“The key remains: together as ever as one. We have to push as one for solutions to protect our families and our fates. So what do you say? Let’s get after it.”
—Chris Cuomo, Cuomo Prime Time, Apr. 21, 2020
This is Cuomo’s schtick. He begins his prime time show every night on CNN with a blessedly brief and snappy introductory monologue that culminates in his plea for Americans to work “together as ever as one” to combat the coronavirus.
Politically speaking, what Cuomo means is this: we need a unitary national effort as opposed to 50 disparate state efforts, and a public policy oriented around “science” and what the public health “experts” say and counsel.
It sounds so high-minded, commonsensical, and appealing. But Cuomo is wrong and he has it precisely backward:
Far from a unitary national effort, we need 50 laboratories of democracy combating and responding to the coronavirus in various ways that reflect the very real regional and demographic differences in the spread of the virus itself.
Scientific Understanding. Moreover, our scientific understanding of the coronavirus is not some settled piece of Biblical scripture that compels “The Ten Scientific Commandants.”
To the contrary: our scientific understanding is rapidly changing and evolving as we learn more about this new or novel coronavirus. Hence the provisional name nCoV before it was named SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19.
“Over 2.43 million people around the world have contracted COVID-19,” the disease caused by the virus, and there are more than 1.6 million active cases,” reports Business Insider.
However, ongoing research on and about these patients has revealed that many of our best original assumptions about the virus weren’t fully accurate—or in some cases misguided.
After China confirmed the first case of the mysterious “pneumonia-like” illness at the end of December, for example, it turned out someone else likely started spreading it there in November.
Symptoms of COVID-19 also turned out to be far more expansive and peculiar than anyone initially realized. Even our understanding of how the virus transmits itself from one person to the next has changed.
But even if our scientific understanding of the coronavirus were fixed and settled, this understanding needs to be applied within a larger-scale analytical framework that considers the tradeoffs involved in various public policy options.
The goal of social distancing, remember, was never to eliminate the coronavirus and protect everyone from infection. That is well-night impossible.
Instead, the goal was to “flatten the curve” and thereby slow the spread of the virus, so that our hospitals and healthcare providers were not overwhelmed to the breaking point as happened in northern Italy.
And that, thank God, has been achieved. New York City and its surrounding suburbs were pressed to the breaking point, but they did not break.
Indeed, despite the genuine and well-founded fear that there might be too few ventilators and that rationing would ensue, the truth is: no one who ever needed a ventilator was ever denied a ventilator. New York, consequently, has actually given away some of its ventilators to other more needy states.
This is a remarkable achievement, which, two or three weeks ago, no one thought possible. It doesn’t’ mean we should abandon social distancing because all is well and the coronavirus is a thing of the past.
However, it does mean that we need to begin making reasonable accommodations to the reality of the virus and start reopening the U.S. economy.
We cannot wait for a vaccine, which, in the best scenario, is 12 to 18 months away. “The fastest vaccine ever developed for a viral infection is the Ebola vaccine, which took five years,” notes Avik Roy in the Wall Street Journal.
If we wait that long to reopen the U.S. economy, there will be no U.S. economy to open. America will lie in ruins. As George Gilder explains:
The health-care system saves lives; the economy provides everything we need to live. The damage being done to the economy—if sustained—could easily cost more lives world-wide than the coronavirus.
Federalism. The genius of the American political system is federalism and decentralization, and it is the answer to our dilemma between, on the hand, protecting the public health and, on the other hand, protecting our economic livelihood and survival.
Federalism allows each of the 50 states to balance these competing concerns and decide for themselves which precise accommodations to make for the coronavirus. This is appropriate and wise.
It is appropriate because the coronavirus is having widely disparate effects on different states and regions, all of which have different and divergent demographics.
Sixteen states, for instance, each have fewer than 100 COVID-19 deaths and, together, account for just 634 deaths versus 54,021 for the country as a whole. Another 24 states plus the District of Columbia have between 100 and 1,000 COVID-19 deaths.
Some 40 percent of the deaths have occurred in New York. New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey account for nearly 60 percent of the virus’s fatalities, observe NPR’s Elena Renken and Daniel Wood.
“The curves are flattening; hospital systems haven’t come close to being overwhelmed; Americans have adapted to new etiquettes of social distancing,” writes Bret Stephens in the New York Times.
“Many of the worst Covid outbreaks outside New York (such as at Chicago’s Cook County Jail or the Smithfield Foods processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D.),” Stephens points out, “have specific causes that can be addressed without population-wide lockdowns.”
We also will learn from what each of the states do—what works well and what doesn’t—and can adjust our efforts accordingly. That’s the advantage or wisdom of having 50 laboratories of democracy as opposed to one sole and exclusive federal policy or decision-point.
Competition and experimentation in governance breed excellence. Monopolistic federal government control, by contrast, breeds mediocrity and failure.
Public Policy. Of course, public policy must continue to be informed by our rapidly evolving scientific understanding of the coronavirus
In fact, says Avik Roy:
The starting point for a more realistic strategy is the key fact that not everyone is equally susceptible to hospitalization and death due to Covid-19. There is considerable evidence that younger people largely avoid the worst health outcomes.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those over the age of 65 are 22 times more likely to die of Covid-19 than those under 55.
That is not to say that younger people are invulnerable…
Still, the much lower incidence of death among younger people warrants a reconsideration of our one-size-fits-all approach to stay-at-home policies, especially outside the hard-hit tri-state region of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Georgia and Oklahoma are the first states to begin reopening their economies, and good on them for it. Governors Brian Kemp (R-Georgia) and Kevin Stitt (R-Oklahoma) made careful and deliberative decisions based on the data and informed by the science.
Georgia and Oklahoma aren’t abandoning social distancing. Instead, they’re incorporating social distancing into the workplace and social settings to allow residents and businesses to get on with their lives. All Americans will learn and benefit from these pioneering efforts.
The key remains: together as ever, not as one, but as 50 distinct and sovereign states. We have to push not as one nation, but as many states or jurisdictions, for potential solutions.
What do you say? Let’s get after it. Georgia and Oklahoma already are doing so. Let’s watch, observe, learn, and follow.