Life comes with risks, some are known and avoidable, some are not. For example, we know that every day millions of Americans get into a vehicle, assuming risk of personal injury, paying little attention to the reality that we could become one of the 100 who will not return home, having perished in an auto accident – one of more than 38,000 in a given year.1 Yet, we do not question the need for transportation, nor do we place restrictions on leisurely travel. To the contrary, we value these as necessities, we encourage it for public health as part of the work-life balance. We even have industries dedicated to leisurely travel, employing millions, a circular win.
Make no mistake. Automobile fatalities should not be used to equivocate the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), but to simply underscore the concept of assumed risk. COVID-19 presents an unprecedented situation with largely unprecedented results – unforeseen economic toll and a nation finding nearly half of its population being asked not to leave their own homes. We are now, as a nation, faced with difficult, albeit legitimate, ethical questions few are willing to acknowledge, let alone discuss:
- How much is a person’s life worth and what price should their fellow citizens pay to keep that person alive?
- Can we afford to spend our way out of this crisis without the revenue lost through economic shutdown and its long-term impact to our economy?
- Is it fair to continue to ask younger and future generations to pay the price of previous generations’ failure to prepare for this moment?
- Is saving a million lives worth decimating several hundred million lives?
- How much are we willing to abandon our principles, such as freedom of travel, to give the state the power to restrict our basic rights?
- Should we choose between the extremes of quarantine and survival by infection?
These questions are too complex to properly evaluate here; however, no reasonable person would suggest that 328,000,000 Americans remain indefinitely sheltered in their homes to prevent a single citizen from dying, nor would a right-minded person suggest we simply give into puritanical Darwinism and accept the suffering and death of millions for the sake of others’ convenience and economic benefit. We need not make the worst type of decision.
How then can a society so divided along such extreme partisan lines that politicians cannot help but attempt to further bloat the world’s already-largest-ever bill with personal political pork that run afoul to the basic principles of their opponents, thus delaying the substance of the efforts from reaching its intended purpose – to provide a measure of targeted support while millions of our citizens are suffering – prolonging the agony of mass anxiety, actually come to productive consensus solutions? It may be that only actions found somewhat distasteful to all will pass through the meatgrinder to reason that is Washington.
As we await the results of the relief package recently signed into law, there is a short window for the government to lay the ground to transition back to some sense of American normalcy while limiting long-term damage. (Note: this article was written the day after the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security [CARES] Act was signed into law.) Are our elected leaders up to the task? The recent $2T compromise bill may indicate that it is within the power, and capability, of government to reach a public health solution that minimizes the more devastating health consequences of infection while empowering the masses to continue their lives with few restrictions to their guaranteed personal rights. Is it possible without government overreach? That a president who has been consistently likened to an autocrat has been slow to resist expansion of federal powers during a time of crisis may serve as a positive indicator.
So while the cure should not be worse than the disease, we should also be able to agree that a free nation needs its medicine if it is to survive and thrive whilst ill. It need not be starved.
Contagion Defense Act
Some promote the idea of imposing certain degrees of large-scale quarantine for as much as a year. A review of the short-term effects of similar measures shows that the consequences of large-scale actions would be catastrophic. Consider, instead, the idea of federal legislation that grants governors and/or the president the authority to temporarily ‘hospitalize’ states on as-needed bases, empowering limited restraining measures. Though requiring the rapid ramp-up in production of the necessary product and education, which is already largely underway, a Contagion Defense Act (CDA) could be designed along the following lines:
- Ensure the use of approved facemasks while in public and at work. It appears likely that transmission of the virus is dominated by incidents of touching one’s face. If true, facemasks, in addition to optional use of protective eyewear, would provide a strong defense. We require the wearing of clothes in public. The addition of facemasks is neither an undue burden nor unreasonable request given the circumstances.
If needed, USPS could routinely deliver millions of governmentally-funded sealed facemasks for use to citizens in need. (A struggling USPS can deliver unaddressed, unwanted junk mail to millions of homes; it can manage this task.
2. Adopt a form of triage. Establish a protected registry subject to similar privacy requirements as the census, conduct mass testing and provide subjects with durable color-keyed ‘non-removable’ identity wristbands:
a. Red for a positive test, which would mandate two (2) weeks stay-at-home before subsequent testing;
b. Yellow for a negative test, which would permit one to go about their public activity provided they wear a facemask; and,
c. Green for cleared, which would be free from restrictions. This would be for those who have tested negative following a positive test or tested positive for antibodies, indicating they have already had the virus and recovered, presently believed to be an indicator of immunity.
Effective testing requires the development of rapid-result accurate tests.
All citizens in subject jurisdictions would be required to wear their wristbands for the duration of the crisis so authorities can ensure appropriate compliance. Testing could be conducted through a coordinated effort from the National Guard, the states and local health agencies.
3. Provide two-sided door hangers to identify every household:
a. A red side indicating even a single resident is positive; and,
b. A green side indicating all residents have been cleared. (USPS would forgo delivery of facemasks to residences with green doorhangers.)
This should not be viewed as a scarlet letter. Everybody gets ill. There is no shame in it. We should simply provide a degree of warning and protection where not overtly inconvenient.
4. Encourage the elderly to voluntarily self-quarantine and establish a temporary payroll tax to fund economic protections for positive-tested and at-risk individuals, i.e. the elderly and those with strong comorbidity factors. Prevent employers from terminating or furloughing these individuals whilst providing employers with the supplemental reimbursement for paying them. (Economically, the unemployed are protected through unemployment benefits and retired seniors are protected through Social Security and retirement plans.); and,
5. Establish, through agreement with state governments, who would form their own internal enforcement mechanisms with reasonable penalties for violations.
To remain active, such legislation should require renewal by joint congressional and presidential approval every three (3) months until the crisis is deemed under sufficient control to lift restrictions, thus ensuring consistent evaluation of evolving circumstances.
Compromise. It is irresponsible for a nation to come to a complete halt when the great majority of the public is under little consequential harm to their physical health, just as much as it is irresponsible to flagrantly disregard public health during times of contagion. Balance can be had.
Risk Assessment
All indicators thus far show that COVID-19 does not provide a significant threat to most under the age of 55 – the drivers of the nation’s economy – provided they do not have pre-existing health issues serving as comorbidity factors.2
To that point, it may be worth noting that, based on the data we currently have (as of March 28, 2020), death from COVID-19 for those having tested positive for coronavirus is not all that dissimilar from the annual chance of death for all causes. 2,3 In other words, as with all combined forms of death, there is an exponential likelihood with age.
Evaluating the data, the chance an average American 80 years of age will succumb to death over the course of a year is about 4.5% while the chance this individual will succumb to death after contracting COVID-19 is estimated at 7.5%. By contrast, the chance an average American 32 years of age will perish is approximately .15% in both cases. (Comment: if coronavirus’ outweighed impact is on the elderly and those with comorbidity factors, the individuals who are already at the highest risk for death, might it be possible that coronavirus does little more than accelerate, albeit through aggravation, the inevitable by a matter of months? The 2020 overall mortality statistics will make for an interesting analysis.) It appears clear that, though taxing a health care network unprepared for the onset of the current epidemic, the disease itself poses an insignificant health threat to most Americans, even those who contract it. (Note: any individual long-term health consequences of contracting COVID-19 are presently unknowable.)
Mitigation Measures Matter
Nonetheless, effective enforcement of the proposals could work well to provide necessary economic recovery, limit the restrictions on personal rights and freedom, protect the most vulnerable through mitigation of transmission, build the herd immunity required to provide a firewall against mass contagion, and grant time for the development of proven treatment and vaccines without shuttering the whole of society. Further, if proven successful, and drafted appropriately, CDA could be designed as general law, to be activated through similar joint approval for future epidemiological crises. (Requiring super-majorities in both houses of Congress to overturn any presidential objection to activation of the law, as with general passage of congressional legislation, would serve as a guardrail against excessive federal or state action under CDA.)
We must listen to the health authorities and follow the data; however, when weighed against the unprecedented damage being wrecked upon society by present actions, there is clearly insufficient scientific data to support some of the draconian measures taken across the world. We must not give in to fear. Rather, we must, as when we get into that automobile in the morning, assume a reasonable element of risk to maintain our individual lives, to expose low-risk individuals to the virus so that we can naturally defeat this enemy as we have countless times over the course of human existence, and to retain our identity and integrity as a nation.
The teaching of history has lost influence in our educational system but have we forgotten who we are as a people? From the settlers who endured deadly oceanic travel to a land foreign to them and suffered brutal beginnings, dying at extraordinary rates, to the pioneers who venturing into the interior of unknown country, to citizens raging war against themselves to remedy a national spiritual flaw, to a nation standing up against tyranny thousands of miles beyond its own shores, we are the United States of America, a nation founded on risk. This is who we are. This is what we do. We face the challenges. We make the hard choices. We take the risks. We succeed.
But there is a place for caution.
Rather than debating the merits of extreme measures, a well-balanced approach should be designed to protect the high-risk individuals without subjecting the low-risk individuals to unnecessary hardships or sacrificing the physical, emotional, psychological and economic health of the nation. Enacting the proposed CDA’s measures may work to bring this to pass while also promoting much-needed solidarity during one of the most trying times we will ever personally experience. This crisis, as with World War II and other major crises in our nation’s past, may well serve to heal a wounded nation. Few recall how divided the nation was just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but many know of the unified war effort and the American Century that was birthed through war and victory.
When legitimate foes present themselves, as with COVID-19, the foes we have imagined and manufactured in the best of times prove themselves the petty inanities they always were. If we are fortunate, we will remember as much when the present crisis is over and V-C Day is here. It is presently difficult to see through winter’s fog of war, but spring is nearing.
This crisis will end. It is up to us to decide how and when, and who we choose to be.
1 https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatality-estimates
2 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm#F2_down
3 https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age-and-sex-in-the-us/
The Offence 
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