Tag Archives: COVID19, tests, masks, hospitals, Trump, economy, shut down, CDC, FDA, restaurants, gyms,

Is it time to end COVID19 closings to save the economy?

Stress

Personal Opinion and Analysis, , , , , , ,

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a reporter who loved stress. She called it “good stress”. And it was mostly about making deadlines and finishing marathons. Interviewing, writing, live shots, telling people’s stories – that all got better under the good stress.  Knowing there wasn’t an option NOT to train for a marathon got her out the door those cold snowy mornings. Before work. And after just four hours sleep.

Ahhhhh good stress. How I miss it.

Stress now is mostly about the endless pandemic. Covid-19. And variant after variant. Almost 2 years of fear, grief, lockdowns, masks, travel bans and Zoom.  Families in mourning. Families divided. Friends not speaking. Children in hospitals.  Vaccine passports. Vaccine mandates. Tests to fly to a foreign country. Tests to get back home. Rules changing overnight. Anti-vaxxers clogging up hospital systems through rounds of different variants. Jobs lost. Or maybe – The Great Resignation. Live events – theater, concerts, clubs – cancelled or restricted.

Only big league sports escaped the shut downs. Even before vaccines. Perhaps because there was so much money at stake. But then this month – as the omicron variant flared – the money suddenly stopped talking.  As the ultimate bad boy story unfolded. Tennis star Novak Djokovic – adamantly unvaccinated – got tossed out of Australia before he could defend his title. For lying on his visa. More or less.

Inflation is soaring, the supply chain has been broken for months and months, The Federal Reserve still seems paralyzed, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was and still is a tragic disaster and President Joe Biden – elected to fix what his predecessor had broken – seems – along with his dysfunctional party – unable to walk and chew gum. Meanwhile the democracy most Americans have cherished for hundreds of years looks ready to collapse under the weight of social media-driven misinformation and Trump-world QAnon lies and conspiracy theories.

You want to talk about stress?

A few months ago I read in a health report that collectively – Americans’ blood pressure has risen markedly since COVID-19 enveloped us.  I know mine has. I’m angry all the time now. So is everyone I know and seemingly, everyone I DON’T know. It’s an inchoate anger.  At everything that keeps going wrong. At a rickety health system where doctors, nurses and other hospital staffs worked until they collapsed and yet somehow loved ones and friends died. It’s an anger that more than a year after vaccines started going into arms – the now militantly UNvaccinated have made it almost a Trumpian religion to stay that way. Even as Trump himself has finally begun touting the virtues of getting the vaccine his administration actually produced. It’s an anger that keeps building because once again the hospitals are full, health workers are exhausted and at least 80% of those on respirators now are unvaccinated. Many of the rest just didn’t bother to get their boosters.

There have always been lots of things which stress us out. They’ve usually varied – person to person. Often in the past, money – or rather the lack of money – has been the biggest stressor. Now – it’s all tied up in COVID. Somehow, in some continually frustrating way, the virus is at the heart of everything. Sometimes it seems we’re not just wobbling under this burden of stress. We’ve all gone down that rabbit hole in some way. Descending into a fragmenting world where everyone seems not just stressed but after almost two pandemic years – almost mentally ill.  Every week it seems we hear of someone pushed onto the subway tracks. Or knocked over from behind on a busy city street. Or shot for literally no reason at all.

Meanwhile the confusing rhetoric from health officials continues. About the omicron variant and masks and maybe a fourth vaccine shot when so few have even gotten the third…..and on and on and on and on.

I yell all the time. At my husband (who yells back at me). At the poor cats. In my car. As everyone else in THEIR cars seems to be doing the same thing.

When will this end? HOW will it end? Where are the psychologists on cable TV or even on Twitter who can explain us to ourselves.  Tie it all together and tell us how to make it stop?

There is seemingly nothing in this world right now (except perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aberrant dream of recreating the Soviet Union) that is not based on or caused by or related to the COVID-19 pandemic. And the way our officials handled or didn’t handle it. And the way we in the free world are reacting to losing the personal freedom we all once believed could never be ripped away.

The COVID19 Panic

Personal Opinion and Analysis

As I watch the stock market tank once again today (at this writing it’s down between 33 and 37% from its February highs) I get angrier and angrier. At our elected legislators in Washington who still can’t seem to compromise on a promised 2 trillion dollar stimulus plan. At the public health doctors who have panicked mayors and governors and ordinary people while they close down everything in sight and destroy what was still a pretty strong economy. And of course at President Trump who wouldn’t listen to the intelligence and CDC people as they warned, starting in January, there was a coronavirus tsunami coming. So here we are. Half of America under orders to stay home. See no one. Do nothing. Home school the restless kids. Work from home while you do it. Don‘t even go for a long run. Or bike ride. Or walk with your friends. Short, short. Even though exercise is the one thing that might boost your immune system to stave off the virus. Oh – and don’t go near Grandma who needs to be isolated from the only thing many older people care about. Family.

Meanwhile companies big and small are closing down. Stopping production. Closing small restaurants and shops vital to our sense of normalcy.  And gyms vital to our total health. Many of these probably closing down forever. Only businesses and operations seen by governors as essential can continue to operate. There are predictions of a 30% unemployment rate as laid off workers – so many of them in our new gig economy not covered by guaranteed, salaried employee benefits like unemployment – start piling up.

Yes we have a health crisis. It’s not only the President who wasn’t prepared. The CDC wasn’t prepared with the simple test the rest of the world has been using so successfully. The FDA wasn’t prepared – wrapping it’s overly red tape even tighter instead of cutting it early on. The state governors weren’t prepared. The hospitals big and small weren’t prepared. And certainly the publicly traded insurance companies and  PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) which essentially run what passes for the US health care system weren’t prepared.  After encouraging hospitals for decades to pare back their general hospital rooms and ICUs and ability to handle any kind of health crisis from any source. And embrace financially rewarding elective surgery instead. While hospitals in less populated areas simply closed. Do telemedicine they suggested. Forgetting many rural areas don’t even have wifi or 5G mobile capability.

So of course there is panic everywhere. Not enough tests (only now ramping up). Not enough protective clothing and masks for medical workers. Not enough hospital beds or ICUs or ventilators. So the rest of us have to stay home and give up human contact lest we turn into Italy.

As CNBC’s Jim Cramer said early on, “no country wants to be Italy”.

So after a week or two of incredible stock market plunges and home arrest in the most populous US states – influential people are beginning to look at the destruction of everything – and worry that we may save lives but have no economy, no savings, no COUNTRY to creep back to. Suggestions are popping up for some kind of middle ground. For only 2 or 3 week shutdowns – 14 days for the incubation period of COVID19 and a week for evaluation. For quarantining only older people. As a group. Despite the fact that many are strong, healthy, athletic and very fit. Medication and underlying conditions free. With the immune systems of people much younger. Older people with health problems, like younger ones, know who they are and are likely to stay 6 feet away from anyone voluntarily.

Bottom line. We are social people. Even the millennials and Gen Z-ers who live digitally on their phones move around in real groups of real friends. The main reason everything is now shut down. Sure. We can all sacrifice the small pleasures which make life livable for a short time. But not indefinitely. People simply CANNOT live with “indefinitely”. A word far too many public health doctors and government officials are using.

Isn’t it time for end dates? So we have something to look forward to? So the economy has a reasonable chance at regeneration? Maybe targeted, rolling shutdowns only in hot spots like big cities. And then only for those 2 or 3 weeks. To slow the virus’ spread. Remembering that the more people who get the virus and either don’t show symptoms or recover quickly – the faster we may get that herd immunity which has helped with other viruses. Although of course we still don’t know if this NOVEL coronavirus reacts the same way.

We all have seen that graphic with the two curves. We have heard “flatten the curve” over and over. We understand. But you simply can’t lock us up forever.