Having more money enables you to do
many things you can't do without it. It's generally accepted that you
can buy more expensive toys and a bigger house. In practice, you can
buy better medical care, though that is controversial. In buying a
more expensive house you also can likely buy one in a nicer or safer
area. It's no accident that poorer neighborhoods have more pollution.
I don't think the primary dynamic is that people decide to pollute in
poor neighborhoods, it's rather than in deciding where to live,
pollution makes it less desirable, making it cost less, and that's
where poor people end up living.
Covid-19 brings these disparities to
light in slightly different ways.
Let's start with the big picture --
Covid lockdown is very difficult for poor people in poor countries.
See for instance
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/2/rana_ayyub_india_coronavirus.
People who are going to starve if they stop working are not going to
stop working if they can possibly avoid it.
Turning to the US, most people are told
to stay home if they possibly can. Social isolation is much easier
the fewer people you live with. It is much easier if you have a
financial cushion. And who are the people whose work must go on? It
includes one prominent class of rich people: doctors. And we hear
about the danger to doctors regularly. Nurses are intermediate, but
the home health aides are not so well off. Outside the health care
field, we have police and firefighters, grocery clerks, and delivery
people - working poor or at best lower middle class. We may worry
about disinfecting our grocery cans and packages when we bring them
home, but these others who do essential work are exposed to far
greater dangers all the time.
Mortality from coronavirus is notably
concentrated in the elderly and those with pre-existing health
conditions. One stark formulation from the web is that it is a
"boomer pruner". If you do nothing at all, the most likely
result is that only a few children will suffer, a significant portion
of adults in the prime of life will get a bad cold, and a large
portion of the elderly and those with pre-existing health problems
will get very sick, and they will die in substantial numbers. We
assume by default in the developed world that this is a horrible
result and that any actions that can help this situation should be
adopted without debate. And indeed the consequences of serious
Covid-19 cases make for startling images -- patients dying in
hallways before they can be properly examined, rationing of
ventilators and leaving the sicker people to die without that
life-saving treatment. We have medical personnel at extreme risk of
contracting the virus.
We are also hearing stories from the
economic shutdown, but no individual story is as shocking as a
Covid-19 story. No one dies directly. Lots of people are unemployed
and struggling to get by in ordinary times. Their numbers are vastly
increased, but there's no especially moving news footage there. The
quote "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"
is associated with tyrants. What about "one destitute person is
a tragedy, a million destitute people is a statistic"? The
federal payments to people, even if repeated and enlarged, won't
really do much to help people who are out of work. They'll just
lessen the pain a little.
Suppose we just let everyone go back to
work. Those who are ill and those who can afford it can continue to
isolate as they see fit. A few of the bleak images of Covid-19 are
not from the disease itself but from attempts to contain it. There's
no reason that patients in the ICU need to die alone, if you leave it
to their relatives to decide whether or not to visit. You don't need
to ban funerals. Perhaps it would be wise if doctors and other
medical personnel who are at risk got out of the business of seeing
Covid patients. But some of the difficulties arise from health-care
workers taking special health precautions. What if we retreated to
the level of precautions we ordinary use for flu patients?
On this scenario, the virus runs
through the population, most people survive and develop antibodies,
and life goes on. Let's make the assumption that 3 million Americans
die. It's a shocking number -- yet it's less than one percent of the
population. It includes mostly those who were already elderly or
sick. It's something we as a society can easily absorb. Estimates are
the Spanish flu killed 2% of the world's population, and it was also
more serious because it included many children and healthy people.
The proper comparison is also not
between vigorous social isolation solving the problem and no such
measures causing rampant deaths. We speak only of "flatting the
curve" -- a rather modest goal. Not running out of ventilators,
and decreasing the death toll somewhat.
Based on values developed in the
realities of recent decades, the mainstream and liberal viewpoint
will continue to firmly back social isolation. We are not ready to
let the virus run rampant.
And yet there is trouble brewing.
Fivethirtyeight.com has this report
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/coronavirus-polls/?ex_cid=rrpromo
which I will summarize as 86% of Americans being worried about the
effect on the economy, and 70% being concerned about someone they
know getting the virus. The story is that Trump backed health
measures only when his polling indicated that Americans wanted him
to. For now, 80% of voters say social distancing is worth it even if
it hurts the economy
(https://morningconsult.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-health-vs-economy-trump-poll/).
There's nothing inherently wrong with Trump bowing to that pressure
-- doing what the people want to do is the idea behind Democracy (if
only we used that as a reason for taxing the rich...). But we'll see
how public opinion goes as time goes on, we still see scenes of
Covid-19 overwhelming the health care system, and the economic pain
gets worse and worse. Along with poll numbers shifting, we'll have to
consider the possibility that people will tell a pollster that social
distancing is worth it, but express their actual, less popular
opinion in the privacy of the voting booth.
The idea that the liberal elite is out
of touch with the values of common citizens is always one to consider
seriously. There is no question that rich, older people are the ones
running the country. In this case there is a danger that Trump will
tap into the truth that lots of Americans would rather go back to
work and let Covid-19 takes its toll. And this time around he might
not be wrong in challenging the orthodox liberal view. 49% of people
still disapprove of Trump, but that number may go down when they see
him taking the side of the working poor against the sick and elderly.
I in fact believe that the fact that
large numbers of Americans think Trump is good and want to vote for
him, not seeing the danger to democracy, is a much more serious
problem than losing one percent of the population to Covid-19.
What should be clear is that we need
adequate funding to deal with the next pandemic, so we can take
strong and effective measures (including testing aggressively and
having enough ventilators) and have a far better chance of containing
the disease. It goes against Republicans ideal that federal funding
for something other than the military can actually do good. Maybe
they will change, or maybe it will contribute to a Democratic tilt.
Covid-19 is certainly not just a First
World problem or a rich person's problem. But social distancing (and
the consequent economic devastation) is a First World
and rich person's solution to the problem.
