The Costs Of COVID-19 Lockdowns: A Cure Worse Than The Disease

COVID-19 has dealt countries such as Italy and Iran an horrific blow. The stories to come out of Italy are nothing short of surreal: hospitals unable to provide care, patients relegated to makeshift clinics, doctors and nurses waging heroic but unsuccessful battles against the disease, people confined to their homes with dead and dying relatives--scenes previously unimaginable outside of a Hollywood horror film. The images and surreptitious videos of Iran's mass graves simply do not seem real--but they are.

The images from the United States are no less comforting. Downtown Los Angeles is a veritable ghost town. Stores have been emptied of staple goods, as people engage in panic buying (some would call it "prepping") as apocalyptic projections emerge from the CDC that half the US population will be infected before this disease runs its course. Without a doubt, COVID-19 will rank among the world's great pandemics.

Or will it?

We Have A Problem: No Patients

For all the dire predictions that Italy's experience would soon be that of the US, we are not seeing hospitals collapsing under patient load. A Google search of the nation's news media reveals zero headlines about hospitals drowning in patients. Instead, social media carries tweets and posts of healthcare workers having their shifts canceled because hospitals have adequate coverage for the patients they have. Italy's experience has not been the US experience.

Nor can we merely ascribe the difference to time lag between Italy and the United States. Italy's first small scale quarantines began in late February, as community spread of COVID-19 took hold, expanding to a regional lockdown on March 7, and a nationwide quarantine on March 9. The first indications of community spread in the Seattle area came on February 29, raising fears there had been weeks of "cryptic transmission" of the disease in the area (a claim easily disproven by declining Influenza Like Illness statistics until the last week of Frebruary). Seattle's onset of community spread began at approximately the same time as northern Italy's, and yet their hospitals systems have remained functioning.

New York tells a similar tale. Community spread of COVID-19 began in the first week of March, yet by March 16 New York reported fewer cases (950) than Italy (3,858) did two weeks into their outbreak. Nor can lack of testing alone account for such discrepancy, for as of March 21 New York reports 8,516 cases, almost 3,000 cases more than when Italy's healthcare infrastructures began to collapse from the patient load.

Even as the "experts" continue to churn social media with apocalyptic predictions that "we are all Italy", data from the real world says quite emphatically that we are not. Despite all their fearful guesstimations about the disease severity, thus far the United States has still recorded only 265 deaths from COVID-19.

Long after the healthcare apocalypse was supposed to unfold here in the United States, it has yet to happen. The healthcare system is so far holding up well. There are resource concerns, even shortages--in particular PPE for healthcare workers--but in no part of the US is COVID-19 producing the humanitarian disaster that has been reported in Italy.

Why The Lockdowns?

It is against this backdrop of "apocalypse maybe" that we must assess the quarantines and lockdowns being ordered across the country. With the recent addition of New Jersey on the growing list of states with lockdowns, some 86 million Americans are under some form of general constraint at this time. The restrictions are in some places harsh: Pennsylvania's governor Tom Wolf has threatened business owners who do not shut down with arrest. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has issued an executive order requiring all "non essential" businesses to keep their staff 100% at home. California Governor Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order for all Californians to "shelter in place".

These are not minor orders. Not only are they major in size and scope, but they are a significant challenge to America's history of civil liberty. Enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution is the right of all Americans to peaceably assemble--at first glance these orders appear to dispense with that right almost cavalierly. Pennsylvania businesspeople and politicians are mounting multiple legal challenges to governor Wolf's shutdown order. By enacting such orders, the nation's governors are wielding power quite possibly beyond their legal mandate.

Beyond the dubious legality of such orders are two very relevant questions: 1) Are they necessary? 2) Do they work? Neither question can be clearly answered in the affirmative.

The necessity question arises from the conspicuous lack of bad news regarding COVID-19 within the United States. Not only are we not seeing hospitals buckle under overwhelming patient loads, in some locations it is difficult even to confirm that hospitals have a significant number of COVID-19 patients at all. There are no HIPAA regulations that would restrict an hospital's ability to confirm to anyone current patient loads--if an hospital is full of COVID_19 patients (or any sort of patient) and was less able to provide medical care, that is vital information that everyone has a right to know.

Even if one can confirm significant patient loads--and to be sure New York is expressing concern about some hospitals, particularly in Brooklyn, running short on ventilators--it is by no means certain that mass quarantines and lockdowns actually have much effect on the spread of COVID-19. If we look at China's experience with draconian lockdowns, the data is fairly conclusive that it does not.

99.4% of the COVID-19 cases detected in Wuhan were reported after the city was placed under quarantine, and, despite the pronouncements of the Chinese Communist Party that the virus has been "beaten" in Wuhan, video footage from within the city shows people are still lining up at hospitals. Whistleblower reports from within China assert that hospitals in Wuhan deliberately misreported patient numbers in order to allow Chinese President Xi Jinping a propaganda triumph.

It is impossible to conclude, in the face of such evidence, that draconian lockdowns have demonstrable effect in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Italy's own rising case numbers despite two weeks of quarantine cast further doubt on the proposition: at 53,578 cases, the graph of Italy's case totals shows the rate of spread still increasing. An effective bar to the spread of the disease would show slowing infection rates.

If mass quarantines and mass lockdowns are not necessary in the United States, and if they are ineffective at slowing the spread of COVID-19, what actual benefit do they provide? At the present time, there is none that can be inferred from the data at hand.

Quarantines Are Catastrophically Costly

In crisis response, one question that is frequently contemplated is "what have we got to lose?" There is compelling logic to the proposition that, if a measure leaves us no worse off, there is little reason not to at least try the measure, even if there is scant evidence to support the measure's efficacy.

When it comes to quarantines and lockdowns, however, the answer to the question "what have we got to lose?" can be summed up as "quite a lot.":

• The Wall Street Journal estimates as many as 5 million jobs will be lost.
• North Carolina has seen unemployment claims jump from an average of 3,000 to over 40,000.
• Californians are experiencing a jump in the need for food assistance, while unemployment applications have jumped from 2,000 per day to as many as 80,000.
• New York hotels and casinos have already lost some 20,000 jobs, and expect to lose more.
• Nationwide, first-time unemployment claims have jumped 33%. As many as 23 million other jobs are in jeopardy.
• The National Restaurant Association is forecasting losses of as much as $225 billion by its members, with 7 million jobs lost.
• The stock markets have tanked at a rate not seen since 1987, and to a degree not seen since the Great Depression, and even trillions of Federal Reserve monetary stimulus has failed to arrest the slide.

Nor are these costs unique to the United States. In Shandong, China--that country's second most populous province and third richest--small business owners are now unable to pay the rent. In Guangdong, home to most of China's hi-tech businesses, workers are unable to find a place to stay, their former landlords fearful of letting the virus back in. In Wenzhou, home to many of China's small privately owned factories, workers dutifully obeying Beijing's orders to report back to work are being refused by local party, community, and business leaders.

Stopping an economy is relatively easy. Restarting it again, particularly after an interval of weeks, is proving to be far more problematic and uncertain.

What have we got to lose from the shutdowns? For a great many--for too many--the answer is "everything."

What Is The Alternative?

In the face of pandemic disease, one might plausibly argue that even extreme economic privation is preferable to extreme loss of life. Money, we rightly tell ourselves, can be replaced, while human life cannot. The thesis of the legacy media--and many of the self-anointed "experts" tapped by the legacy media to feed their various narratives--is that these lockdowns are necessary, and that there simply is no other way.

The polite term for this thesis is "horse hockey". The more accurate but less polite term would be considered a synonym for "fertilizer". Humans are resilient, adaptable, and inventive, and we are quite good at finding alternatives. Rarely is there only a single solution to a crisis.

As regards COVID-19, there is growing evidence that the common anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, in combination with other compounds, are successful both in treating the disease as well as preventing it. One study in France proclaimed a "100% cure rate". Some have even speculated the greater prevalence of malaria (and corresponding greater use of antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine) might help account for the demonstrably lesser spread of COVID-19 in South America and Africa; despite weaker healthcare infrastructures overall, COVID-19 has been far kinder to those nations than to the nations of Europe and eastern Asia.

While the precise benefits and efficiacy of these treatments have yet to be determined with scientific rigor, surveys of the scientific literature establishes with quite a bit of confidence that there is significant benefit to be had. Chloroquine is probably not a "miracle cure", nor a "magic bullet" to knock out the disease, but it most certainly displays therapeutic benefit in treating COVID-19 infections.

Nor is this exactly new information or medical breakthrough. The antiviral properties of chloroquine have been recognized and studied since at least 2006, and in particular with reference to COVID-19's close cousin, the SARS virus.

Shockingly, the response of the legacy media has been to dismiss the very real science behind the antiviral use of chloroquine. Rather than discuss its successful use, they have panned the drug and even suggested it would kill rather than cure. Ironically, the same media has largely ignored the very real dangers of common over-the-counter medications such as acetaminophen, which results in as many as 1,500 accidental deaths every year. Medication error and medication misuse are real dangers, but are not at all unique either to chloroquine or treatments for COVID-19 more broadly.

The bottom line: We have viable treatment options to mitigate the disease, to reduce its severity, and even to prevent disease. Even if a vaccine is available later on, and that proves preferable to chloroquine therapies, chloroquine shows substantial promise in being able to confront COVID-19 in the here and now, while vaccines are being developed, and without shutting down quite literally the entire world.

Stop The Madness Before More Damage Is Done

It may already be too late to halt the slide of the stock markets. It may already be too late to prevent a resurgent financial crisis. It certainly is already too late to ward off significant supply chain disruption. The ripple effects of what has already been done cannot be avoided.

While we cannot prevent the consequences for the mistakes we have already made, we can at least avoid adding to their number. The United States is not required to follow the path of Italy, nor even of China. These countries are not obligated to stay the course they have chosen. At every step, the choice exists to change direction, to adopt less draconian strategies for containing COVID-19. We owe it to ourselves to look long and hard at every option to end these lockdowns.

Economic destruction is a steep price to pay to confront any disease. It is an insane price to pay when it is not necessary. For confronting COVID-19, the economic destruction of quarantines and lockdowns has never been necessary. It is a price we do not need to pay.

Let's stop paying it.