Letter to Editor | Cutting a deal with COVID

— from Tom Eversole —

Deal making is useless against Mother Nature. Threatening COVID19 with a premature return to business as usual is like bullying the weather not to rain, because you haven’t fixed your roof yet. You’re going to get wet.

Although we lost valuable time in starting, physical distancing has helped flatten the curve. A flatter curve doesn’t guarantee fewer casualties, it just means the number will be spread out over a more manageable time. We bought time but didn’t adequately ramp up supply chains and personnel.

Short of a vaccine, what will reduce casualties is Public Health intervention: testing, identification, isolation, contact tracing and support that allows exposed folks to safely quarantine. Public Health (vs. medical) capacity is about staff, not stuff. Nationally 100,000 additional staff are needed for those interventions to safely reopen workplaces. 

If we don’t use the time bought by flattening the curve to staff up and stock up, the logarithmic curve will resume, producing multiple hot spots nationwide. Exhausted staff and supply lines will collapse.  The most useful trait of our species is our intelligence and ability to learn from mistakes – not our bravado. There is no lifeguard at the gene pool.

The benchmark for reopening our economy is a stepwise return of workers, who are healthy and protected when they return to safe workplaces. Essential workers (public health, emergency management, medical and first responders, grocers, delivery drivers, pharmacists and others) have risked COVID19 infection on our behalf.  Reopening businesses prematurely could render everyone’s sacrifices in vain.