“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (Genesis 3:4-7, NIV).
I’m thinking maybe they picked the wrong end to cover.
What were their eyes opened to? The serpent said that they would be like God, knowing good and evil. Why would knowing good and evil make them realize their private parts needed covering? What is good and evil, and how does it relate to genitalia?
To an organism, good is whatever promotes its survival and propagation. Evil is whatever impedes it. All organisms (or actually, the genes they carry) seek eternal life (caveat–genes don’t actually seek anything, it just seems that way because configurations of genes that appear to behave as if they seek eternal life are the only ones that survive). Reproduction through others is the only path (as yet) for human genes, and the genes of most other sexually-reproducing species, to achieve, if only partially, eternal life. Once Adam and Eve became godlike, knowing good and evil, the naked display of their genitalia—of the window into eternity–was too powerful to handle. It was as if staring life and death in the face every passing moment. They had to cover up.
Why, now we know how dangerous is the human mouth and nose to human survival, do we refuse to cover them?
The mouths and noses of coronavirus- afflicted people are spreading death, a profound impediment to the survival and propagation of our genes. Yet, at least in the US, people act as if wearing a mask violates the whole individual-liberty premise of our founding. Require that people cover their genitalia and no one objects. But mandate they wear masks and the founding fathers are turning in their graves.
Specific rationales for not wearing masks run the gamut, a showcase for the human capacity to find reasons for whatever their emotional impulses compel. Consider the claim that masks aren’t effective. A prominent Fox News doctor wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journalrecently where he claimed masks are only good to protect others from you–that they offer no protection to you from others, so wearing them is okay, but won’t do much good. Think about that for a moment.
If I wear a mask, according to this doctor it will prevent me spreading the virus to others. What if others are wearing a mask, too? Won’t their masks prevent them from spreading the virus to me? Logic is apparently not the life of television doctors.
Of course masks are effective at reducing the spread of a respiratory virus, particularly when everyone wears one. And even if everyone isn’t wearing one, they will offer some protection to the wearer. They might not keep out all the viral particles, but they’ll keep some out, reducing the viral load if one is exposed.
And viral load seems to matter a great deal. Studies have shown that those who get the virus at a ‘super spreading’ event like weddings and funerals, sporting events, concerts, etc., are likely to suffer a more severe case of the illness than are those who get the virus from more casual, less concentrated contact. A forty-year-old otherwise healthy doctor or nurse treating covid 19 patients who gets the virus and dies likely succumbed for the accumulated viral load (akin to accumulated radiation) finally overwhelming their immune system.
Compare Japan’s experience with that of the US. Japan, with a population of 126.5 million, reports as of May 22, 2020 roughly 16,500 infections and 800 deaths from the virus. The US, with a population of about 330 million, reports 1.51 million cases and over 95,000 deaths. New York City, with 196,000 cases, reports almost as many deaths (16,149) as Japan has had cases. Japan never shut down its economy.
When I pointed out as much on a Wall Street Journal comment board, the explanation was that Japan was lying about their statistics. I responded that I used Japan as an example specifically because Japan is not China. Japan is a liberal democracy. It would be pointless for her government to try to lie. Japan hasn’t the political machinery for suppressing truth such as China’s authoritarian regime enjoys.
What did Japan do differently than the US? A number of things, including isolating and tracking known cases. But the factor that prominently stands out is that the Japanese wore masks in public. Everyone wore them, from politicians, to subway employees and riders, to housewives at the grocery.
Imagine that you’re a respiratory virus. Your goal (though you don’t know it because you haven’t eaten the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), is the same as the goal of your host humans, to survive and propagate. Your strategy for doing so is to replicate in the respiratory tract, in the process causing irritation such that you may be expelled to infect new hosts through their coughing and sneezing. How would you most like your human hosts to behave? First, you certainly wouldn’t want them to wear any sort of facial covering that might lessen the velocity of the expulsions from their mouths and noses. Second, you’d like them packed closely together so copies of you will have the best chance of reaching a new victim via a cough or sneeze or just the act of breathing. Places you love? Subway trains and platforms, airliners and airport check-in lines, cruise ships, stadiums full of people, bars with loud music so everyone has to shout, filled to overflowing concert venues, etc. New York City, especially in late February and early March before her political leaders decided to close the barn door now the cow’s gone, was a coronavirus Garden of Eden. Tokyo, with an even denser and much larger population to infect, was a barren desert so far as you were concerned. It was just impossible to simultaneously get many of your kind past the mask of the infected one and the mask of another who wasn’t.
The amygdala in the human brain, an almond-shaped organ, is heavily involved in modulating responses to environmental stimuli that have existential implications. It has four basic strategies when presented with an existential crisis, the four f’s as they’re known: freeze, flee, fight or fuck. (Yes, fucking is a matter of great existential concern). Freezing is first because it is a do-nothing strategy. The amygdala is an apostle of Hippocrates—first, do no harm. Freezing is the default.
So, the US froze. Like a mouse (who has an amygdala) freezes when the lights come on and he’s caught out in the kitchen. Freezing gives time to study the options—Can I get back to my hole underneath the cabinet without getting squashed by the lumbering human standing over there? It keeps movement, which predators are primed to key on, to a minimum. But it does little to protect an economic system from a respiratory virus, save somewhat reducing the number of strangers with which one comes into contact. But numbers of contacts don’t much matter If no one’s wearing masks. It only takes one contact with a viral-laden person at the grocery and then it’s carried home, to infect all those who are similarly frozen in place.
Freezing is as dangerous for an economic system as it is for a mouse. The mouse is in the kitchen to solve another problem of profound existential concern, finding food. Participation in the economic system serves the same purpose for humans.
The mouse can perhaps avoid the kitchen, foraging elsewhere if it knows the light is still on and predators are still present. We haven’t the luxury of completely avoiding the economic system if we aren’t one of the very few who are still subsistence farmers. The light’s still on. The predator’s still present. But we have only the economic system to provide us with food. We have to go out.
Thus, shutting or locking down the economic system can only be partial. At minimum, the food production and distribution system within it must continue to function, making the economic shut down seem more a puritanical penance—we only gave up the fun stuff hoping to appease the God that set this plague upon us–than any sort of real strategy for surviving the virus.
But why? Why did it have to be this way?
The federal government, of course. It used the virus to extend its power and reach into every aspect of American social and economic life. It pledged to spend $2.2 trillion in fiscal stimulus it didn’t have, adding to the already trillion-dollar deficit expected this year before the virus. It’s considering even more. It doled out money to everyone who could fog a mirror. The grandkids are on the hook. But that’s okay. In the long run, we’re all dead. In the meantime, the federal government, which should be declining in importance in the day-to-day affairs of life during this time of peace and prosperity, reestablished itself at the top of our minds, where it knows it always should be.
The Federal Reserve, taking its cue from the federal government proper, promised to print money at a furious pace, figuring it would double the holdings on its balance sheet from the $4 trillion left over from the last crisis to $8 trillion by the time this is done. No Bad Loan and No Failing Company Left Behind. But I bet it does better. I bet it triples its balance sheet.
There will be precious little left of American capitalism once this is through. Ever since the fall of the old Soviet Union, we’ve steadily and incrementally abandoned capitalism for the central planning that we supposedly despised in our old foe. What is the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which sets the national price level and decides on economic winners and losers, but our version of the Soviet Politburo?
The federal government even let virus hysteria afflict our forward-deployed warships, apparently not understanding the connection between printing money to appease the masses and the Pax Americana that makes such a thing possible. Or possibly, the government well understood the connection between forward-deployed warships and the US dollar, but thought the risk of losing some measure of international fear of our military was worth indulging a bunch of sailors swept up in the social-media hysteria as an aid in proving the bona fides of the crisis.
Compare the per 100,000 population covid deaths, West vs East. The following is derived from the Johns Hopkins University website as of May 24, 2020:
West
Country Covid Deaths per 100k Population
US 29.68
UK 55.28
Spain 61.38
Italy 54.17
Belgium 80.87
Netherlands 33.83
Switzerland 22.37
Germany 9.96
Ireland 33.05
Sweden 39.20
Russia 2.34
East
China 0.33
Japan 0.64
South Korea 0.52
Singapore 0.41
Taiwan 0.03
Did I cherry-pick a bit? Yes (but not egregiously just to make a point, check the website for yourself). Are China’s numbers to be trusted? No. I didn’t include any Eastern European nations, save Russia, but their experience has been similar to Russia’s, so it can be used as a proxy. It’s clearly the case, as one goes West, the virus becomes more deadly, until one reaches the US, where death rates decline from Western European highs by about half. Is that because the US is doing better than Western Europe at dealing with the virus or is it because the virus gained its toehold in the US later than in Western Europe? There’s no way to know, but I think the latter is probable. And given summer is upon us, the virus will abate in the US due to seasonality before it does as much damage as in Western Europe. This time.
What is clear is that East Asia did a much better job at dealing with the virus than did the West, if the goal was a lower death rate from the virus. What did East Asia do differently? Masks, for one.
Will the relative ineptitude at reducing fatalities in the West mean that the West is ultimately better off for the manner with which it dealt with the virus? Possibly. The virus kills the old and infirm, like a pack of wolves thinning a herd of elk in a Yellowstone winter. The elk herd enjoys overall better health for the efforts of the wolves. Perhaps the same will be true of the virus. If so, the West’s ineptitude might accrue to its advantage in its ongoing struggle for primacy with the East.
This much is clear. The US (and a great many of its Western allies, Sweden and Germany being notable exceptions) locked its economy down after the virus was already in community-spread mode. The lock down threw millions out of work but was ineffective at reducing viral spread and consequent deaths, at least in part because the US refused to mandate masks in public. The US got the worst of both worlds—economic calamity and a full-blown pandemic.
Considering the US did this to itself, one has to wonder, was it intentional? Was the virus used as an opportunistic tool for the federal government to extend its power and reach into every realm of its citizen’s lives? Looking at what the US did and not what it said, how could anyone conclude that it was anything but intentional?
The most potent anti-viral in the world, sunshine, is returning to the Northern Hemisphere. While the virus will still be with us, it will find it ever more difficult to stay viable between the time it leaves one person’s mouth or nose and is inhaled by someone else’s. It will likely appear by mid-September that we’ve got the virus licked. It will be an illusion. By Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead, October 31-November 2) the lengthening shadows of autumn will hearken its return. The virus will be resurgent. It won’t be Trump’s fault, but he’ll be blamed for it, and possibly lose the election as a result. But it won’t matter who is the President. What will happen will happen, regardless.
Given how politically beneficial making a crisis out of the virus was to governments of all levels, but particularly the federal government, none will be inclined to apply any lessons learned from the first round to this one. Governments will do the same thing. People will expect different results while governments hope the inept results are the same. Governments will get their wish.
Masks won’t be required. The economic system will be locked down. Over a million will be infected. Over 100,000 will die. An economy still not fully recovered from the first round will be destroyed. A greater Great Depression will ensue. Only the stock market riding the Fed put will be immune, but only for a while, because this time famine and war will likely join plague and death for a complete set of apocalyptic horsemen.
The Fed will promise to double its balance sheet, again, which this time will mean conjuring $10-12 trillion dollars out of computer pixels. The fiscal deficit will likewise reach levels as a percent of GDP never seen in US history, including during WWII and the Revolutionary War. The limit to money creation will be reached. The warships won’t sail, not for being infected with the virus but for the lack of money to operate them. The end of Pax Americana will descend upon us.
It didn’t have to be this way. We could have worn masks and gone about our business. But the federal government couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a rather mild malady (as pandemics go) into a full-blown health and economic crisis. All because it felt its grip on the American heart slipping. But it will prove to have overreached in its effort to extend its power and influence over our lives.
Corona Crisis, Version 2.0, is apt to be a doozy.
Sin is always crouching at the door. Thou mayest overcome it. (Genesis 4:7)
I doubt we do.