Uncounted Casualties

Some of the bobble-chasers are breathlessly previewing the Grand Reopening on Colorado's horizon. I fear it will be too timid and come too late to avert more unacceptable losses, of businesses as well as people.

These will be baby steps, we're cautioned; it's not going to be a "free for all," in the governor's words. The restive and the rebellious need to just relax, hang on a little longer, sacrifice more, see that  there's light at the end of the tunnel, and keep "doing our part." Grab on to this glimmer of hope and be grateful for Jared's mercy: that's the tenor and tone the Governor and Democrats want set. And so far it seems to be working for them.

Well, sorry if I'm not so eagerly chasing this bobble.

I'm pleased things are moving fitfully toward a "reopening." I think the Governor sincerely understands the urgency of getting Colorado moving again, if for no other reason than to stanch the budget bleed-out. But the celebration and optimism should be muted, and just as cautious as the "reopening" itself, tempered by the reality that this will be too little too late for many businesses and the multitude of workers they employed. Many of those businesses are closed, done, shuttered, finito, kaput. Each is someone's dead dream. And nothing the state or federal government can do now will bring them back. 

Were the sacrifices warranted in the name of saving lives? That will be debated for a hundred years. Right now we're like London, 1941, during a lull in the blitz, crawling from our hiding holes to see what's still standing, and what's barely standing but won't be for long. The final outcome can't now be known. Most are too shell-shocked or hunkered-down to focus on much more than their immediate survival. 

Bastiat famously wrote about what is seen and what is not seen. The economically astute person pays as much attention to the latter as the former. The bobble-chasers see what the bobble-danglers want them to see. They are patiently awaiting word from The Authorities on what comes next. But let's consider the unseen for a second.

Is the mayor of Denver keeping tabs on how many businesses there already closed for good and won't reopen at all? Does Colorado's Governor keep such a list? They know the human mortality stats back and forth (and sometimes sideways), which is understandable, but what about the business mortality stats? Even Paul Krugman could foresee a precipitous plunge in tax revenue, with potentially profound budget implications. But that doesn't begin to measure the psychological and social impacts on those who lose businesses and jobs, not because of the virus but because of a panicked political reaction that was disproportionate to the danger.     

Yes, we're talking now about gradually reopening some businesses, but with conditions and caveats that might make reopening beside the point, if profitability can't be achieved. But how many Colorado businesses already went off the cliff? How many can't be pulled back from the brink by a gradual reopening and hit-and-miss "assistance" from Uncle Sam? 

No one knows. These casualties of the lockdown are real but also conveniently invisible, because no one is tracking them. They don't get a spotlight in the Governor's regular Royal Edicts and Proclamations Period. Their passing from the scene is largely unnoticed and unmourned, except for the loyal or occasional patrons who lost a favorite haunt or were left in the lurch.   

And why is no one in power tracking the economic casualties as diligently as they track the human casualties? Because they want the economic casualties quietly buried in an unmarked grave, where they're out of sight and out of mind. That way fewer question get asked about whether the "cure" they prescribed in a panic inadvertently killed the patient.

Hyperventilation Nation

I didn't know until yesterday, when I heard it from Andrew Cuomo's lips, that 80% of the patients put on ventilators never recover, which means ventilators really aren't the "life-saving" miracle machines we often read about in recent headlines. That seems to be on the high (meaning pessimistic) side of the percentages I've seen reported, but it's fair to say that patients have a pretty low probability of ever getting off a ventilator once they're on one. 

The machines can be helpful in prolonging life, in other words, giving some percentage of users a fighting chance, but most of the people who use one won't make it. How much more life these machines buy for patients -- how many more days or hours, on average -- I do not know. I'm sure those statistics exist somewhere. But all most of these machines are good for is delaying the inevitable and prolonging suffering for the doomed. Do ventilators lower the overall mortality rate? Not by very much, relative to all the focus they receive. I've also seen reports that ventilators sometimes can do more harm than good; that they themselves can be a conduit for infections that kill; that they may have been OVERUSED as a treatment for COVID19.

None of this argues for not using ventilators in situations where they're helpful, or for withholding this technology from lost causes and just writing them off. But it does point to a disconnect between public perceptions about ventilators and their real-world medical utility in the midst of this crisis. And that misperception could have repercussions, depending on how the politics of this play out.   

So . . . did I have a point? My point, I suppose, or my question, is why all the obsessive focus on ventilators for the past three or four weeks, given that the projected "shortage" was based on bogus models and they have a marginal medical benefit to begin with? Now, just as the curve is being flattened, states that only a few weeks ago were making a federal case out of the lack of ventilators -- like New York -- have MORE than they need and are shipping them out to other hotspots, which will themselves be cooling off by the time the machines arrive.

So were ventilators ever really the issue -- or were they weaponized to advance partisan political agendas that had nothing to do with saving lives? And will the weaponization of ventilators end here? I doubt it. Democrats will next be making a scandal out of what we paid for this tidal wave of surplus ventilators, even as the need for them steeply declined and their utility as "life-savers" came into question. They'll then begin blaming Trump for browbeating companies into overproducing them, after having blamed Trump for the alleged ventilator shortage.

No matter where the Coronavirus crisis takes us from here, "Ventilatorgate" already has proven, once and for all, that this country is certifiable insane. Let's do what we can to fix the bodies. That's the top priority. But what we can do to fix our sick and broken "body politic" is a much more daunting question.

Brighton Case Still Raises Questions, Despite an Apology

Well, I applaud the Brighton (Colorado) Police Department for conceding that this arrest was overkill and for offering an apology. But . . . .

What we're seeing in this case and others suggests to me that you have officers out there, and maybe departments, that will blindly follow orders and enforce "the rules" even if those rules defy common sense and are of dubious legality and Constitutionality. 

I know individual cops can't be expected to study the legality of every stupid law they are asked to enforce. But come on. They are sworn to uphold The Constitution, not to blindly and robotically do the bidding of whomever signs their paychecks, so this is still very alarming to me despite the apology that a backlash brought. 

Will the cops side with the people or the power-drunk "authorities" when push comes to shove? I would like to think most cops (and soldiers, for that matter) would at some point balk at being a party to tyranny and obvious rights-trampling. But 20th Century history tells us a scarier story.

Two Can Play the Bailout Blacklist Game

For a week Congressional Democrats have been playing the inclusion game, refusing to back the COVID19 stimulus bill unless it includes a laundry list of pork, special preferences, mandates or policy changes unrelated to the immediate crisis but which promote their partisan ends. Suddenly, this morning, we see them shifting to the exclusion game, in which the power to dispense aid will be used to punish or penalize companies or industries not in the party's good graces.

And perched atop the left's COVID bailout backlist, to no one's surprise, are any ventures or businesses connected to President Trump.   

So, virtually everybody else in the country might qualify for help -- a bailout, if you will -- but any COVID19-impacted businesses connected to President Trump can go bankrupt and go to hell: Is that the vindictive game these plunderers and pirates are now playing?

Okay, so let's play the bailout blacklist game. And let's play it by bipartisan rules.  

Let's also go through the vast investment portfolios of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Congressional Millionaires Caucus; let's go through their campaign donor lists; let's look at the major employers in their states or districts. Then we'll prohibit federal assistance from going to any companies or industries in which they have in investment stake, or which have a history of supporting them politically. That should bring this nasty little game of stick-it-to-Trump to a halt.

Senator Schumer Wednesday morning denied this was designed to target Trump, claiming, in his usual unctuously phony fashion, that it would apply broadly, to any companies in which members of the executive or legislative branches have "majority control." But since most Congressional lifers don't own or directly control businesses, and wouldn't know the first thing about starting or running a business -- their forte is destroying businesses -- this prohibition in fact would apply to a very, very small group of political leaders.

You can further shrink that group by looking at the businesses or industries they're in. The hotel and hospitality industry obviously is poised to take a major hit. It likely will be high on the list of industries needing aid. And how many people in the legislative or executive branch have "majority control" over hospitality companies?  Hmm. Let me think. I'll come up with somebody.

Political journalists obviously knew who Democrats were gunning for. So who does Schumer think he's fooling?           

We have to be thoughtful, selective and hard-nosed about where we target assistance. Not every company or industry in the country can get a bailout. There's just not enough money in the world for that. But when making those decisions, it strikes me as wrong to arbitrarily discriminate against a Trump-connected enterprise that otherwise qualifies for assistance. If the aid criteria are intelligently crafted -- that's a huge if -- and if the process is applied fairly and equitably -- that's another huge if --  shouldn't Trump-related businesses that meet the standard also be covered? 

Or are the people who work in or for this subset of businesses -- it's those people we're supposedly trying to help, right? -- unworthy of the same help other American workers will get, just because they happen to wait tables or clean rooms at the restaurant or hotel connected to the Trump business empire? Democrats obviously want to destroy Trump, not just politically but personally; that's been their Ahab-like obsession since he unceremoniously tossed them out of power. But who they're really punishing with such vindictiveness are thousands of rank-and-file workers who just happened to fill out a job application at the Trump-owned business, but now find themselves in one party's crosshairs through guilt by association.   

This Trump rage is so unhinged and irrational that it ought to qualify as a new mental disorder.While we're on a crash program to develop new vaccines, why not a vaccine that addresses this psychological problem? Seriously. We'll badly need one -- and the medical lab that brings a cure to market will make millions -- if Trump wins reelection this fall.