Out of an Abundance of Caution

In March 2020, COVID-19 panic hit the US with surprising speed. In weeks prior measures were already being taken, but then President Trump declared a national emergency followed quickly by Governor Newsom declaring daily-escalating shelter-in-place orders in California. We all stayed home, waiting for the viral wave to break over us. The rationale was that temporary drastic measures were necessary to keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed like they had recently been in Italy.

At that time, the virus was an unknown danger. Six months later, it's safe to say we know quite a bit more about it, and what it has exposed in our culture.

A month after the lockdowns began, major news outlets reported on antibody studies performed by respected institutions like USC, Stanford, Northeastern University and others. They independently found that the virus had spread through the population 10, 20 or even 50 times greater than the "confirmed cases" on the John Hopkins dashboard website. When I heard this, I told my children that the panic would be over in a week because the virus was confirmed to be not nearly as deadly as initially feared. Instead of a 5% or even 2% mortality rate, it was 10, 20 or 50 times less. Worse than the flu, but not a deadly pestilence that demanded shutting down the economy.

I still remember the dejected feeling several days later reading follow-on news reports that interpreted those same results, not by concluding that the virus was not as deadly as we feared, but that the contagion was far worse than we knew.

In the initial weeks we were given conflicting advice regarding masks. The US Surgeon General tweeted that we should not buy masks because they are ineffective and because medical professionals needed them. The obviously duplicity can be forgiven because everyone was scrambling then, but months later the mask/no-mask debate has been fully integrated into our progressive/conservative culture war.

So, as a conservative, here are a few lessons I've learned.

The seeds of COVID-19 fear were planted well before the virus came. For years, we've been helicopter parenting our children because of the low-percentage chance that a child molester may be stalking our city playground. We've sanitized commercial kitchens from the residual presence of peanuts because a small number of our people may have a deadly reaction. And we started offering gluten-free communion options to our congregants because - well, I still don't know the rationale for this one. I'm realizing that our ability to assess risk and responsibility has not kept pace with the explosion of news and opinion offered by the Internet. 

Our new moral reasoning that brought ethically-sourced seafood, fair-trade coffee, and reusable shopping bags is now been applied to a contagious disease. People are driving in their cars by themselves with masks on and no one is telling them that there's no point. Others are wearing gloves while pumping gas and no one is re-iterating the CDC's updated advice that the virus is unlikely to be transmitted on surfaces. Instead of reasonable measures which respect individual freedom and common sense, we have fear-mongering and moralizing in the name of science, regardless of actual effectiveness. I'm realizing that while science is a powerful tool which can bring wonderful benefits, it can be easily co-opted for political purposes when used as a moral cudgel.

Finally, the massive outlay of cash by the Federal Government has completely pummeled what remained of fiscal conservatism. We have no idea what the future cost will be as our national debt climbs ever higher, but we convince ourselves that there will be no cost or that the uber-rich will pay. The government showered unemployment benefits on low wage workers, and weeks later our streets explode with Marxist fervor. If the Progressives succeed in tearing down the free-market system that has been built over the past several centuries, the ruin and misery felt by all people, rich and poor, regardless of skin color or political affiliation, will be immense. I'm realizing how precious and fragile our system of liberal democratic capitalism is.

We continue to respond to the coronavirus out of an abundance of caution, thinking that the risks are obvious, the science is clear, and the costs are worth it. But it seems we all have a lot more learning to do.