Entry 508: Idea Thievery

I very rarely answer my phone if it’s from a number I don’t recognize.  If it’s truly important, I figure, they’ll leave a message, and I can call them back.  But the other day I let it go through to voicemail, and it turned out to be from Michelle Obama!  Yeah, okay, it was just a recording.  She was calling on behalf of DC mayor Muriel Bowser about Coronavirus updates.  I’m not sure why Michelle Obama was doing this and not the mayor herself.  I guess more people will listen if it’s the former first lady.  To any event the message was basically: Yeah, this sucks, but please continue to sit tight. 

And I think that’s the correct message.  Physical distancing is the only weapon we have right now against this pandemic.  There’s no treatment and no vaccine.  All we can do is lessen the spread until these things are developed or the virus runs it course.  Quarantine is the least worst of a few awful options.  If we go a different route, we are likely going to experience the same negatives as quarantine and a bunch more people will be sick or dead.  That to me is why “opening up the economy” is such a bad idea.  It’s not an either/or.  If the disease is running roughshod over society, there isn’t going to be much of an economy, because nobody will want to go out in public.  Most people – even most people who claim they support opening everything back up – probably aren’t going to go to bars and movie theaters and sporting events if they think there’s a chance they could get really sick or die.  And how do you ensure a reliable, healthy workforce?

You might notice I used hedging words above like "to me" and “probably.”  I think these are important qualifiers.  We don’t know very much about the virus and societal trends and human behavior are very difficult to predict.  I don’t think anybody on either side of the debate (so far as there is one) should be completely confident in their position.  Everything is uncertain, and while people can (and should) say that right now this uncertainty dictates we proceed very cautiously, nobody can say they know how things will turn out.  Bad processes sometimes lead to good results and vice-versa.  Shit happens or it doesn’t.  You can end up looking really foolish or painting yourself into an alternate reality if you don’t allow for this.

Beaches are good example of what I'm talking about.  There has been a lot made of photographs of people congregating kinda closely together on beaches, and different decision-makers have handled this differently.  In Florida the governor has been very hesitant to limit access to the beach; in California the governor has been more strict.  It's turning into a red-state/blue-state thing, but it shouldn't.  And those of us who have a more liberal outlook on life should be wary of falling into this trap. If red-staters want to play politics and deny reality (and many of them clearly do), then that's on them.  But those of us who don't want to do that, shouldn't then move to a polar opposite position; we should move to the true position, as best as we can discern it.

With respect to the beaches, it might be the case that being outside, even in relatively close contact with strangers, is not that dangerous.  I listened to a podcast recently with medical professionals discussing this.  The virus seems to thrive indoors much more so than outside.  You might be okay at a relatively crowded beach.  But it's not safe to say this for sure, and that should be the message.  It shouldn't be OMG! Everybody on the beach is an idiot and they are all going get coronavirus and die.  It should be We need to assume this is not safe right now.  Once we learn otherwise, we will open things up.  It's about how you communicate risk.

If I was the governor of a blue state, and I was getting a lot of push-back for my stay-at-home orders, I would say explicitly it's a risk mitigation strategy.  I would say that my state is not going to be the "guinea pigs" for the rest of the country.  I would frame it in a way as if the decision to open up is stupid (because it is based on what we know) while allowing for the possibility that it could work.  Then I would watch those states that are opening up and see if there is something to be learned from them.  I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.  It's a cliché to say the virus doesn't care if you're Democrat or Republican, but it's true, and it cuts both ways.  The virus isn't going to wreak havoc just to give irresponsible people their comeuppance.

In general, there is a tendency to reflexively hate on ideas made by people on the opposite side of the political spectrum.  It's understandable, but not everything terrible people say is terrible.  The real cunning move is to steal the other side's good ideas and turn them into your own.  That's what I would do if I was a politician.  It'd be DG 2020: The Idea Thief.

Until next time...