A Runaway Train
As I compile my daily diary of the progress of the COVID-19 virus, from time to time I like to stop to try to get a sense of where we are and what likely lies ahead, a daunting task considering the fact that much about this virus is still unknown and the leader of the free world is impetuous and driven by a sense of what he feels is good for himself and not what would be best for our nation or the world.
Although the President’s Task Force on the Coronavirus makes occasional references to models of how the virus is likely to spread, they provide little guidance about the assumptions underlying those models. The best we know from those presentations is that the death toll in the U.S. alone could be between 1 and 2 million without intervention and between 100,000 and 140,000 with intervention. Although the President seems to be indicating that the crest of the epidemic will come in the next 30 days, his scientific advisors have remained silent on this issue and have simply said that the timing is strictly in the hands of the virus. In contrast, New York’s Governor Cuomo has been very clear that the apex of the pandemic will hit New York State sometime between the middle and end of April; and New York is considerably ahead of most other states in the spread of the disease. Nor has the President’s Task Force given much guidance as to how long the disease will be among us or any idea of the amount of damage it will do to our economy. Thus, much of what you will read below is speculation.
Where is this train going?
You can think of us as passengers trapped on a runaway train whose engineer has died holding the throttle down and whose conductor is inebriated. In short, we don’t know where the train is heading and when it will run out of fuel. There are two factors which say that this ride is going to last quite a while. First, the virus has an usually high transmission coefficient; and second, we live in a highly interdependent world. It is not like we are living on a farm around 1850, growing our own food, making our own clothes and collecting the wood to heat our house and cook our food. This is particularly true in the United States which has largely turned into a service economy where everyone depends upon others to provide them with a wide variety of goods and services. Thus, there is a very high probability that before this train comes to a halt as many as two-thirds of the nation’s residents will eventually contract the virus.
The good news is that the virus will not prove lethal to the vast majority of its victims. We have been told that a number of people testing positive are asymptomatic and even the death rate of people that have contracted the disease is not more than 20%. More importantly, the longer we are able to delay the impact of the disease, the greater the chance that that the scientists from all around the earth who are working on developing vaccines and cures will be successful. Even so, octogenarians, like me, seem to have a much greater chance of falling victim to the virus, which means that my strategy is to hang on tightly until this train comes to a safe halt and pray that it stays on the track.
Realistically, our train will encounter more than one dangerous turn before its journey comes to an end. That’s because the virus will do its damage in waves, with the first wave taking place over the next three months. After that wave has receded, social separation restrictions will be relaxed so the world’s economy can recover. (Think of a diver for coins resting on the bottom of a pool who can only hold his breaths for so long.) That respite from social separation, in turn, will lead to a second wave of infections as only a relatively small portion of the world’s population will have been infected in the first wave and thereby obtained some immunity to it. Although theoretically the second wave could be as bad as the first, the world will be better prepared to fight it. We will have a better idea how the virus is transmitted and who are its favorite targets. In addition, we will be better equipped to treat patients and we will know which defense strategies will prove effective. If we are really lucky, the scientific community may just come up with a vaccine or cure; however, the chances of that happening before we encounter the second wave (perhaps as early as next Fall) are still probably small. For the same reasons there will be a second wave of the disease, we are also likely to encounter a third wave and possibly others; however, we should be better prepared to handle each successive wave of the disease. In short, this s going to be a rough ride, so hold onto your hats.
While many will be injured on this misadventure and all-too-many will succumb to the virus, our problems will not be over as we may find that our journey will end in a dessert (in the form of a protracted economic recession) where we will be equally unprepared. More about this later.
What lies Ahead?
One thing that you must have noticed is that political campaigns have largely ground to a halt. I say largely because each day I still receive over a dozen e-mails asking for a contribution to a political campaign. In addition, each day the President convenes a press conference which I refuse to refer to a “news conference” for obvious reasons. There is no question that the President must miss his beloved campaign rallies held in large stadiums, with thousands cheering him, wearing their MAGA caps and holding signs bearing his name. Instead, he has had to move his campaign into the tiny White House press room where he is confronted by reporters asking him “nasty” questions about his poor performance in handling the first crisis of his presidency that he didn’t himself create. There is little doubt though that the free television time the networks are affording him have been critical in the rise of his approval ratings which may be the only joy that he derives from them.
The President was never a very good business man; he only played one on television. Now he’s now using the skills he acquired on his television show to play a president on national television. Although his decisions have been tragic and his presentations largely incoherent and chocked with misstatements, standing in front of the lectern in the White House briefing room, surrounded by medical experts, corporate and military leaders, and a cadre of sycophants praising him for his leadership, he certainly projects the aura of a leader. As Paul Krugman recently observed “We have a President bent on treating this pandemic as a reality TV show, tweeting that ‘President Trump is a ‘ratings hit’ and boasting that his coronavirus updates have ‘an astounding number of viewer’.” Krugman thus, concluded, “If you want a definition of obscenity, that’s it.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Excuse me if I digress. Trump’s record as a businessman was terrible. His ego demanded that people take notice of him which led him to build and/or acquire large and lavish buildings, financed heavily with borrowed money. The problem was that, even though he regularly shortchanged suppliers and tradesmen, the revenues generated by his properties could not support their debt service requirements. This all came home to roost in the early 1990s when his casino empire was forced into bankruptcy. He was able to escape that debacle relying on that old adage: “If you have borrowed a million dollars and can’t meet the debt service payments on your loan, you are in deep trouble; but if you have borrowed a billion dollars and can’t meet the debt service payments on your loan, your banker is in deep trouble.” Faced with the disastrous situation that Trump had created, his bankers chose to let him off easy, just to get him out of the way so they could try to minimize their losses. Following that experience, no bank, with the exception of Deutsche Bank, has been willing to lend to him; and Deutsche Bank’s continued support of his businesses is a story that has yet to be told. Thus, his only real success has been playing a business tycoon on television. (Think Trump steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Airline, Trump University, Trump Doral Golf Club, etc.)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The President is currently pursuing a three-fold strategy. His first line of defense is that no one could have foreseen the magnitude of this pandemic, a contention plausible only to his most ardent supporters as it is contradicted by the quick responses taken by South Korea and Singapore and by the fact that it was predicted by Bill Gates in 2015 and was the subject of an action plan presented to the President when he took office.
His second line of defense is that the primary responsibility for dealing with medical emergencies lies with the states. I addressed this argument above and was able to convince at least one of the President’s ardent supporters that in a nation-wide pandemic it is the responsibility of the federal government to provide back-up medical supplies for the states. Rachel Maddow made yet another argument. She pointed out that on March 13th President Trump declared a “National State of Emergency” (a term of art under the National Emergency Act of 1976) which, when declared, arms the President with certain emergency powers to address and coordinate emergency relief efforts. She argued that when a President takes such action, it imposes on him/her a responsibility to exercise those powers, something the President has chosen not to do.
The President’s last line of defense is that he has put together a remarkable team that has done a “fantastic” (he really loves that word) job. This reminds me of a Herblock cartoon during the time of the Nixon administration. It depicted a man lying on the ground having been run over by a car which has circled back to the victim. Getting out of the car is Nixon and the caption is “Good thing for you I came along.” Thus, the very best that you can say for the President is that he appears to be trying a rectify a bad situation which he has made worse. Trump’s biggest mistakes, aside from misleading the nation as to the potential seriousness of the virus, consist of (1) allowing the PREDICT PROGRAM (a $200 million project set up to prevent the next pandemic) to lapse, (2) disbanding the White House’s pandemic response team and terminating the employment of its technical experts, (3) refusing to accept virus testing kits offered to all nations by the World Health Organization in early January, and (4) ignoring the problem altogether for almost two months. As the actions of South Korea and Singapore (and California) clearly reveal, the critical factor is not so much how much action you take, but when you take that action. (It reminds me of Winston Churchill’s observation: “You can always count of the Americans to do the right thing---after they have tried everything else.”) Because of the propensity of the virus to quickly increase the number of its victims, prompt action is the only effective way to contain it. On many occasions President Trump has criticized President Obama for prematurely withdrawing our forces from Iraq, thereby allowing ISIS to grow into a formidable force and requiring far greater effort to eradicate it. Our current enemy may be of a different nature, but the principle is the same.
The fact is that even after the President at the end of the first week in March belatedly recognized that we are dealing with a serious pandemic, he has only done a mediocre job at best. The obvious keys to defeating the COVID-19 virus are (a) to take action to slow the spread of the virus and (b) to get the necessary resources to where the battle is being fought. This is no different from fighting an enemy that has invaded our territory. First, we have to slow the enemy down to buy time to generate the resources needed to defend against its aggression and then get those resources to where the enemy’s attack is being focused. Part of Trump’s problem is that he thinks (and proclaims) he knows more than the generals.
His efforts to retard the spread of the virus have been feeble and primarily consisted of publishing “suggested guidelines” for individuals to protect themselves from contracting the virus. Not only did he not strongly encourage the states to adopt social separation measures, he hasn’t even done that yet. It was only on or about April 1st that his Surgeon General said that the “President’s guidelines should be considered orders. The President himself is yet to speak on the subject and the Vice President whom the President appointed to head his Coronavirus Task Force simply said that the Task Force has no recommendations on this subject. It must also be understood that there is a fundamental difference between a mandate and a guideline. A guideline calls for voluntary compliance with the result that most younger people (particularly, young men) who have a feeling of invincibility are generally willing to take the chance that exposing themselves to the virus will not seriously affect them. The problem is that a stay-at-home mandate is not solely for the benefit of the individual being asked to observe it, but it is also for the protection of the more vulnerable members of the community who might be infected through social contact with an “invincible” youth. The President’s failure to call for the states to impose stay-at-home mandates, much less impose one nationally, is already causing hundreds of unnecessary deaths.
The other action taken by the administration to slow the spread of the virus has been to ramp up testing for the virus. By the end of March, over 1 million Americans had been tested for the virus. While this exceeds the number of tests performed by any other nation, these tests were performed after the virus had already infected so many individuals that using the tests as a basis for tracing and quarantining other potential victims was no longer feasible. Thus, the critical factor is not how many tests were performed, or even how many tests were performed on a per capita basis, but when those tests were performed. The two nations that have had the greatest success in containing the virus (South Korea and Singapore) began their testing effort in early January and not in mid-March as we did.
The second task in the fight against the virus is to acquire the necessary supplies and to get them to the site where the battle is being waged. Again, Trump’s performance deserves very low marks. (Doesn’t this makes you wonder why he brought a lawsuit to prohibit the University of Pennsylvania from disclosing his college transcript.) The critical materials in the fight against the virus are ventilators and personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. Rather than make an immediate and all-out effort to acquire these items, the President essentially said “Not my job. The states should be doing that.” The simple problem is that we are dealing with a national problem that requires a national solution; and (as explained above) having the states go out and procure their individual needs results in higher costs and misallocations. Many governors petitioned the President to utilize the Defense Production Act to quickly produce the necessary equipment and materials, a request which the President rejected saying that “the federal government is not a shipping clerk” and that he didn’t want to “nationalize” our industries. Instead, he wasted valuable time trying to cajole manufacturers to set other matters aside and fill the needs of the country. Ironically, his administration had already invoked that Act thousands of times in order to have equipment for the military produced or produced more quickly.
Another problem is that at this time there are no ventilators available for sale, which means that someone has to take control of the nation’s existing supply and deploy them where they are most needed --in the words of New York’s Governor Cuomo, “a rolling deployment.” This is a job only the federal government can perform. Can you imagine Governor Cuomo trying to commandeer ventilators owned by another state. To his great credit, Governor Cuomo was able to engineer a gift of 1,000 ventilators from China and a loan of another 140 ventilators from the State of Oregon. So far, the Trump administration has failed to take any steps to coerce the states to share their equipment.
Although Trump has a marvelous record for escaping (justice) for his wrongful or foolish actions, it seems likely that this time may be different and that’s even assuming that Fox News continues its support for his re-election. Both the medical and economic fall-out of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic are going to have serious adverse effects on his approval ratings. The first problem is likely to come in the next sixty days when the red states start to experience the brunt of the pandemic. Not only are they as unprepared as New York was, but, like Trump, they have wasted valuable time getting prepared and have failed to have their citizens practice social distancing. Their only hope is that some of the administration’s belated efforts to manufacture the necessary protective equipment for medical personnel will come to fruition before they experience the virus’ onslaught. Even If those supplies are ready in time, those states will suffer a large number of fatalities causing a public outcry which will sap the support of the President’s voter base.
The second problem that Trump will have to overcome is that the U.S. is currently on track to have the highest number of virus cases and deaths (in both absolute and per capita terms) of all developed nations. This should be clear by the end of July. Surely the American people will be asking why the only nation to have put a man on the moon has trailed all other nations in protecting its people from the virus. For a man who won the Presidency with the slogan of “Make America Great Again” this is not likely to sit well with even his most vocal supporters. Although logically these arguments should bring about the President’s political demise, that is a prediction I shudder to make. As H.L. Mencken once wrote, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
One bullet the President seems to have already successfully dodged is the obligation to disclose his tax returns before the Fall elections. The Supreme Court has already cited the pandemic as a reason for its decision to postpone until its next term consideration of the cases requiring the production of his tax returns. This means that the President’s tax returns will remain under wraps until after the Fall elections. In my view, it was a travesty that the Court even agreed to hear those cases as the President’s arguments for preventing their disclosure were wholly without merit.
Still, the most daunting task ahead for the President will be to overcome the economic fallout that is likely to ensue. Even though the Congress has appropriated over two trillion dollars to prop up the nation’s economy (more than twice the bailout money expended during the Great Recession of 2008-9), we are not only heading into a recession, but one far longer and deeper than that experienced in the last 100 years. The rate of unemployment is already higher than in the Great Recession and the President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank has predicted that unemployment will exceed the level reached in the Great Depression. Most economists are already saying that the current appropriations are not likely to be sufficient and Speaker Pelosi is talking about a fourth legislative rescue package to bolster hospitals and state and local governments and the President has mentioned that he wants another $2 trillion appropriation to rebuild the nation’s roads and bridges. To be sure, many small businesses are likely to fail and many individuals will be facing the struggle of their lives just to put food on their tables even assuming the courts will not evict them from their homes or their hospitals will not deny them the emergency medical services they require. Thus, just as Trump hoped to ride a favorable economy back into the White House, a devastated one might usher him out.
In addition to the health and economic problems that lie ahead, we may also be heading toward another Constitutional crisis. The Democrats in both the House and the Senate were rightly concerned about giving the government a $2 trillion blank check to prop up the nation’s economy. That had been tried when the banking industry was bailed out in 2008 and the public outcry was overwhelming. In fact, the adverse reaction from having bailed out the bankers who created the real estate bubble while millions of Americans who lost their homes were abandoned gave rise to the creation of the Tea Party and the Republican electoral victory in 2010. Accordingly, to secure the support of the Democrats for the CARES Act, the White House had to agree to include provisions calling for periodic reports to Congress as to how the monies were being employed. This was particularly important because the President had declared a National Emergency which gives him certain powers to reallocate funding (think of the monies taken from the Defense budget to build the wall on our border with Mexico). In addition, the President has a long and well-known history of using public funds to benefit himself and his supporters. (Think about his “perfect” telephone conversation with the President of Ukraine, his attempt to hold the G-7 summit at his Doral Golf Club, and his many vacations at the government’s expense with a large entourage at Mar-a-Lago.) Even though the President had exhorted Congress to act in a bipartisan fashion to enact this legislation, no Democrats were invited to the signing ceremony.
As an added insult, the President issued a signing statement saying that his administration would not be complying with the provision in the Act to keep the Congress informed. On top of that, the President, rather than appoint a person respected by both parties to oversee the use of these funds, he appointed a White House aide, Brian Miller, to serve in that capacity. And just to make sure that Mr. Miller knows how he is expected to carry out his oversight duties, the President fired and humiliated Michael Atkinson, the Inspector General overseeing the Intelligence Agencies, because he passed on to Congress the letter of the whistleblower that triggered the initiation of the impeachment proceeding against the President. In case you were not aware, the President abhors oversight which explains why over a dozen Inspector general positions within the government currently remain vacant. What were the Democrats thinking? They had obviously forgotten that one of the Duplicitous Don’s principal MO’s as a businessman was to order merchandise or work and then refuse to pay the agreed-upon price. Thus, unless something happens, we may well be headed for the next Constitutional crisis as Trump again chooses to prevent the Congress from seeing how its largesse is being deployed.
Quite frankly, I don’t think Trump is likely to back away from his refusal to deny the Congress the ability to oversee how the money is being spent for two reasons. First, as a confirmed grifter, he can’t help himself from misusing government money and certainly does not want to give the Democrats ammunition for attacking him as the Fall elections approach. Secondly, he has a well-established MO of defying those he has swindled. His responses to suppliers and tradesmen he has stiffed was always “If you don’t like it, sue me.” He clearly knows Congress won’t sue him; that didn’t get the Democrats very far in conjunction with the impeachment proceeding. In addition, the Democrats can’t expect any support from the Republicans even though they too were parties to the legislation. Thus, the Democrats will have to think hard and long whether and how they will support further legislation providing the federal government with additional funds to support the economy.
Another issue that might stand in the way of enabling the country to extricate itself from the oncoming economic plight relates to voting by mail. Although many states now freely permit voting by mail, the President recently voiced his opposition to it for the usual bogus reason propagated by Republicans; namely, that it would open the door to voter fraud. Not surprisingly, he didn’t seem to question the 2018 elections of Governor DeSantis and Senator Scott of Florida, both of whom won by relatively slim margins in a state with unlimited use of voting by mail. Remote voting may soon to take on new importance as the current rules of both the House and Senate require all votes to be taken by those present in the chamber. If it becomes imperative for Congress to alter its rules, shouldn’t the same considerations apply to voting by the public at large if the virus remains a threat next November.
When and How Will This End?
As I mentioned at the outset, we will be going through a series of waves of attack by the virus until a vaccine and/or a cure can be developed, a process that will take months, if not years. The good news is that scientists and technologists all over the world are collaborating in their efforts to find a medical treatment that will defeat the virus. In the interim, nations will have to devise ways of resuming economic activity that will not immediately trigger a succeeding wave of illnesses and deaths. Those countries that contained the virus at its outset will have the ability to quarantine those who are infected and those who enter their borders. Those nations, like the United States, that have allowed the virus to spread widely within their borders will have to adopt another strategy.
The first question is when should a nation begin to bring its economy out of its medically induced coma. Paul Krugman suggested that the experience of the 1918 pandemic points to erring on the side of being too late, rather than too soon. Those nations that dropped their social separation efforts too soon in response to the 1918 pandemic had slower economic recoveries than those that waited longer. Others who have studied the question have ventured that the 1918 experience may not be relevant today because of the great advances in science and technology that have taken place over the past 100 years. Not only do we understand the human body better, but we have developed literally thousands of pharmaceutical and vaccines and therefore may be in a position to cut short a second wave of the virus before it can reap major damage. We also have developed electronic technology that can track where a person who has contracted the virus has been and with whom he or she has come in contact so we can quickly identify others who might need to be quarantined. Another bit of good news is that many European nations that have been fighting the virus will likely precede the U.S. in relaxing their social separation policies and will be in a position to provide some guidance to U.S. officials in making that determination.
Coming off social separation mandates will not be like an alcoholic giving up drinking. It has to be a gradual process, first allowing those who have acquired immunity to the virus back into the work force and keeping those most vulnerable to the ravages of the virus sequestered in safety. In addition, work environments will have to be altered so as to minimize the possibility of another rapid spread of the disease. This will likely include accelerating the advent of automation and minimizing the use of human labor in manufacturing processes. The fewer hands that touch a manufactured item, the less likely that a virus will be propagated. Where manufacturing and distribution processes cannot be automated, protocols will have to be established to minimize the possibility of transferring the virus, and workers will have to be furnished protective gear and trained as to how to protect themselves and their co-workers. Where possible, workers will be encouraged to work from the safety of their homes and meetings will have to be conducted electronically. Changes such as these cannot be implemented over night, which means the process will be drawn out.
I personally believe that until the virus is finally conquered we will all be wearing face masks when we leave the safety of our homes. The principal reason why this has not already been mandated is because there are not enough face masks currently available for every citizen, and those which are available are more urgently needed for medical workers who are certain to come into contact with the virus. The simple fact is that if the disease can be transmitted by someone coughing or sneezing, it can also be transmitted simply by exhaling, the only difference being the distance that the virus will likely be projected and that can just as much be a function of the strength and direction of the prevailing breeze. The use of face masks will serve a dual purpose. It will prevent you from inhaling the virus and prevent you from touching your face before you get home and have a chance to wash your hands.
What will be the New Normal?
As our leaders like to say, “We will get through this.” Well, at least the vast majority of us will. Even so, our lives will not be the same. Just as the tragedy of September 11, 2011 changed the way we conduct our daily lives, this pandemic will not only have an immediate devastating impact on our economy, it will also bring about some fundamental changes in the way that we conduct our daily lives.
More than one writer has suggested that the pandemic will be used as an excuse by some democratic nations to move toward authoritarianism. Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, has already charged off in that direction, closing down Hungary’s Parliament and limiting the power of its courts, all under the pretext of being in a better position to fight the pandemic. While it would not be surprising to see that happen in other countries, that does not seem like the course that will be taken in the U.S. First, Trump, while loving the pomp and ceremony of being our nation’s leader, seems loath to take dramatic action on his own. He was slow to declare a national emergency and afterwards has been reluctant to exercise the powers that his declaration affords him. As Jennifer Senior wrote in today’s edition of the New York Times, one of the characteristics of Trump’s narcissistic personality is a fear of actually charting a new course, particularly one he can’t blame on others. A second reason is that the American people take pride in the fact that their nation was born out of a desire to free itself from a despot; and a return to one-man rule would seemingly take more than a pandemic, even one of a significant duration. Third, Americans equate authoritarianism with Communism, a culture which our nation fought for forty years following the end of World War II. It is therefore unlikely that we would embrace a system that has been so long vilified. Finally, for the last forty years the United States has operated under Ronald Reagan’s philosophy that “Government is not the solution to our problems, it is the problem.” This dislike for a powerful federal government lies at the heart of President Trump’s political rhetoric that the Democrats want to bring socialism to America. Even though America’s opinion on the issue of big government, vs. small government is likely to change as a result of the pandemic (as explained below), the remaining animosity toward big government that will continue to exists is likely to prove sufficient to keep this country far away from authoritarianism.
This raises the question of how will we continue to practice democracy if we are fearful of contracting a deadly disease if we attend a campaign rally or stand in line at a polling station. If citizens can’t or won’t attend political gatherings, political campaigns may become more electronic affairs, with politicians relying heavily on televised interviews and town halls to get their messages out to the voters. While this is not likely to stop the thousands of political ads that we are forced to endure while we watch our favorite TV programs (of which I seem to have fewer and fewer), those ads are likely to be less influential if candidates are given extended opportunities to explain their positions and past actions. As for the problems associated with voting in person, we may learn more tomorrow when Wisconsin voters go their polling stations in the face of their governor’s stay-at-home order. While, hopefully, this crisis will soon pass and we will act more quickly in stamping out future pandemics, the issue is still likely to be with us in the Fall, raising the pressure on state governments to adopt vote-by-mail procedures that already exist in some states. This, in itself, could have an important impact on the outcome of future elections around the country.
If this pandemic doesn’t do anything else, it will certainly underscore the importance of everyone having access to health care and the need for a social safety net for working class citizens. Congress has already appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up our healthcare systems and provide individuals with monies to enable them to weather the economic storm that is about to befall them. There is a very real possibility that these monies will prove insufficient and that Congress will have to augment them. There is also a significant likelihood that governors of both red and blue states will be petitioning Congress to take such action, which in turn may create a national movement (not unlike the Tea Party) to create a permanent social safety net. This could actually be the spark that will ignite Bernie Sanders’ revolution. For those of us who thought that was an impossibility only three months ago, it may be time for a re-appraisal.
This pandemic will not pass without major changes to the medical profession. Unlike the rest of the developed countries, our healthcare system is largely private. It tends to work well for the affluent and is a disaster for those at the lower end of the income scale. This pandemic has shown once again that our healthcare system needs to be rethought. One change that has already been put into practice is freeing doctors to practice “telemedicine.” The medical profession has always resisted this practice, claiming that medical diagnoses cannot be safely made over the phone. Existing technology, however, is making a mockery of that assertion as there are already many cell phone apps which enable patients to provide their doctors with a wide range of diagnostic information. This change alone can reduce medical costs.
When I was practicing law defending accounting firms, it became apparent to me that it was far less costly to help my clients avoid problems than to try to extricate them from the problems they may have caused. This principle clearly applies to healthcare, and the pandemic itself is showing that preventing the spread of the virus is a much better alternative to trying to cure its victims. Thus, to contain the rising cost of medical services, we will have to move toward a healthcare system that emphasizes preventing healthcare problems, rather than one that focuses on cures. This pandemic may just be the catalyst that moves the nation in that direction, and that means that the system must be able to provide healthcare for everyone, not just those who can afford it.
Forty states have now issued orders closing schools. I have five grandchildren who are still in school and are now attending their classes on-line. The virus has made this a necessity. The systems that are being put together to make this possible can be used to bring higher education to a much larger segment of our population at fraction of the current cost. This will not only ease the financial burden on college students who are now forced to take out large student loans but it will also facilitate greater upward social and economic mobility of those at the lower end of the income scale. Thus, the so-called “American Dream” may actually become available to a much larger portion of the population.
Let me conclude this much too long piece on a sobering note. Our current national debt stands at over $23 trillion and efforts to resuscitate the nation’s economy will increase that figure by over $2 trillion and possibly more. Our having the world’s largest and strongest economy enables us to simply take these extraordinary measures without the necessity of raising taxes, a luxury not enjoyed by other countries. This is because the U.S. dollar is the safest and soundest currency in the world. That could soon end if we allow our economy to be crippled by the virus for a prolonged period and if we continue to do stupid things like provide tax cuts for the wealthy that greatly add to our national debt and have little positive effect on growing our economy. It should also be appreciated that China is rapidly growing its economy and, with a population four times ours, it could surpass us as the world’s strongest economy and its currency supplant the dollar as the world’s economic common denominator. This alone could have a devastating effect on our economy and our ability to grow it. While this has been a problem looming in our rear-view mirror, this pandemic may have brought it much closer.