Partisanship, Prisons, and Pandemics
The Judgement of Solomon
In the First Book of Kings we learn of two mothers, living in the same house, who come to Solomon because each claim the same infant child as her own. Calling for a sword, Solomon declares he will cut the baby in two, and give each woman half. One of the women thinks this solution excellent. If she can’t have the baby, she declares, neither of them will. The other begs Solomon, “Give the baby to her, just don’t kill him.” Thus Solomon declared her the true mother.
Watching Americans bicker is putting me in mind of that story—except that both parties seem content to kill the baby.
The official death toll here has topped 1,000. No, 1,100. Update: 1,331. But that was at two o’clock. I am sure it is already much higher.
This shouldn’t surprise me. But it does. I suppose people are mathematically-minded to different degrees. I think in mathematical terms well enough that I could do the math and grasp how bad things would be. I severely modified my own behavior and have been begging the world, every waking minute of my day, all day long, every day, to do the same, through every medium of communication at my disposal.
Many philosophers and theologians believe your acts are the true measure of your faith. Anyone watching me the past week would say I had true faith in exponential growth. My acts reflected my faith.
So why am I so surprised? I suppose because I’ve been in denial, even as I’ve deplored others for being in denial. But part of it is that I just haven’t deeply internalised the math. I’m shocked to my roots that 240 people have died of the virus here in the past 24 hours. [I have not updated that figure since I wrote it. I’ll go nuts if I keep checking this.] I’m stunned that five doctors died in a single day. The part of me that isn’t mathematically-minded is protesting: “But on Monday, only 112 people died! And last Saturday, only 78 people died! What are we doing wrong? Why are the numbers going up so fast?”
The official death toll is much lower than the real toll, though, because for now, we only know how many have died in the hospital. We don’t yet know how many have died in their homes, or in a retirement home. Those figures will be released in the coming days. But yesterday, officials discovered a whole retirement home in which every single person was dead.
We’ve now been on lockdown for a week—or is it eight days? The days are kind of blurring into each other. Eastern France has been worst hit. The military built a field hospital in Mulhouse, to assist the local emergency room, which is overwhelmed. France should get as much applause for building a field hospital overnight—unprecedented in peacetime—as China, don’t you think?
There’s an undercurrent, though, of fury—as there is in the United States—that the government was so unprepared and botched the initial response so badly. France made the same mistakes we did. The government didn’t take it seriously enough, fast enough, despite every flashing red light. They assumed it could never happen here, even as it was happening in Italy. Macron waited too long to declare a lockdown—and they went ahead with municipal elections, which both sent the signal, “This isn’t that much of an emergency” and called the legitimacy of the election into question, because people who believed the government when it said it was an emergency didn’t come out to vote. The second round of the election has been postponed.
The government failed, years ago, to renew stockpiles of critical equipment—including, as in the United States, surgical masks. They told people they didn’t need masks unless they were symptomatic. Wrong.
But above all, they pursued the wrong test strategy. They didn’t understand how widely the infection had already spread, and didn’t understand that asymptomatic transmission was not only possible, but the key vector. They didn’t have enough test kits, and they thought testing the whole population would be too expensive and impractical. So they failed to test widely enough, and quickly enough, to avoid a lockdown.
We do have one advantage here. Macron, by temperament, will respond to any crisis by forming a committee of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject at hand. For historic reasons, France has superb capabilities in virology and epidemiology. Macron will respect this committee, believe what they say, and act accordingly. It helps, too, that he and his ministers are smart enough to understand what they say. Macron appointed Françoise Barré-Sinoussi to the head of his new coronavirus advisory committee. She and Luc Montagnier won the Nobel Prize for identifying the AIDS virus. She’ll be fine.
It’s unfortunate that she felt obliged to say, in her first public statement on this crisis, that it is ethically wrong at this stage to impute curative powers to chloroquine. “We will have the first reliable analyses in about two weeks. These trials are state-of-the-art. Let’s be patient,” she said.
The unregenerate unsanitary
Most people—“the vast majority,” as the beleaguered Interior Minister Castener is prone to saying—follow the lockdown orders, at great personal and economic cost. But some don’t.
I don’t know if it’s worth trying to reason with them, at this point. They’re now a law-enforcement problem, not my personal problem, and thank God for that, because the optimistic notion that people will have the good sense and the civic spirit to follow the recommendations without being ordered to follow them—and threatened with punishment if they don’t—is wrong. I’ve seen the same pattern unfold in country after country in Europe, and I’m sure of this. People won’t take this seriously, or at least, not enough people will take it seriously, until the gravity of the law is invoked. If you don’t tell people it’s forbidden to drive off a cliff, Californians and their cars will be bobbing in the Pacific below Highway 1 by nightfall. People must be forbidden from leaving their homes, not just advised.
I don’t know—no one knows—how complete compliance with the lockdown has to be for it to work. But I know that as the death toll climbs up—exponentially—the rules become stricter and stricter. Is that fully rational? No. The deaths today are a reflection of last week’s policy, or last month’s. Frantic officials are trying to change the way people behaved last week, even though that’s impossible. The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on …
If the West can’t figure out a way to combat this virus, we won’t just die, individually. The West, and everything it stands for, will die as an ideal. I’m sorry to tell you this.
The United States is so diminished in the world’s eyes, and not just by the Trump Administration, but by this whole century’s follies. If we can’t stop the epidemic in the West, China will become the world’s leader and model. People want to be governed in a way that works. Government exists, above all, to secure the realm. If Western democracy fails when the realm needs securing, the authoritarian temptation will be irresistible.
It’s a grim sign that our commitment to the principle of freedom of expression has already collapsed. The epidemic has barely even begun. Twitter has announced it will “broaden its definition of harm” and require the deletion of any Tweet that “goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.” Other social media sites have followed suit, announcing similar measures. Twitter hasn’t had the balls to delete Trump’s tweets when they go directly against that guidance, which is just as dismaying as the injunction itself. It’s especially dismaying because “public health officials” have, thus far, lied to the public—or just given the wrong advice—more than once.
I don’t even necessarily disagree with the policy, in principle. I’ve seen the kind of misinformation people are spreading. The Russians, bless their hearts, are working overtime to spread it, too. Why? Because they’re psychopaths. The virus kills Russians exactly as it does Westerners. It is hardly in their interest to propagate a raging, uncontained epidemic in the West. It’s like that joke about the Russian peasant and the magic fish. The one where his neighbor will be granted twice what he asks for, so he asks the magic fish to poke his eye out.
But the Russian misinformation is trivial compared to the misinformation we are generating ourselves. Look, I understand what Twitter is thinking. I honestly have no idea what I’d do in their position. I don’t know if I’d have the stomach to stand on principle and defend freedom of expression—on principle—right now. I might be saying to myself, “Hey, we’re a private company. The First Amendment doesn’t say we have to let people say this, and if we do, people are going to die.”
But what an admission it is—an admission that deep down, we no longer believe in the bedrock principle upon which our society, all open societies, rest. No, it’s not a First Amendment issue. Twitter can do whatever it likes with its property. But it’s a cultural milestone—and it’s barely been remarked. Twitter is one of the key platforms by which human beings communicate with each other. But it really isn’t clear to any of us anymore whether people should be allowed to do so freely.
Twitter didn’t do this when Russian disinformation campaigns brought the legitimacy of an American presidential election into question. They haven’t announced such a policy in any previous health or security crisis.
But we’ve reached a tipping point. It’s been building up slowly, but here we are. There is so much pollution in the information environment, so little ability in the broader population to distinguish fact from fiction, that we’ve given up on the ideal—a public square in which truth emerges from debate, and bad arguments are countered not by censorship but by better ones. Do we really still believe that happens?
The Spanish death toll has now exceeded China’s. The Spanish health minister, Salvador Illa, just announced a massive deal with China: China will send Spain 432 million Euros worth of masks, rapid test kits, respirators and gloves. “We have secured entire production chains [in China] which will be working solely for the Spanish government.” This is what a foreign policy accomplishment now looks like, the world around: being on China’s good side.
It’s being reported in Europe that the G7 couldn’t even issue a joint statement on the pandemic because the other members of the G7 want to refer to the virus as Covid-19 but Pompeo insisted on “Wuhan Virus.”
I belong to a mailing list for people in my neighborhood. It’s touching to see how much people want to help each other. But it’s dismaying to see how much trouble they’re having with the concepts involved. There’s no lack of civic-mindedness or altruism in my neighborhood, but so much of it is misdirected.
One neighbor suggested, since the schools are closed, that everyone in the neighborhood take turns watching the others’ children.
Another wrote, yesterday evening, to warn us: Watch out. The police are being completely unreasonable. He had just gone out to get water, he reported, but he was stopped, scolded, and given a fine by the police. “I guess,” he wrote, “that water is not considered essential to life.” The subject of his message was, “ABUSE OF POWER!”
I was relieved that at least, that others quickly pointed out that water comes out of the tap.
The government’s advice has become more and more specific as the government realizes how many of its citizens are just baffled. “You may always walk your dog, but everyone must do so sparingly, respecting the health advisories and using sanitary precautions. Without meeting in a group,” Interior Minister Castaner explained.
A couple in Vaucluse was given a stiff fine, yesterday, for walking their rabbit on a leash. It was the second time they were caught. The first time, the gendarmes just cautioned them, assuming they were honestly confused. Who understands being locked in your home, in France, in 2020?
The prime minister is visibly going grey before our eyes.
Over the weekend, the Senate adopted a health emergency bill. Among its primary measures: tougher sanctions for recidivists. The 135 Euros fine will increase to 1,500 Euros. Do it three times? Six months in the clink.
Prison? Doesn’t that seem counterproductive?
Speaking of prison, think about this problem now. Prisoners have to be released. Overcrowded prisons are cruel and unusual to begin with, but under these circumstances, they’re intolerable. Harvey Weinstein has contracted the virus, which means Rikers’ Island is a hotbed of contagion. If the plight of the inmates doesn’t move you, consider the danger to prison wardens and the public at large.
Prisoners have to be released. Start figuring out who we can’t let out now—the ones who will slit our throats the moment they’re set free—and let out the rest. Make plans, today, to cope with an influx of newly-released prisoners. Expect prison riots across the country as inmates realize the gravity of their situation. When Italy suspended visits from relatives in an effort to protect inmates from infection, it set their whole prison system ablaze.
Think about what to do with the refugee camps, too. About this, there’s good news: you can now be absolutely sure now that no one is now seeking asylum in the West unless their claim is fully legitimate. They certainly won’t be coming to take advantage of our bustling economies and our health care systems, trust me.
In fact, you don’t have to worry about immigration enforcement anymore. The government will soon cancel all non-essential services, including conducting Green Card interviews and rounding up illegal aliens. France, you may recall, cancelled my appointment to renew my residency permit. What does that mean? Basically, the French government threw up its hands and said, “Forget it, you’re all here legally until further notice.” No. Stop begging us to deport you. We never told you to come to this hellhole in the first place.
No one want to come to the West anymore. Problem solved. Even ISIS has banned its fighters from traveling to European territory.
It’s refreshing to see the way certain problems we once thought very serious have just taken care of themselves, isn’t it?
But it’s disgusting to keep refugees trapped in overcrowded camps. The virus will spread through them like wildfire. That can’t be allowed. So figure out what to do about that.
We’re still having trouble getting our heads around this problem here in Europe. The Greek Council for Refugees, for example, noting that suffering in Greek migrant camps has reached “unimaginable levels,” writes, “Nothing can justify the indiscriminate detention of people seeking asylum.” Well, I agree. But we’re all now indiscriminately detained. They’ll have to be indiscriminately detained like the rest of us.
So, what do we do? I don’t know.
I’m sure you’re despondent by this point. Let me boost your morale.
The sophistication of the scientific apparatus bearing down on this virus is astonishing.
If you think we’re uneasy about this virus, consider things from the virus’s perspective. That virus is about to run out of luck. Out of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viruses in the world, it managed to antagonize Homo sapiens—the species with six layers of cerebral cortex and the opposable thumbs. There’s just no doubt which organism will be destroyed in the end. We will murder this thing to its last miserable drop of single-stranded RNA.
It should have stuck to pangolins.
We’ve defeated rabies, measles, rubella, mumps, Hep A, Hep B, yellow fever, chicken pox, rotavirus, viral pneumonia, varicella, and papillomavirus. There’s a norovirus vaccine in the pipeline. HIV is now an ordinary affliction.
It’s not just the sophistication of the scientific apparatus—it’s the sophistication of the entire modern industrialized world. It’s the whole human race, in 2020, versus some subcellular gunk in a protein coat that can’t even reproduce by itself. It’s not even a fair fight.
It may feel like we’re back in the Middle Ages, but we’re not. We know so much now about infectious disease. The scale of the international research collaboration is extraordinary. Unprecedented. We’ve never had so many first-rate scientists, all over the world, learning so much, so fast, about anything before. We’re so much better at solving problems like this than we were in the Middle Ages.
And as buggered-up as America looks right now, a buggered-up superpower at its worst is still an awesome thing. I bet all of this will happen. Even at our nadir, we can still pull all of that off. We’re a country that can whistle up two trillion dollars, put the checks in the mail, and still have change left for the new aircraft carrier.
We’re already seeing astonishing innovation, creativity, adaptability, all over the world All of the stupidity of our species is matched by equal and opposite brilliance. Look what my friend Nick in Delhi is doing, for example—watch the video, and read the thread. That kind of thing is happening all over the world.
There will be effective treatments, probably within months. A vaccine, if we’re lucky, in about eighteen months. Maybe even sooner. It won’t be long until we can test everyone, inexpensively. The IAEA has nearly cracked that problem. That will make a huge difference. We’ll be able to get parts of the economy off the ice. People will be able to go back to work. We’ll be able to see each other in person again.
We won’t be in lockdown forever. It will last six weeks, probably—although we may have to do it more than once.
Even if the US screws this up completely—and it might—the world is now so advanced, scientifically, that things no longer depend on us getting it right. China, India, France, Israel—there are so many countries that now have the ability to do this research, and they’re doing it. Also, the American government is a disaster, but our scientific establishment is strong as an ox. They’re working on this around the clock.
The human race is going to be fine. Shaken, sure—and God knows what will happen to the world economically and politically. We should probably all start studying Chinese and preparing to welcome our new authoritarian overlords. But at least the Chinese don’t hate Jews.
In the end—and not that long from now—the human race wins. There’s just no doubt.
Bonus: the anti-vax movement has disappeared.
So hang in there. We win.
I’ve already received an extraordinary collection of letters from you.
I’m so glad I asked. Thank you. I’ll spend tomorrow trying to select a good sample of extracts.