Day 78. Saturday. Do we know enough?

As you will have guessed from the lower frequency of entries in this blog, the pandemic has become less exciting. It is certainly less novel. Not only that, I've stopped worrying about toilet paper and soap.

California's death rate is not declining, but was never very high, and certainly this county's was not; the state's hospital cases are getting slightly fewer. The nursing home where my mother lives has had a few cases, but is now clean again.

But ... few countries have eradicated the disease, so we have to decide what to do about it and when.

Aside: should more countries have tried? A few, such as New Zealand, were able to clean it out without an authoritarian government. The country that failed the worst, namely the USA, suffered from a mentally defective president and an excessive reliance on the letter of the law. Even China, which locked down earliest, took some serious damage to its economy; to be sure, this might not have happened if the epidemic had been recognised in time, which was prevented by a mendacious local government, but authoritarian regimes lead to lying as surely as night follows day. 

But now we do know that free, developed countries can contain CoViD-19, so we can take some risks. I see it as likely that people will understand if there has to be another, perhaps local, clampdown. The     question remains of how many would react to that by moving to a place under looser regulations, bringing the virus with them. If this becomes a problem, some poetic justice may ensue: places where popular opinion refuses to clamp down will be among the worst infected, and good luck to them.

So far, the debate seems to be about what kinds of contact to allow, as authorities try to balance economic damage, general mental health (and reluctance to make sacrifices where there is no visible enemy -- the war metaphor has its downside), and physical health. But in time it will have to come round to who pays. My income has been untouched and my assets nearly so, while others have had to endure weeks or months without pay, partly for their own protection but partly also for mine. I could understand if they thought this unfair. So far, the obvious losses have accrued to landlords and (I suppose) utility companies. Governments have been busy printing money, but it will be politically difficult for them to give it to these entities. Yet a wave of bankruptcies would serve no purpose (except to provide an excuse for another bailout handout for banks). This circle will have to be squared.

Another thing that must be done, ideally by everybody, is to prepare for the next lockdown. Perhaps enough of us know how.