The role of government and coronavirus

On March 16, Santa Clara County and the other 6 counties in Bay Area declared “shelter in place”, a code name for lockdown. It asked all restaurants, gyms and “non-essential businesses” to shut down. By now, coronavirus has created panic in the United States. Toilet papers are out of stock on Amazon, and fresh vegetables and eggs are also out of stock from Amazon fresh, a phenomenon that I have never experienced before.

As the diagnosed people reached 4000 in the U.S. yesterday (March 16), almost double the amount the day before, the pressure on government officials is mounting. Why is there such an increase? What can we do about it? The job of CDC or local CDCs is tracking disease and educating the public about how to prevent it. The society exists to function together, to socialize and to help each other. To shut down economic activities is a blatant violation of our basic constitutional rights.

What are economic activities? It’s voluntary exchange of goods and services. In itself is basic human freedom. Limiting business activity or voluntary exchanges is limiting our constitutional liberty. This is done under the pretense of protecting life. But is this the best and only way to protect us in this era of coronavirus?

The job of a government is helping the society function smoothly. CDC’s job is tracking, educating the public and analyzing the solution to the disease. Instead, we got very little information on the spread. We don’t know how community spread happened and what was the path. For an area of 6.7 million (bay area’s 6 counties) people, there are less than 600 cases reported. This is one-thousandth of the population. In such a small ratio to shut all of the economic activities and limit to “essential” business is simply lazy governance.

How people are infected in restaurants or gyms? What restaurants and gyms? If there is one person got infected in 1 restaurant, should we shut down all the other 10,000 business? This over-reaction is unnecessary and harmful to the business.

The problem is that CDC has been unaccountable in its reporting, tracking and curing of this disease. By limiting citizen’s mobility and basic freedom, it’s washing its hands in its one lack of treatment and progress. Instead of modeling after other countries that did an excellent job of tracking and controlling diseases such as Taiwan and South Korea, CDC is modeling after totalitarian countries like China and a country with Fascism history -- Italy, both resorting to lockdown and both had the worst explosion of cases after lockdown.

It’s easy to see why lockdown does not help to control the numbers. This is because the government has to step up to understand and treat the disease. Simply shutting social and economic activities does little to control the disease.

Infectious disease spreads through people. How to deal with such diseases reflects our basic values in humanity. In North Korea, they simply kill the patients. In a totalitarian country like China, they locked 10 million people in their homes, sealed off the border, and took away people’s freedom to step out of their homes. Such bad precedence was modeled by a country like Italy, which has close economic ties with China. Italy’s situation got worse after its lockdown. Wuhan's situation did not get better after lockdown (even though the official number seems to be good) and its residents are asked to endure another month's lockdown until April (The lockdown has been 2 months since January 24).

Lockdown reduced the possibility of spreading in economic activities, but it hurts the economy and basic liberty. This indirectly hurt people who can derive joy and health from normal social activities. When people are holed in their home, they get depressed, they worry about their economic future and their immune systems will go down. In a severely separated and abnormally functioning society, people will get other diseases. People who hole up at home tend to overeat and lack physical activities. This leads to more obesity and depression-related diseases. The medical cost of such problems would outweigh the medical cost of treating people with coronavirus.

The job of CDC is informing the public and helping the society to pay attention to the transmission path and take precautions. But this time it stepped out its lines by shutting down the whole society. This just fans more panic, and it severely depresses the economy. In an economy that is badly hurt, more businesses will go bankrupt and more people will lose their homes. This will lead to more problems such as crimes and illness.

CDC is further stepping out its line by defining “essential business”. Is essential business just food or gas? What if someone lacks basic clothes and shivers in coldness and need to buy a coat? What if someone’s car breaks down and needs repair? Furthermore, given the shortage of vegetables on the market, many people need potting mixes to grow veggies at home. Shouldn’t the gardening store be open?

It’s scary to the government dips its hand in limiting economic activities while not being accountable to the public on its basic function: How is this disease spread? What’s the best treatment, and when is the best treatment? How much do we know about the patients’ spreading path? When all the information is shrouded in secrecy due to “patient privacy”, the CDC is not fully accountable to the public. This is the danger we are facing.

What kind of government that is not accountable to the public but has too much power to control social life? It’s called a totalitarian government. The action of bay area CDCs is not acceptable and should be put on the pillar of shame.