Lose-Lose

It's impossible to miss the most polarizing debate of the moment: “open now and take our chances (which are good because the whole thing is over-hyped”) and “opening too soon will be a disaster of indescribable proportions.”

Although I tend toward the latter, there is, so far (as of this date), no data to support it. I see no trends in early-open states and municipalities that are indisputably causes of concern.

If this continues – if the apocalypse does not materialize – the new world will be noticeably more anti-science than even the remarkably anti-science world of the last three years. Science took the riskiest stand in our lifetimes – and it was wrong. No one will forget that. The history of this era will feature that failure, and our children and grandchildren will wonder what we were thinking.

It looks, from this vantage point, like lose-lose. Either increasing death and devastation, or the invalidation of scientific expertise for a generation.

Imagine the chances of addressing climate change in that environment.

Videophones

I'm on an advisory council that works with our County's Office for the Aging. All of the members are seniors, well past 60. I just got an e-mail from the OFA Director about a Zoom meeting next week, asking if that kind of meeting would work.

All the members responded and they're all familiar with Zoom. We've all done it, all learned how to make it work.

The new world will contain so many hip boomers.

UPDATE:  But, apparently, not hip enough to figure out how to publish a blog with consistent fonts.

Healthcare Ratcheting

More on ratcheting: healthcare. Or, more accurately, accessible/affordable healthcare.

Of course, millions of people suddenly unemployed means (at least in America) many millions of those are suddenly without affordable healthcare – in the middle of a global pandemic. Losing health insurance without a safety net is more likely in states which did not expand Medicaid, but there is more than enough pain to go around.

This is a fascinating opportunity to observe ratcheting first-hand. We had A, and suddenly, B. To what extent will we return to A? Will the ratchet slow the return to coverage as in A? Most of American business and commerce is shut down. Employees are laid off or furloughed. Many businesses will go under, and others will rise to fill the void. Whole segments of the economy will be re-built from scratch (especially, if the experts are right, if the virus won't be gone for a very long time).

Time for innovation! It's near impossible to eliminate healthcare coverage for an industry unilaterally, during normal times, but when you're building companies and economy segments up from nothing – anything is possible! And since labor unions represent only about 10% of American workers, the decision can actually be unilateral!

Those who know me are aware of how I feel about capitalism, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I feel sure that industry leaders are thinking about this very issue right now. How will it turn out?

Is it completely out of the question to suggest that, at the end of the worst pandemic in living history, we will emerge to find that Americans have greater access to affordable healthcare than before?

In the new world, will we be closer to A or B? Or can we hope for C?

PSA

Just a note: I am fully aware of the fact that politics will play a huge part in determining the landscape of the new world. Depending on who is elected President, and who wins the Senate, the world will be drastically different. But that's always been the case. Imagine a different outcome to the Presidential elections of 1860, or 1932. Imagine a Republican Congress for most of the second half of the last century. I'm thinking, and writing, about differences which, for their content and speed, we have never seen before.

And besides, I'm just sick to death of politics.

The New Neptune

I find this question interesting: who will make money from the crisis, and emerge into the new world stronger – and what effect will that have on wealth inequality?

Answer: I don't know. I hope we can ratchet inequality of all kinds back a little in the new world. But the weight of all that wealth – really, it has a gravitational pull on everything, similar to the Sun's grip on the Solar System – is very resistant to any other forces available. A lot of inertia there.

I took Economics 101 as an undergrad in 1968, and that was it. It's not my strong suit. But it seems like trillions of dollars have changed hands in the last month or so. Where will that wealth go? Who will benefit, when it is spent or leveraged? Will a money aneurysm begin bulging out of the side of our world in a place where it hasn't been before? Things have been disrupted, maybe as if another Neptune has come barreling into our gravity well.

Or maybe all that cash will just be absorbed into the Sun with no more effect than a couple of solar flares, and that will be that. Status quo ante bellum.

Stay tuned.

Ratchets

OK. Back to talking about the new world.

You probably know what a ratchet is. It's a device you put on a tool so that when you make progress, you don't lose that progress. When you're tightening something, the ratchet makes sure it doesn't untighten itself.

I think the new world will include the results of the ratchet effect. However, in these cases, the ratchet will both keep progress from backsliding, and keep progress from progressing.

Right now, we have discovered that we can provide resources to people in need quickly and simply – enhanced unemployment, resources for lost business, and even simple cash payments so bills can be paid. Who knew? (Ans: many of us. For a long time). Anyway, it is up to us to build ratchets around these progressive initiatives so that, in some way, they survive the crisis. They represent a sudden acknowledgment that we can best address a disaster by everyone helping everyone else. Anyone who has ever filled a sandbag on a levee knows that, but I digress. The new world must not look like the old world in this respect.

And, of course, the crisis is being used to ratchet us back and destroy or diminish our impulse to work together for a common cause. The stimulus bills have shoveled unimaginable billions to the usual suspects, who add it to the billions they already have. Somehow, they want still another payroll tax break in the next bill. If I'm reading this all correctly, even the USPS is being pulled under, allegedly to help pay for the stimulus bills but really to further voter suppression so vote by mail won't work. And here in my home county, the use of plastic grocery bags was banned starting March 1. By March 20, the ban had been lifted – apparently, bringing your own bag to the grocery store helps spread the virus. Sure it does.

Anyway, we've got to look for the ratchets, and then carefully observe in which direction the screw is being turned. The new world will depend on how good we are at this.

Meta

One of the reasons for the gap in posts is what some would call “meta.” As each day goes by, I'm less and less sure of what is going to happen, and therefore, what it is that is being written about. We seem to be caught in a stasis: numbers wash over us, unending, but nothing changes.

Are we headed for a long drawn-out battle, led by disinterested and incompetent generals? Will this all go away, slowly but surely? Will we descend into calm, only to have the next storm break around us?

We are lectured by epidemiologists and those who share their opinions and world-views, and they seem unanimous: disaster, considering our approach to this crisis so far. But disaster is neither here*, nor on the horizon – just predictions and speculations. And we are also told that this disease is unpredictable, due both to its apparent character as a rule-breaker, and the long time it takes to know something this new. So we plan with last year's knowledge for the unknowable future.

Which means that the makeup of the new world will depend on which future will find us. Right now, there is no actual evidence that any of them are inevitable – or even highly probable.

By the way, not that you should care, but this make me angry. Come on. Come at me.  Show me what you've got. Don't tease me, don't make me wait. I'm ready for whatever comes – but come on – come.

* - UPDATE - Yes, I understand that 300,000+ deaths qualifies as a disaster.  I'm talking about the predicted responses to our shoddy pandemic response, which are not, at this moment, "here."