When Offered Two Bad Choices, Let's Take Neither

We are currently faced with a pandemic that is capable of killing millions of people, and at the same time, confronted with a collapsed economy that has driven tens of millions out of work, creating the types of food insecurity and sacrifice not seen since the thirties. Our national conversation in response to those twin catastrophes is to offer a take it or leave it a choice: lockdown or infection.

Why? It’s an obviously false choice… neither works, so both must be declined. Let’s consider an alternative approach, one that I’ve heard too little of so far.

First, let’s get rid of the stupid arguments about the virus — it’s real, it has the potential to kill millions, and we don’t yet know how to prevent it or cure it. If you are prone to arguing whether these statements are true or not, then I have a hospital that I’d like you to volunteer at… and we’ll chat again in a few hours.

Most of the population already understands this reality, and want to avoid the disease however they have to. Nobody is enjoying the isolation or unemployment, so the motivation to resolve this is universal. We also understand that certain populations among us — the elderly, the immune-compromised, among others — are so susceptible to severe complications that we have a national mandate to protect them from the disease, and from those among us who are selfishly flaunting their relative health, and inviting the virus to hitch a ride on them.

So, we have to do whatever it takes to repel the disease and to minimize the stress that it causes for our hospitals and first responders, and reduce the exposure of our most vulnerable. Got it.

We have over 26 million people out of work, a number that feels a lot more like the opening bid than the final tally. Our industries, our small and medium-sized businesses, our gig economy are all teetering on collapse. The markets are vacillating, the oil patch is convulsing, the state and local governments are looking into their wallets and dodging the moths that come out. Without responding to the economic dangers, we could easily see a depression that is characterized by widespread hunger and a collapsed health care system, as tens of millions of suddenly uninsured ex-workers flood emergency rooms, or die in their homes unnecessarily.

So, we have to do whatever it takes to support the economy and to minimize the stress that it causes for our institutions, our hospitals and first responders, our business class and our workers while making sure that basic necessities remain available and flowing. Got it.

If we have to reject both outcomes, what do we have left? Let’s assume that the real solutions — vaccines, even cures, are another year to a year and a half off, and that’s a best-case scenario. We need to find a plan that gets us from here to there without feeding the virus or starving the people. To create and execute that plan, we need to stop playing one side against the other and push both sides in the same direction.

Dr Scientist: we need to move the populace out of their homes and into the workplace. You say that you know how the disease is communicated, through droplets expelled from infected persons. The current plan is to test and isolate everyone who is infected, and to trace their movements for more isolation… a plan that, in order to execute, creates any number of thorny issues from a culture accepting a level of non-privacy that it likely won’t, to an army of detectives coordinating intricate spiderwebs without the time and opportunity to plan out and create the logistics and tools necessary.

Let’s take an alternative vision: Dr Scientist, what can you imagine as protective gear for public safety? Instead of masks, does a face shield, where we preclude those poisonous droplets from finding eyes and ears as well as mouths and noses help? What would the perfect shield look like? What materials, what cleaning protocols, what level of reuse? Are there a type of glove that would make you feel more secure, Dr Scientist? Do you want disposable garments or simply external outfits that can be easily removed without spreading infection? Tell us what we need to travel safely in this dangerous world, and don’t worry about the cost.

I understand — and fully agree — that technically the best answer is continued isolation until the cures and treatments are safe and available. Unfortunately, that’s not an option, so please focus on what is workable. We won’t hold you accountable for what happens, just for your work.

Ms Businessman, we have a plan: we need enormous amounts, perhaps hundreds of millions, perhaps more, of the equipment that Dr Scientist has sketched on that blackboard over there. We need them yesterday, or more to the point… we need them as quickly as you’d like your economy back. We need them designed, manufactured, distributed and replaced as needed. We need them in every size, every shape, and we need the designs and manufacturing plans fully shared and open, so that every fabricator is providing the same item with the same way, and improvements to the design are universal. We can discuss the fashion options in the second iteration.

How will this be paid for? Let’s agree on a budget — say, $1,000 per person per full outfitting. Let’s tool up for about 100 million people, give or take… at that quantity, we should have a pretty solid volume discount, no? That would come out to $100 billion, or basically a rounding error in the trillions of dollars that we’re looking at, with no real end in sight. You say you need $2,500 to do it right? Still not an issue… tho frankly, I’d like to see the books, please.

While we’re at it, Dr. Scientist, please continue — and accelerate — your efforts to refine decontamination protocols that are most effective. Let Ms Businessman have those specifications, complete with application priorities and frequency schedule. Oh, and Dr Scientist, let’s set up a special detail to get the first responders something special. This stuff about them taking handouts to protect themselves is insulting not only to them but to this great nation… the idea that we can’t protect the men and women who protect us is unacceptable.

Ms. Businessman, get in gear. Under the (borrowed) powers of the Presidency, I’m instructing you to convert your factories to this great and noble enterprise… and by the way, I suspect that there’ll be an interesting opportunity to move a bunch of this stuff around the world, so long as you don’t ever tell me that you can’t meet this country’s needs first.

Ah, that brings us to the congressmen and women. I have a package for you — it’s a timetable for when we will be able to safely outfit and clean sufficiently to open most of the economy back up. Your job, along with your buddies in the Senate, is to create solutions for that period of time. Industries will be fine after a transitional period as a couple of hundred million people open their doors and head back out… work with the Fed to arrange the necessary loans to facilitate their retrofitting and recovery, but please don’t buy them a fancy market multiple or price. They’ll grow that back soon enough on their own.

Let’s focus on creating simpler and more effective mechanisms for moving funds out of the government’s hands and into the populations; centralize the effort in bringing the forces necessary to bear to move food and water, critical services and support to the endangered. It’s not forever — we’ve got a timeframe for opening in a fuller way, so the majority of the jobs will come back if you don’t dawdle.

Empower the military — your great logistics arm — to mobilize an integration of public, private and governmental functionality that operates without turf warfare or politicization. Just get the job done as they more than anyone in this nation know how to do it. Create an operating hierarchy (heck, you threw together that Space Force thing pretty much overnight) and coordinate resources across the country, but under the auspices of the Governors, since you’d pretty much have to anyways.

I know.

That exercise was incredibly over-simplistic. There are a dozen issues that it ignores. Obviously, it’s a massive, unprecedented problem that’s made more complicated by the wasteful infighting, egotism and partisanship of our current government… but that’s not the point. The point is for us to change the approach, from an either/or battle to everyone sitting on the same side of the table, dealing with the realities and accepting the compromises necessary to be as successful as we possibly can against an existential threat. We have no choice, we simply must.

If the question isn’t whether to open up the doors, but how to make Dr Scientist less twitchy as he sees them open… if the question isn’t how to fund the economic chasm, but how to give Ms Businessman the marching orders for our industrial power to make the economy able to function with reasonable safety… If the question isn’t a tug of war between local and federal powers, but a unified effort led by a Manhattan Project that incorporates all of our vast powers behind a singular objective… if all of those questions are attacked and converted to powerful initiatives and a united, save this country energy… then just maybe we’ll heal a whole lot more than this invading pandemic. It all begins with a premise, a repudiation of fragmentation and division, and an armistice of the hostilities between Americans.

And before you argue that the President, or the Congress, or whoever your favourite boogyman is these days isn’t capable of this, remember: it’s not about them. The more elements of our society that stop feeding the scuffles and point to a coherent solution; the more members of our government who adopt a solve-it mentality instead of a win/loss calculus; the more handlers of the economy who refuse to accept doomed solutions and insist on the full engagement of our power; the more leaders who stand up and actually lead for once; the less that any person, even a president, can stand in the way of our ultimate success. It is only in our acquiescence to our worst elements, to our least representatives, that the constraints of an individual or collective power can force their failing on the rest of us.

It is, as always, up to us.