Betsy McCaughey - The Next Pandemic

ENCOUNTER BROADSIDES

Inaugurated in the fall of 2009. Encounter Broadsides are a series of timely pamphlets and e-books from Encounter Books. Uniting an 18th century sense of public urgency and rhetorical wit (think The Federalist Papers, Common Sense) with 21st century technology and channels of distribution. Encounter Broadsides offer indispensable ammunition for intelligent debate on the critical issues of our time. Written with passion by some of our most authoritative authors. Encounter Broadsides make the case for ordered liberty and the institutions of democratic capitalism at a time when they are under siege from the resurgence of collectivist sentiment. Read them in a sitting and come away knowing the best we can hope for and the worst we must fear.

Table of Contents

A MERICA IS SUFFERING through two public health crises, one caused by a viral pandemic from halfway around the globe, and the other weve brutally slammed on ourselves.

Suffering understates each of these crises. Coronavirus is a vicious disease. Most of us have never before witnessed scenes like the corpses piled up behind hospitals in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic. The viruss victims, mostly elderly, drown when their lungs fill up with fluid. They die alone, because even their families are barred from visiting their bedside. Their bodies are deposited in bags and forklifted into refrigerator trucks.

Each death is a tragedy, and tens of thousands have already died that way, with more to come.

But the second public health crisis the shutdown is almost certain to kill even more Americans. And their deaths will be gruesome, too. Deaths of despair. Leaving behind families who are emotionally broken and destitute.

The shutdown is almost certain to kill even more Americans than Coronavirus. And they will be gruesome deaths, too. Deaths of despair.

Tens of millions of workers have been laid off because of the government-imposed shutdown. Before the virus hit, Americas unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, the lowest in fifty years. Now Goldman Sachs predicts unemployment will be at 15 percent by midyear. A St. Louis Federal Reserve economist grimly predicts 32 percent unemployment which is worse than during the Great Depression.

No model or guesswork is required to foresee the deadly impact. Job losses cause extreme suffering. Every 1 percent hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3 percent increase in drug overdose deaths and a 0.99 percent increase in suicides, according to data provided by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the medical journal Lancet. These are facts based on past experience, not models. If unemployment hits 32 percent, some 77,000 Americans are likely to die from suicide and drug overdoses as a result of layoffs.

Then add the predictable deaths from alcohol abuse caused by unemployment. Ioana Popovici of Nova Southeastern University and Michael French of the University of Miami found a significant association between job loss and binge drinking and alcohol abuse.

The impact of layoffs goes beyond suicide, drug overdosing, and drinking. Overall, the death rate for an unemployed person is 63 percent higher than for someone with a job, according to findings in Social Science & Medicine.

Not to mention the tragedies of people who spent decades building a small business, only to see it destroyed in weeks because of the shutdown.

Shutdown-related deaths are likely to far outnumber deaths due to coronavirus.

This comparison is not meant to understate the horror of the coronavirus for those who get it and their families. Or to second-guess public officials, who have acted with the best of intentions.

But America should never have to endure another shutdown. The shutdown wasnt caused by the virus. It was a frantic response to Americas unpreparedness. The nations Strategic National Stockpile of medical equipment was nearly empty. Our medical supply chain put us at the mercy of China for masks, antibiotics, and medical supplies. Hospitals were unprepared to stop the spread of infectious diseases. Nursing homes with minimal infection control were destined to become death pits once the virus hit.

The shutdown was originally justified as a way to flatten the curve, allowing time to expand our health care capacity, so that lives would not be needlessly lost in an overwhelmed, undersupplied system.

The time was well used. Through herculean efforts by governors, the White House, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Defense Department, and private-sector companies all across the United States, hospitals in hot zones like New York City got the ventilators they needed and field hospitals took in the patient overflow.

But that begs the question, why was America so unprepared?

Washington politicians can hardly wait to appoint a commission, launch hearings preferably televised, of course and piously demand answers to that question. House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris already have introduced a bill to set up the investigation, claiming the federal government was unprepared.

Theyd like to pin the blame on Donald Trump, but these politicians need to look in the mirror. Nearly every single year for the last two decades, commissions and committees have warned Congress that the medical stockpile was inadequate, our dependence on China was fraught with danger, and our health departments were unready for a pandemic. The Congressional Research Service, the US Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and many others sounded the alarm again and again.

Their findings were ignored, their reports gathered dust, and the very members of Congress who are so outraged now did nothing.

Meanwhile, regardless of who was president, whether a Democrat or a Republican, career federal health bureaucrats ignored Americas unpreparedness, while pouring resources into their favorite global projects. They committed billions to fighting Ebola, building health labs and medical training systems on other continents, and conducting disease-fighting programs in forty-nine countries.

In 2015, the Obama administration even sent $3.7 million of taxpayer money to fund the Wuhan Virology Institute.

While globalism prevailed, preparedness at home faltered.

So heres the message to Washington, DC: No more commissions and televised hearings are needed. Its time to act. This Broadside is a road map for how to battle the next pandemic without a shutdown. Its based on real-time facts on the ground, as the battle against the virus continues.

Many of the steps toward national preparedness listed here are already being taken. The rest are within reach, thanks to the burst of scientific innovation the crisis has inspired.

Stock the US Strategic Stockpile to the brim.

Build a made-in-America supply chain for medical supplies.

Level with the public about precautions such as masks.

Improve hospital infection control.

Dont allow nursing homes to become death pits.

Get regulators out of the way, so patients have access to treatments.