Little Obvious Dangers vs. Big Less-Obvious Dangers
Last year as I was driving I noticed a wasp crawling on the inside of my windshield at about eye level in front of me.
My first thought was, “How long has that wasp been there without me noticing it?” I was a little chagrined at my poor perception, rolled down my window, and watched the progress of the wasp to see where it was headed and to make sure it wasn’t going to fly into my face and sting me.
After a few moments, though, I realized I couldn’t both keep an eye on the wasp and an eye on the road; when the wasp was in focus, the road was blurry, and vice-versa. More importantly, I couldn’t give as much attention to the wasp as I was without going on auto-pilot with my driving, which I judged to be unacceptably unsafe on the narrow, no-shoulder twisty road I was driving on in deer country.
I promptly ignored the wasp and focused on driving, gauging that even if I got stung, it would be a small pain with no serious consequences (I’m not allergic), whereas a car accident could lead to a broken car, serious injuries, expensive medical bills, or possibly death.
It made me think of danger in terms of Big Less-Obvious Danger vs. Little Obvious Danger, and I thought of other times in my life where a Little Danger like a wasp got more attention than a Big Danger like driving poorly because it was novel and easy to see. Losing civil liberties after 9/11 came to mind — for me, terrorist attacks on American soil were a Little Danger, because they killed a tiny percentage of the population, whereas the erosion of the American ideal was a Big Danger, because it affected all U.S. citizens, as well as other people in the world (particularly those held without rights and tortured at places like Guantanamo Bay).
The current situation with the global pandemic and economic shutdown makes me wonder which is the Big Danger, and which is the Little Danger. My intuition tells me that the pandemic is the Little Danger, because a large majority of people can be exposed to the COVID-19 virus without any long-lasting harm, and that shutting down the economy is the Big Danger, because it is affecting everyone. It’s not clear-cut because we don’t have all the facts, but given the facts we do have, that’s my best guess.
On the one hand, if everyone were to get infected with COVID-19 within a year, our hospital systems would be overwhelmed, so there wouldn’t be enough respiratory machines to go around, and a higher percentage of the population would die earlier than if they hadn’t been infected. Health care workers would be most affected, fighting a battle at the front lines with not enough resources or peoplepower, leading to high stress, overwork, and exhaustion.
On the other hand, the extraordinary measures the world governments have taken to slow the spread of the virus have led to loss of jobs and personal freedoms, with still-as-yet-to-be-determined consequences that might include businesses failing, people losing their homes, rising alcoholism, and increased crime rates.
The drastic measures governments have taken have been extremely effective at saving lives. In 1918–1919, the CDC estimates 1/3 of the world’s population was infected with the flu during the Spanish Flu pandemic. Since there were around 1.5 billion people back then, approximately 500 million people got infected, and over 50 million died. (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html)
In comparison, according to the World Health Organization’s May 15 situation report (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports), there are so far 4,248,389 recorded cases and 292,046 deaths globally. These numbers are tiny compared to the 1918 numbers, even though our population is much larger…so far there are over 100x fewer recorded cases and 165x fewer deaths, even though there are almost 5x as many people.
Granted, there are probably a lot of unrecorded cases, since symptoms are so mild in so many people that they don’t even know they’re sick. Also, we will have more cases and more deaths before it’s over. Even so, the numbers speak for themselves — many, many lives have been saved by the emergency shutdown measures governments have invoked all over the world.
It speaks to the power of sacrifice — when the majority of people sacrifice their freedom of movement, it greatly affects the minority who are in danger of death from the disease.
Now, some people are outraged at the current number of deaths, and want to blame politicians for mishandling the situation. Some think it would be a good idea to wait to give people back their personal freedoms until doing so would result in no further deaths.
To me, that’s extreme. The American dream is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Right now we have a situation where a large majority of people are giving up liberty and the pursuit of happiness so that a small minority can have life. That might make sense in the short-term, so that our hospitals don’t get overwhelmed, which is a societal good, and kinder for our healthcare workers, who make up a surprisingly large percentage of the population. But in the long-term, everyone is going to die eventually, and even in the high-risk 75+ population there is an 85% survival rate of the disease, so I’m not sure that it makes sense for the government to keep being so heavy-handed in trying to save lives. Our country was inspired by Patrick Henry, who famously said, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
I know it’s not a simple equation. Laws curb our liberties all the time, often to preserve life — we can’t drive as fast as we want, in many states we have to wear seat belts or helmets if we want to be in a car or motorcycle, and we’re not allowed to buy whatever drug we want whenever we want. I wonder, though, how much this pro-life revoking of liberties is politically motivated. I’m guessing that politicians know they will have a hard time getting re-elected if their opponents can point a finger and say, “Under this person’s watch, thousands of people died!” It’s politically safer to save lives than to promote freedom. Right now, it’s unknown how much damage is being done by the economic shutdown.
If I were a politician, I would think I could weather an attack on my decision to shut the government down better than an attack on my decision to open it up. In the former case, it’s harder to quantify the damage being caused by the shutdown, and voters will be sympathetic to me, even if it turns out to have been a mistake in hindsight, because I had the best motivation (saving lives) and that’s what public health officials were recommending. Plus, everyone else is doing it, so how could I be faulted? In the latter case, I’m sticking my neck out to gain for my constituents the more nebulous benefits of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, knowing that my opponents will blame me for any deaths that might occur, which are easily quantified. I’m guessing only the most idealistic politicians who care more about what they think is right than about re-election will be brave enough to go against the grain. Only when the majority of voters make it clear that they prefer liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the many over preservation of life for the few will most politicians feel brave enough to restore our freedoms.
In an earlier blog post, I wondered whether I was morally obligated to save a life. I came to the conclusion that saving a life is ideally a choice I would make out of my own free will on a case-by-case basis, rather than a legal or moral obligation in all situations. Here we are a few years later, and I’m put in the position where it has become against the law to go shopping without a face mask in my state, even though I live on an island with no active cases. So far I have upheld the law, but if they renew it on June 1, I will be mightily disappointed in my governor. What I might have been happy to do out of a sense of personal responsibility chafes when forced on me from the outside, just as giving someone $20 as a gift feels much different than if the same person were to take $20 from my purse without asking.
In my ideal world, governors would give the liberty and pursuit of happiness part of the equation more weight, and the life part less, than is currently the case. We can see from the numbers that we are already vastly ahead of where they were back in 1918. I don’t think it ought to be the government’s job to prevent every death; if that were the case, citizens would never be allowed to drive a car, go swimming, golf or fish, climb a mountain, camp in Alaska, or any of the other potentially deadly things we like to do for fun. Instead, it’s the government’s job to make sure society is functioning. To me, that means making sure that the infection rate is slow enough that the hospitals always have enough capacity to treat people, not trying to prevent the spread of infection altogether. After all, herd immunity comes after enough people have been infected and recovered, so slowing the spread of infection means we’re also slowing the moment when we have herd immunity.
There must be some middle way, where the majority of the population who will easily recover from the disease can be allowed to become infected, while the most vulnerable populations isolate themselves. Granted, not everyone who is vulnerable knows it, so there will still be deaths. I think they will be few enough that the hospitals won’t be overwhelmed, though. As long as someone is exercising their free will, risking exposure to the virus because they want to and not because they have to, I think they should have the right to take a chance.
We probably won’t know for years what the real mortality rate of COVID-19 is, or what all the negative and positive consequences of saving lives by taking away freedoms will have been. We can only act according to our own judgement in the moment, and let the bean counters figure out in hindsight what all the repercussions of the decision to save as many lives as possible at the cost of the world’s economic well-being will have been. As for me, I’m choosing to ignore the wasp in the car and keep my mind focused on driving safely.
