: Isolated men with mental health issues and easy access to guns. Whatever twisted justification these men find for their violent behavior is immaterial. In fact, many even subscribe to a myriad of contradictory ideologies and movements.

Ironically, if instead of fighting for political scraps, we looked to psychologists, sociologists, and data on the issue, everyone might get what they want. Second Amendment enthusiasts would get to keep their gun of choice; gun critics would get some much-needed reforms; and social-justice minded activists could point out and help to erradicate an outgrowth of systemic racism. That’s because, despite the fact that Americans only seem to want to pay attention when a random mass shooting occurs, most gun violence in America occurs on a daily basis throughout the country, going virtually unnoticed. Worse, for every 100,000 black men in this country, 29.12 die by firearm homicide annually. That figure is only 2.1 per 100,000 white men. Interestingly, of all gun deaths in the United States, about 64% are the result of handguns, while only about 4% come at the hands of a rifle. And, regarding overall gun violence, only a small percentage come in the form of mass shootings:

So, what if we were not so reactive? What if we were not so focused on fighting with emotion, and were proactive? What if those so enraged after a mass shooting that they will settle for nothing less than a complete ban on, and the confiscation of “assault weapons”, and those so indoctrinated by the manufacturer profit-motivated NRA, that they refuse to discuss any reforms at all, were to stop ignoring the fact that ground zero for our gun problem is handguns and young men, not assault rifles and mass shootings? Only then might we get the smartest people in a room together to formulate a solution. Then, we might find a way to restrict the access to guns for those most mentally unstable, and to stem the tide of illegal sales via loopholes and lack of federal guidance, all while allowing honest law abiding gun owners to maintain the weapons of their choice.

The right solution could greatly reduce the number of daily and annual deaths, and help to prevent the mass shootings that briefly catch everyone’s attention. Instead, we continue to bicker and fight over intangible and irrelevant ideology that does nothing constructive, but continues to fuel political emotion: keeping issues on the “hot-button” and controversial politicians in power.

Currently, our economy is taking a massive, if not unprecedented, hit. Dealing with an attempt to “flatten” the COVID-19 curve has caused businesses to shutter, employees to be laid off, and the stock market to crash. Yet we are doing it because it needs to be done. The government has put forth mitigative measures in short order, and has shown a willingness to spend exorbitant amounts of money to bail out industries and individual citizens. Wealthy people, like Mark Cuban, are stepping up to cover some of those costs as well. Suddenly, the impossible is reality.

So why have we not stepped up with the same economic sacrifice and innovation, with the same vigor and determination, to tackle climate change? The answer to that, much like the current pandemic, before it hit us like a tsunami, is that Americans probably see it as unlikely to actually affect them, and too far off to care. People have been dug into positions and entrenched so deeply, that they probably don’t even remember what the fight was about in the first place. Even as scientists warn that climate change is one of the biggest threats facing humanity, even as a majority of the scientific community agrees that we will only see further droughts, fires, severe storms, and economic damage as the world warms, we are manufacturing junk-science to deny objective reality. It is easier to tell ourselves a lie, and to attack those relaying objective information, than to grapple with the truth and get together to find a data-driven solution.

Perhaps the pinnacle of America’s emotion/identity-based political propensity came in 2016. Then, a brash and unabashed Donald Trump touted his plan to “Make America Great Again!” He pledged to wall off our border with Mexico and stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the continental United States; to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord; to hold our allies accountable for shared expenses; and to stick it to snotty liberals everywhere. Nevermind that the economy was already healthily on the rebound, that almost every american was benefiting from and generally tolerant of the cheap labor that undocumented migrants provided, that most Americans cared about the environment. Nevermind that many Americans did not have any substantive knowledge about any of those issues anyway. This candidate would recapture an American sense of pride and the illusion of dominance in all things.

Trump made a large contingent of Americans feel good, and appealed to their emotional inclinations regarding abstract identity-based issues. It did not matter that the bulk of those “issues” did not mean all that much from the tangible day-to-day standpoint of governing, or make an impact on our everyday lives. Despite Trump being woefully underprepared for the actual job he was vying for, many Americans, largely removed from any actual type of misery or truly dangerous strife, chose to vote in a popularity contest. They assured themselves that nothing of actual substance would ever happen which would require their chosen leader to have to actually make good decisions. To be sure, since he’s won the election, Trump’s rallies are light on substance. His speeches follow more in the vein of stand-up comedy routines and barroom rants than policy updates.

Trump, evoking the mannersims of Rodney Dangerfield as he tells a joke at one of his political rallies, to the delight of his fans.

So no one should have been surprised when, in May of 2018, Trump disbanded America’s Health Security Team, and pushed Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer from the security counsel. Even as The Washington Post, several scientists, health experts, and academics railed against the move, warning us that the United States would be grossly unprepared to confront a viral pandemic, most Americans, and the President himself, ignored the issue. It seemed too remote. The experts were too inconvenient to hear out. Because we placed comfort and emotion over experts and science, we are now deeply immersed in suffering.

Even now, as Trump has finally ceded much of his decision making power to pragmatic experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, he still insists on calling COVID-19 “the Chinese virus”. This, as if finding some juvenile comfort in sophmoric racism. This, an appeal to identity-based reactive emotionality. It was an arrogant mistake to elect such an ill-equipped person to lead a nation. It was hubris to think we’d survive his reign unscathed.

Americans, now, are turning their weary and anxiety-glazed eyes toward their Mayors, Governors, and congresspeople. Suddenly the D or R next to their name is less important than their ability to reason. Abruptly, their color or creed is absolutely irrelevant. Undeniably, their feelings about one “value” or another are a miniscule consideration compared to their ability to listen to objective facts, and to compromise. Without warning, anti-vaxxers and fact-deniers have faded into obscurity.

The Federal Government is planning a 1 trillion dollar stimulus package to attempt to rescue the economy. However, some economists have hypothesized that it will take more like a 3 trillion dollar stimulus to thwart economic collapse and avoid a serious recession. Therefore, those in our government are going to need to be solution-minded and prepared to engage in a prolonged collaborative process.

Politics are an essential part of government, but government is much more than politics. American citizens and their representatives need to collectivly realize that while every politician and every constituency brings concerns, values, and causes to the table, these should only influence, and never control. We will get through the current crisis, and we will persevere. We will see success and ascension again.

But we no longer have the luxury of ignoring science or voting emotion. We shouldn’t have the audacity to shun practicality or distort reality for our own pretentious comfort. If the current crisis is teaching us anything, it should be showing us that we are, in fact, capable of hitting the pause button. We are capable of coming together to tackle a problem. We are capable of moving in unison, at the guidence of those most informed, to conquer an obstacle.

Never again should we get complacent. We need to stop being intellectually and civically lazy just because we have been more lucky than other generations and other civilizations up to this point. We are as susceptible as anyone else to meeting our demise. True threats are always around the corner. Let’s get ahead of impending problems before they meet us on the doorstep, like this pandemic has.

Wake the F*** up America. Stay awake.