Day 53
6:53 am. Sunshine again. Temps going to high 20’s today. Summer, has it finally arrived?
I enjoyed some relaxing social distance socializing at the neighbor’s yesterday. Wonderful food and beverages. Everybody conscious of standing and sitting a safe distance apart. And thankfully the conversation was not focused entirely on pandemic topics. Hopefully a sign that we are returning to normal.
Which brings me to this thought. Have we delegated too much responsibility for deciding when to re-open to our public health officials? I understand their input was critical in formulating some kind of plan about a virus which seemed to be on a path of destruction. But how destructive has Covid-19 really been? Yes, the world has lost over 330,000 human beings already. Look at the stats. In Canada, at least 75% of deaths have been in long term health care facilities. Yes, we have grossly neglected oversight and health and safety measures in those facilities. So now that eyes have opened to this problem, it can be addressed and corrected. So that no seniors or their families will ever have to fear placement in seniors homes going forward. Do whatever is necessary to ensure the mortality statistics in future are not because of our failure to protect our seniors.
But should the rest of society be locked down forever because of a virus that frankly, does not kill everyone in its path and is impossible to eradicate? We have so compromised our economies, that future generations will be paying for our failure to plan. So we’ve learned that now. And it is questionable that decisions on re-opening are left in the hands of those who enjoy guaranteed incomes. There should be a balance in decisions that have such profound impact on the economy. Introduce people who generate their own wealth into those decision making corridors. The self employed. The amount of risk someone is willing to assume, in terms of their health, is very much influenced by how their income is generated. When a pay cheque is guaranteed, it is easy to choose the draconian lock down measures we have been suffering under. I dare say, that if your income does not come from a guaranteed source, you will be willing to tolerate a degree of risk far greater than your neighbor.
We will not eradicate Covid-19 entirely. And it seems that all our efforts to date have been predicated on this objective. Like seasonal flu, Covid-19 is here to stay. Can we survive economically for another 18 months while waiting for vaccines to be developed and distributed? I think not.
John Robson of the National Post wrote an excellent essay and I reprint part of it here. He quotes Thomas Sowell who wrote decades ago in “Is Reality Optional?” as follows;
Very few problems can or should be solved, in the sense of wiping out every vestige of them – not even crime or disease. Would anyone really spend half the Gross national product to wipe out the last vestige of shoplifting, or every minor skin rash?…..the anointed don’t like to talk about painful trade-offs. They like to talk about happy ‘solutions’ that get rid of the whole problem…” And as he concludes, as long as we’re trying to avoid any negative medical results from a plague, we’re going to keep digging and end up in a hole deep enough to bury the economy and the budget. And for what?
Well worth reading the entire article and reflecting on these points of view. How much pain are we willing to endure in this impossible effort to eradicate that which is impossible to eradicate?
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