As leaders prepared the public for what would turn into widespread shutdowns of business and leisure activities, they made it abundantly clear that the point was to “flatten the curve” of growth in coronavirus cases. That is, when it was clear that the virus could not be contained, the strategy shifted to an effort to space out inevitable infections over a longer period, so there were as few cases as possible at the peak. The idea was to prevent the number of cases from exceeding the capacity of the hospital system and thus save the system from collapse.
“If you look at the curves of outbreaks — you know, they go big peaks, and then they come down,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters on March 10. “What we need to do is flatten that down.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said much the same thing on March 15, adding, “The point of this is, instead of a spike of the curve, to delay and flatten that curve with the hope that you can keep the utilization of resources to be within the healthcare system’s capacities.”
The next day, the White House unveiled its aggressive social distancing guidelines, starting with 15 days, and then extending for another 30 days, through April. Fittingly, the guidelines were described as “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” In short, the point was never to stop the spread, but to slow it.
All indications are that the United States has largely succeeded in this goal. On March 16, there were 1,400 new cases. As the virus rapidly spread and testing increased, the number of daily new cases soared to more than 30,000 on April 2. It has now stabilized at around 30,000 daily cases. The trend varies by region. New York, which was hit hardest and early, is seeing a significant decline. Other areas that were hit later, such as the Washington, D.C., metro region, are not yet declining.
But hospital systems have not collapsed, even in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has begun to give ventilators to other states.
As national debate over easing restrictions has gained momentum, some people are trying dangerously to shift the goals of social distancing. Suddenly, instead of focusing on hospital capacity as the metric, advocates of continued lockdowns are speaking in vague terms about not being able to reopen the economy substantially until we reach some vague metric of feeling safe, or even until there’s a vaccine.
Virginia’s top health official has said the commonwealth could be stuck in phase one, in which only some businesses open within significant limits, for two years, while we await a vaccine. “I, personally, think phase one will be a two-year affair,” Virginia Health Commissioner Norman Oliver said. “There are a lot of people working on this, and I hope they prove me wrong, but I don’t see it happening in less than two years.”
That is ludicrous and dangerous. It would beggar the state of Virginia. Two years of a society in lockdown is not sustainable. More than 26 million people have lost their jobs nationally because of the pandemic, and the longer the shutdown continues, the more businesses will fail. The national debt is expected to exceed its highest level, achieved during World War II, and the country will not be in a position to spend trillions of dollars regularly to prop up the crippled economy. It is simply not feasible to keep schools closed for years and expect parents to hold down jobs while taking on the new responsibility of educating their children. Nor is it fair to force children to give up sports, play dates, birthday parties, and all other activities for years when they themselves are at low risk of becoming seriously ill if infected. It’s one thing to expect it for a few months, but expecting them to give up years of their childhoods would be grotesque.
It remains unclear how immunity and mutations work with COVID-19, so it’s uncertain that a vaccine will be found within two years, if ever, let alone that it would be readily available. A lockdown until there is a vaccine would mean few people in our population of some 330 million would be spared economic devastation, not to mention psychological damage from isolation.
To state these obvious facts is not to downplay the dangers of the coronavirus, which has killed 55,000 people in this country already. The Washington Examiner has been arguing since February that the threat needed to be treated as a big deal, and we broadly supported social distancing to slow the spread. But we did so with the understanding that the point was to prevent the hospital system from collapsing. That should still be the goal.
The initial strategy appears to have been effective, but the very rapid adoption of stringent lockdowns makes it difficult to sort out which specific actions were most effective, and whether similar results could have been achieved with more modest measures.
With 30,000 new coronavirus cases being added each day, the U.S. cannot suddenly snap back to life as usual. There is a prudent argument for waiting for the numbers to decline for a few weeks before restrictions are greatly eased and to ramp up activity gradually. Getting to a low enough baseline of infections and loosening limits gradually would give the nation time to adjust to any uptick of cases before medical capacity becomes endangered.
If there is an uptick in states such as Georgia that eased restrictions earlier than others, it would inform decisions about whether to go slower. The Georgia approach can also be compared to Texas, which announced that all retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters, and malls will be allowed to open on May 1 as long as they operate at 25% capacity. It’s also important to keep in mind that human behavior has changed dramatically due to the experiences of the past six weeks. People are more likely to practice social distancing, stay home at the first sign of symptoms, wash their hands frequently, and wear masks. The supply of protective equipment will continue to grow, as will testing and medical capacity.
Easing back to social interaction creates a higher risk of infection, and perhaps a higher death toll. But the question for public policy is not whether the risk can be reduced to zero. That will never happen. The threshold must remain one about the infection rate and hospital capacity. We must learn to live with the coronavirus and treat COVID-19. That does not mean, it must not mean, crippling our nation in the hope of reaching an unachievable goal of absolute safety.
