Discerning the Times with Pastor Rusty
  • Home
  • Christian Education
  • Winning Your Children
  • Free Resources
  • Store
  • Comments or Questions
  • Most Recent CBM Bible Study

Examining Costs vs. Benefits and COVID-19

4/22/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Here is a brief opinion piece from Walter Williams detailing a number of things we need to think about as we wrestle with the current crisis facing our nation.  Herd immunity needs to develop and we must take back the power we conceded to our government in the interest of slowing the initial spread of this coronavirus.  We must get our nation open for business again even as we face additional battles with the virus.  Below is the article by Walter Williams as it appeared from The Daily Signal (a publication of the Heritage Foundation).

One of the first lessons in an economics class is everything has a cost. That’s in stark contrast to lessons in the political arena where politicians talk about free stuff.

In our personal lives, decision-making involves weighing costs against benefits. Businessmen make the same calculation if they want to stay in business. It’s an entirely different story for politicians running the government where any benefit, however minuscule, is often deemed to be worth any cost, however large.

Related to decision-making is the issue of being overly safe versus not safe enough. Sometimes, being as safe as one can be is worthless. A minor example: How many of us before driving our cars inspect the hydraulic brake system for damage? We’d be safer if we did, but most of us just assume everything is OK and get into our car and drive away.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 40,000 Americans lose their lives each year because of highway fatalities. Virtually all those lives could be saved with a mandated 5 mph speed limit. Fortunately, we consider costs and rightfully conclude that saving those 40,000 lives aren’t worth the costs and inconvenience of a 5 mph mandate.
​

With the costs and benefits in mind, we might examine our government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first thing to keep in mind about any crisis, be it war, natural disasters, or pandemics, is we should keep markets open and private incentives strong. Markets solve problems because they provide the right incentives to use resources effectively. Federal, state, and local governments have ordered an unprecedented and disastrous shutdown of much of the U.S. economy in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

There’s a strictly health-related downside to the shutdown of the U.S. economy ignored by our leadership that has been argued by epidemiologist Dr. Knut Wittkowski, formerly the head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at Rockefeller University in New York City.

Wittkowski argues that the lockdown prolongs the development of the “herd immunity,” which is our only weapon in “exterminating” the novel coronavirus–outside of a vaccine that’s going to optimistically take 18 months or more to produce. He says we should focus on shielding the elderly and people with comorbidities while allowing the young and healthy to associate with one another in order to build up immunities.

Wittkowski says, “So, it’s very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible, and then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been exterminated.” Herd immunity, Wittkowski argues, would stop a “second wave” headed for the United States in the fall.

Dr. David L. Katz, president of True Health Initiative and the founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, shares Wittkowski’s vision. Writing in The New York Times, he argued that our fight against COVID-19 could be worse than the virus itself.

The bottom line is that costs can be concealed but not eliminated. Moreover, if people only look at the benefits from a particular course of action, they will do just about anything, because everything has a benefit. Political hustlers and demagogues love promising benefits when the costs can easily be concealed. By the way, the best time to be wrong and persist in being wrong is when the costs of being wrong are borne by others.

The absolute worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic, and possibly its most unrecoverable damage, is the massive power that Americans have given to their federal, state, and local governments to regulate our lives in the name of protecting our health. Taking back that power should be the most urgent component of our recovery efforts.

It’s going to be challenging; once a politician, and his bureaucracy, gains power, he will fight tooth and nail to keep it.
​

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

0 Comments

You Cry at the Window

4/1/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Below I have posted the text of a recent article by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.  I think it is important for each of us to understand the gravity of what is now unfolding in our nation.  We all need to do our best to help limit the spread of the coronavirus and we need to maintain appropriate respect for those battling this virus in our hospitals.  As well, we need to be prepared to help our health care workers in whatever way we can.  Here is the article:

Staying home can be tough, but it's nothing like the nightmare our health care workers are experiencing. For thousands of brave men and women across country, their office is no longer a hospital or ER -- it's a combat zone. "You spend hours in your [patient's] room," nurse Claudia Griffith wrote in an emotional post to the outside world, "gowned up head-to-toe, sweating and not able to breathe. Then you realize... this is it. I can't save this patient anymore. You sit there and say your goodbyes while they pass without family or loved ones, because nobody is allowed in the hospital for everyone's safety. You are their only contact and hope." Nothing, she says soberly, can describe it.

Even when they have a chance to sleep, the exhausted staff can't. "My mind won't shut off," one New York City nurse tried to explain. She lays in bed and cries, her mind filled with the faces of patients she lost. The helplessness is brutal, Claudia admits. "You don't even know how this virus works, but you watch as it kills your patient." To anyone who hasn't seen the suffering, she insists, it's real. And she's pleading with the country to act like it is. Stay inside, Claudia begs, "as if your life depended on it."

Theirs already do. And if Americans can't bring themselves to isolate for their own sakes, then they should do it for the medical teams risking everything. "Take it seriously," Johns Hopkins's Dr. Martin Makary told listeners on "Washington Watch, "and take it seriously for the sake of our most vulnerable." Right now, "our number one at-risk group," he explained, "the number one profession who is mostly likely to get this infection is health care workers. And what you do in your day-to-day life will actually impact the health of [those] workers you've never met."

"Folks may be going outside right now, saying, 'It's a beautiful day... My kids are in the backyard playing. What's the big deal? I don't know anyone who's dying that I'm friends with.'" But the big deal, he said somberly, is that "we're gearing up for a tsunami that's going to hit with a massive impact..." With projections topping 200,000 casualties now, Dr. Makary thinks the government was right to limit people's movements through at the least the end of April. "We want our leaders to... give us spirit and hope. But the reality is, they are all closely following these numbers -- not only in the preview that we're seeing in some countries overseas like Spain, but also locally in New York City..."

The administration is doing the best it can to prepare for the worst. That's no easy task, Dr. Makary explained, even with all of the metrics and experts they have. Because "when that peak happens, talk to any doctor or nurse. It's going to be ugly. We are basically at full capacity in some U.S. hospitals with very little room to take care of people that come in from this point forward... We are on track right now to have hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions more cases."

So when can we expect that peak? "New York is about two weeks away," Martin believes. "The rest of the United States is probably three to five weeks away depending on where you live. Now, one of the big concerns that many of us have is that some parts of the country were sort of slow to recognize that this is a real threat. Some places immediately took dramatic steps and others [went about] life as usual... even up until recently." Those are the areas, experts believe, that may be hit hardest. Of course, a lot of things factor into that -- like public transit and congestion. But the cities that have been in denial will pay, Dr. Makary warns, "because this infection is seeded everywhere in the United States. We need to abandon the idea that it's somehow contained."
​

Fortunately, there are still things you and your church can do to help. First, take the stay-at-home orders seriously. If not for you, then for someone on the front lines of the coronavirus war. Then, check out the creative ways you can meet the needs of the people in your community. Take a page from Midland, Texas and organize a car prayer chain or fill a truck with food for the hungry. See how you can get involved (from a safe distance!) on our special webpage, FRC.org/church.
0 Comments

    Archives

    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly