Dispatch from Coronaville: The Guv'Mint

Over my next two DFC (Dispatch from Coronaville)  posts I'd like to tackle two hot topics: government and science. Two recent posts from the boiling cauldron of emotion, links and shares that is Facebook provided the impetus for these themes. One is by an old friend from Saipan days who expressed skepticism of the latest authoritative (or perhaps authoritarian?) guidance from the public health experts on what constitutes best practices for protecting oneself and others from the virus.  The other was a share by a high school classmate about the Japanese approach to the virus that seemed to involve neither massive shutdowns nor mass testing.  Describing this friend as libertarian would be putting it mildly and his profound distrust of government is always on display in his often funny posts.

Both are good men.  Both I often disagree with.  On Saturday, I'll write about science.  Tonight I want to talk about government.

I am not an ideologue when it comes to government. I probably come across as "liberal" to most of my Facebook friends, but I am not sold on the government as the shining solution to every problem. I spent 11 years looking at the bumbling, inefficient, shambling results of a bloated government. My friend the dentist whose post I'll address on Saturday knows of what I speak. And it gets worse than even that in places where you can't get anything done without greasing the palm of whatever local government functionary you are forced to deal with. Places where the kind of complaints we bandy about on Facebook would get us disappeared without a trace--off to be re-educated somewhere.  We in the United States know very little of how bad government can really get.  After all government is not some giant Entity on to itself.  It's people.  And people without accountability are trouble.

But at the same time I believe that there are some things that only government can do well. Indeed, I would argue that without government to smooth the way, the free market as we know it cannot exist. Imagine if every company had to pave its own roads, run its own fire department and police, and monitor its own environmental impact.  There are societies pretty much free of government but they typically operate at the tribal level and its members live a subsistence lifestyle. I'm not arguing that's a bad thing; just that I doubt the modern world could function without government.

The problem is that when one is an ideologue, it's hard to see when the facts on the ground don't square with the ideology. And I would the argue the facts on the ground never always square with a single ideology. Some might say that Ronald Reagan's quote that "government is not the solution the problem, government is the problem" is always true. I don't know about that. Remember the good old days when fire fighters were private entities?  Yeah, they weren't so good. I tend to see government as more neutral, something that can either be toxic or useful depending on how it is used.

So I've provided a link to the Bloomberg article that my friend shared. You may peruse it at your leisure. I've bullet pointed the highlights for those who can't be bothered.  My conclusions were quite different than my friend's. (Although to be fair, I don't know exactly what his conclusions were; he's the king of the drive-by "I'll just leave this here" accompanied one of his trademark witticisms.  What is he thinking? Something libertarian, that's the only thing I can be sure of).

My takeaways on the Japanese miracle (though we are using this term loosely as there are other countries including Vietnam and South Korea that seem to have had much greater success. But I suppose the argument could be made that a little less "success" is worth it if the economy can keep humming along and life can continue with some semblance of normalcy):

• There doesn't appear to be one key factor that has helped keep case numbers and deaths down in Japan.  There's no magic bullet.  A loaded magazine unleashed on full auto is more like it.
• The "Tracer Round": One of the bullets in the clip was an early response by contact tracers. They didn't use high tech surveillance like Korea.  Japan has had a lot of practice with contact tracing; they've already been doing it for other illnesses such as the flu and tuberculosis.
• Another bullet was Japan's public health centers (gasp!).  The article states that they don't have a "CDC" in Japan but a connected system of public health centers that acts as a bunch of little CDCs
• Japan also immediately accepted the threat as "their" problem. They didn't disregard the virus while it flooded other countries. They went on the offensive right way.
• In Japan, doctors and medical experts took the lead in policy for dealing with the virus rather than politicians who were criticized for their slow response.
• Rather than focusing on social distancing per se, the Japanese focused on avoiding the three "Cs":  Closed spaces, Crowded places, and Close contact
• It's possible that Japan may be dealing with a less virulent strain of the virus than other parts of the world
• The Japanese economy, unfortunately, has not been spared. They still face a dark economic present and future as the pandemic reverberates around the globe.

One final thought. Government is perhaps most dangerous when people willfully turn a blind eye to the poor governance and corrupt leadership because it serves their purposes or purports to support their ideology. There's no need seek out "deep state" conspiracies or nefarious plots to control our lives.  The evidence is right there in front of us for all to see, if only we are willing to look. I would argue that of governmental danger is happening right now. That's something even my libertarian friend and I might agree on.

The numbers are down today, across the board. And that makes me hopeful. Yes I know the papers are mourning our crossing of the 100,000 deaths milestone, and it is a tragedy.  But at least today all the indicators are pointing downhill.  I only hope they'll stay that way. My fear is that we needed to wait just a few more weeks to open up--but I'm really hoping that fear will be unfounded. Both my friends--the conservative dentist and the libertarian high school classmate--tend to take a less urgent view of the coronavirus--at least if I understand them correctly.  And let me tell you they are little devils on my shoulder. My heart is with them. I want so badly to believe that this is winding down, that the re-opening won't bring about the cataclysm that some predict.  My brain just has trouble going along.

As of today there have been 1,704,335 total cases representing a 3.6% rate of increase, the lowest I've recorded so far. This is 22,000 fewer cases than I predicted. Likewise 100,243 deaths is a 2.6% rate of increase, again the lowest rate of increase I've documented.  There were a little less than a thousand fewer deaths than I'd predicted by today.  Based on these rates of increase I project 1,765,691 total cases by Saturday, May 30, and 102,849 total deaths.

New case are down in all three states. The drop is largest in Nebraska but the decline in new cases in Florida and Ohio is healthy. I can officially start my two week countdown. Our goal is June 11. I am praying we can keep that downward trend going that long. 

Florida: 52,626 total cases, 0.24% of the population

Ohio: 33,439 total cases, 0.29% of the population
Nebraska: 12,687 total cases, 0.65% of the population

New deaths are down as well. We are back in the double digits in Ohio and Florida, and Nebraska is back in the single digits. Good news.  One thing I should note about about the death rate that I report here every three days. My friend the Conservative Dentist (who I think I will start referring to as the Conservative Dentist Compatriot, which will then enable me to call him the CDC for short, haha!) pointed out to me that the formula for calculating the actual death rate is not as simple as dividing the number of COVID deaths by reported cases, which is what I typically due. I affirm that the CDC i.e. my friend, is correct. The experts who come up with the officially mortality rate take into account the fact that the actual number of cases is likely much higher than reported.  The number of COVID deaths is also likely under counted (though some conspiracy theorists argue the opposite). It's important to also consider other factors such as the age and underlying health of those infected when calculating an accurate mortality rate.  For me, I understand the limitations of my numbers. What my numbers indicate is a general sense of what happens to that small subset of people who actually have symptoms serious enough to get tested, and I acknowledge that even then this number does not account for a number of other variables such as age and health condition. Now having gotten that disclaimer out of the way:
Florida: 2,318 total deaths, a rate of 4.4%
Ohio: 2,044 total deaths, a rate of 6.1%%
Nebraska: 160 total deaths, a rate of 1.3%