I can be accused of wanton speculation but I wonder if the pandemic and other matters of alleged existential threat – like climate change – have much to do with the fact that we know too much and don’t handle the information very well. In my mind, the thought needs to be taken seriously.
And we throw these not-very-well digested factoids into the combustible environments of our politics, resulting in a double whammy: little perspective and political mud-slinging, making for political sludge. No wonder we are throttled from one extreme to the next at any cry of “crisis”. Don’t expect much help from our blinder- and bubble-induced media to calm the nerves.
The thought came to me as I was ruminating on the coronavirus situation. I previously stated my belief that raw numbers with little context or perspective can be misleading. The fact that the US has so many coronavirus cases, for instance, is a result of the fact that we are better able to uncover them. Though, I am curious about the effect on the average flu season if we marshaled the same financial resources and powers of all levels of government on this single matter. Would a “pandemic” be in the offing? Would we be on a near-war footing?
“But people are dying!” is the cry in the land. Yes, and it’s the same response about climate change. Regarding climate change, at no time in history are we better able to monitor the condition of the earth with the plethora of satellites, ocean buoys, and land stations at our disposal, producing a mountain of data. To make the numbers meaningful, we try to make comparisons with the past from ice cores, tree rings, geological strata, etc, since Baylonian astrologers didn’t have the advantage of a GEOS-8 (weather satellite).
But let’s face it, the concomitant conclusions from a tree’s rings are extrapolations and, to put it bluntly, lack the oomph of a satellite reading of the temperature at the thermosphere. Today, once our attention is drawn to a subject, it is put under a microscope to feed anything from sensible proposals to hysteria.
What draws our attention to a subject? Frequently, sadly, it’s politics. Progressives are constantly on the lookout for the next moral equivalent of war as the excuse to put more of government in the hands of “experts”. It’s in their ideological DNA. What better way to expand the reach of the administrative state than a pandemically-induced lockdown of a people’s entire way of life? It’s the fulfillment and finest expression of their long-sought dream.
But are we really experiencing a pandemic? Probably yes. Yet, a proper understanding of the numbers might mitigate the response to it. We might refrain from shutting down life in a region with none or few cases and concentrate our efforts on the places and populations most at risk. Instead of sending everyone home for 3 weeks, we might implement and enforce rigorous personal sanitation, testing, and sending home anyone sick. That way we don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs as we deal with the problem. Impoverishment is an insane cost for an illness that 90+% of the infected will experience as a cold.
We are experiencing a far more serious epidemic in the insertion of political shenanigans into any manufactured or real problem. Take a look at the Democrats’ wish list in the $2 trillion relief bill. It’s socialist egalitarianism run amok, and has very little to do with addressing the illness. Don’t tell me this isn’t about politics.
The problem, and the numbers, are soiled by considerations about November 2020. The media are a megaphone for it.
RogerG