Among the millions of voices yelling into the C-19 void, it’s hard to imagine that everything has not been said, and yet to these ears, there are a few shreds of logic that simply have not gotten much air that I can see. Although I’m sure it’s been said, herewith is a needful collection of apparent fallacies that need to be amplified, particularly as they relate to the now growing struggle over opening state’s economies and businesses. FYI, they are especially relevant to Maryland.
The number of cases keeps growing It is already common knowledge that C-19 testing has been applied in minimally and greatly uneven ways if at all. Cases can’t ‘grow’ if you never test, right? So, if you want to and need to increase cases as a perverse justification to stymie further economic activity and/or even to manipulated potential aid and otherwise keep certain adversaries at bay, simply test, because then your cases count grows. The pattern of testing needed to initiate medical action, report accurate case numbers, protect the community, these have glaring examples of stupefying neglect in many jurisdictions. Come right down to it, who needs a test? If it quacks like a duck, it is. Medically, that can sometimes be a necessity, but for statistics, it’s another thing. Come to think of it, we’ll just cook the books anyway we feel like it. Add these 50 presumptive cases here and the 150 statistical overage deaths there and we’ll arrive at any number we want, whenever we want, on the day we want. One thing is clear, credibility of statistics is in meltdown.
Total cases, current cases Given that C-19 has a cycle of sickness that lasts about three weeks, we could be in our third, fourth or even fifth round of sickness in some places. We don’t know for sure because, again, testing. Total cases to date seem to be routinely thrown out repeatedly to impress upon us the severity of today. The number of ‘recovered’, is on some statistical sites but not in the news. Regardless, they are wrong. Look up the active cases for a month ago. The vast majority of those are recovered, some are dead, and an unfortunate small few are still struggling. The official recovered number is about 50% behind, again, perhaps because of testing, negligence, or fiat declaration. We’ll open our state when?! When fictitious numbers meet fictitious goals. Current hospitalizations may be the truest (but still imperfect) measure of current case stress which is what really counts when the vast majority do not require hospitalization or are even asymptomatic.
All cases are equal A case is a case and a death is a death right? No. Three types of institutional settings are directly or indirectly regulated by the state: nursing/long term care facilities, hospitals, prisons. Risk: All of these settings present an abnormally high risk of C-19 transmission. Benefit: At least the state can directly help, control, and monitor these petri dishes that they directly regulate…..right? We’ll maybe not if their current track record is any indication. Nevertheless, the political impulse to -for example- release prisoners to prevent infection constitutes an admission that general public environments constitute a considerable decreased risk. So why are there no distinctions between institutional and general public infection trends in re-opening decisions? General public and institution numbers need to be thoroughly separated. BTW, bad institutional numbers highlight the ineffectiveness of direct government oversight and contagion control.
Outcomes over efforts Elected leadership are seeking numerical outcomes to drive efforts, or their decision-making process, not the other way around. This is not sustainable. In fact, to the extent that numbers have any partial validity, the US (read governors, CDC, et al) responses are a dismal world class failure. We have four, nearly five times as many cases as the nearest nation. Compare this to a diet. The declaration that one will not eat until they attain a certain distant weight plunge is virtually suicidal. Any program enacted should be sustainable for all, not just for one third of participants, not even for four fifths. Casting off a full fifth of our economy (current approximation of those laid off) into a welfare-based/non-existence for an indefinite time is a recipe for disaster, especially when the C-19 pathology is expected to stay around for at least a couple of years. The only reasonable solution is to manage acute hot-spots and acute cases with laser-focused urgency but create phased normalcy elsewhere. Some of our current mitigation is more like chemotherapy, kill everything in one monolithic effort.