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.

Seeing The Crisis Clearly

After a wobbly start, governments at all levels seem to be doing a better job of tracking and reporting Covid19 infection rates and deaths. That's clearly a top priority right now. You can't peruse the news, in print or online, without seeing the tragic tally creep higher each day, sometimes by fits, sometimes by starts. Statistics are tricky little devils so an alert reader must parse the numbers with care and put them in context. But at least they're out there now. It's a good way to remind us that human lives are riding on how we weather the storm and get back to "normal," whatever that means now. 

But the relentless focus on just one set of stats, as important as they are, also can tend to encourage a certain tunnel vision, or maybe it's more like myopia, obscuring our ability to see the "big picture" and know entirety of what we're dealing with. We understandably want to know who is sick, who has died, how the outbreak is evolving, where the "hot zones" are. But too tight of a focus on just that data may blind us to the wider but also real repercussions that stem not just from the virus but from our response to the virus.

There's been an earthquake. We're looking almost exclusively at the epicentre, however, trying to triage the temblor's immediate casualties, while forgetting or ignoring the aftershocks rippling through wider society. Some naturally prefer a narrow focus. It feeds the sense of urgency and crisis that helps hasten the public and private sector response. They frankly may not want to look at secondary or tertiary impacts indicating that we cured the disease but killed the patient, which is a topic of growing debate right now. They want to focus on the benefits of their actions, while ignoring or discounting the equally real costs, as if it's creepy, cold-hearted or inhumane to even consider a cost-benefit analysis in times of such duress.

Plunging tax revenues, spiking unemployment claims, a change in state GDP; these commonly used metrics all will help us grasp the larger implications. These are "lagging indicators" that will roll in over time, like waves on a beach, but they're also reasonably reliable. Other social impacts are harder to find metrics for, unless you make a special effort. And I think Colorado should make that effort.

Therefore, my suggestion is for Governor Polis to begin tracking and reporting an additional set of metrics as we move forward, aimed at measuring the wider social repercussions not just of the virus, but of the state's response to the virus, so that we don't fall prey to tunnel vision and can grasp the situation comprehensible. Here's my starter list of suggested indicators, which I may amend over time. I believe all these, except for the homelessness number, are there for the unearthing if you dig for them.

• Business closures
• Bankruptcies (business and personal)
• Divorces
• Suicides
• Domestic Abuse Calls
• Crime trends 
• Homeless trends 

Please email me at SeanPaige@msn.com if you can suggest measurable metrics I overlooked.

I really believe the Governor will be doing Coloradans a disservice if these metrics aren't as closely monitored as COVID19 infection rates and fatalities.

Don't Let Closure-Mania Become Another Contagion

The Powers That Be just closed a popular Colorado hiking spot, Waterton Canyon, to recreationists. So, now we can't go outside and responsibly enjoy public lands that we own? "Social distancing" isn't just easy in such places; that's what they're there for, right? -- so people can find a little solitude and enjoy a healthy escape?

Closure-mania seems as contagious as COVID-19 at the moment and both are becoming equally menacing, not just to our bodies but to our "body politic." Here's the danger in where things are heading.

Once we hand politicians "emergency" powers to close things down, there's no end to what they'll start closing down, all in the name of "protecting" us, of course. Absolute power is intoxicating that way. "Erring on the side of caution" sounds reasonable, but it's a slippery slope if taken to unreasonable extremes. And I think we're already straying into that territory.

Yes, "something must be done." But doing something in a panicked, knee-jerk overreaction will do more harm than good. Now the go-alongers want to shame the slow-downers into silence. You must be rooting for the Plague if you question authority, or dare to argue that the "cure" could be worse than the malady. 

But not questioning authority, and going along mindlessly and passively with a cascading series of unacceptably extreme measures, many of which set a dangerous precedent for our future civil liberties, is out of character for Americans, to put it bluntly. And civil disobedience might be necessary at some point in order to sober-up our power drunk politicians and reassert citizen supremacy. 

There's only so far most Americans are willing to go, even in a "crisis," if they come to believe that they are being manipulated and a "crisis" is being exploited. I hope our political leaders have the good sense to pull back before they test those limits and push things too far.

PS: Now comes the closure of Rocky Mountain National Park, reinforcing the point I made in the post above. Closure-mania has become a second contagion. With all the businesses in Estes Park closed, where are the risks in letting the public get out and enjoy a 265,000-acre park? It might be just the tonic our battered souls need. If anything, they ought to waive any entrance fees and let the people enjoy their public lands (public lands they already pay for) without charge. It feels to me like we're moving from the precaution phase to this crisis to the punitive phase of this crisis.

PSS: Officials in Aspen also are using the threat of public trail closures to compel citizen compliance, although hiking in open spaces would appear to be very low-risk and it provides anxious and homebound citizens with a healthy and safe way to stay fit and blow off steam. 

Government officials appear to be one-upping each other in a race to trample our civil liberties. Parks and public lands have become chess pieces in the game of COVID coercion -- pressure points The Authorities are using to compel compliance with orders of dubious efficacy, legality and legitimacy.

Closing public lands and parks in the midst of government funding battles has by now become a budget battle cliche -- a routine ploy that one side or the other uses to gain leverage in negotiations. Such closures clearly are punitive in nature: if we make the public feel the pain -- and closing parks has proven to be a very good way to do that -- the public outcry will work to our advantage, or so the thinking goes. But current closures aren't related to immediate budget shortfalls (those will come later, when our leaders have successfully collapsed the economy in a coronavirus panic). There's very little cost involved in letting people enjoy their public lands. These are by definition uncrowded places, where the risk of transmission is small -- unless The Authorities can produce evidence proving otherwise.

The Authorities seem to be closing them just because they can, based on some flimsy, far-fetched link to a public health problem. It's a completely arbitrary and clearly punitive abuse of power that ought to give the public pause.   

No one in the midst of this lockdown has the means or motivation to challenge these actions in court, or to engage in civil disobedience. Most are just wondering where their paychecks have gone and when the last roll of toilet paper will be gone. But I worry that our reluctance to at some point resist sets a precedent, and sends a signal of passivity, that we could really come to regret someday.

Waterton Canyon, a popular recreation area for fishing, running, biking and more, was closed by Denver Water because of the coronavirus.