The Silent Voices of COVID-19 and the Danger of Lock Downs

Recently, I was talking to a highly respected physician. This doctor went through residency in New York in the 1980s, spent a few years in the ICU, switched to ENT, and now works in sleep medicine. While we were waiting for a program to load on her laptop, the physician said, “You know, Mike, I’ve seen everything. And I’ve never seen people so fixed on one goal at the expense of everything else. I really worry about everyone else. Our stats at the hospital aren’t good. And it’s not because we’re not here. People are still terrified to leave their house.”

She went on to explain how vaccinations were down 40% and how people were missing their cancer screenings, chemotherapy appointments, and other preventative and intervention based procedures. She also went on to tell of anecdotal stories (stories passed through colleagues at various departments) of increased motor vehicle fatalities due to layoffs of first responders, the return of the opioid epidemic, and an increase in depression related suicides.

The good doctor also went on to stress that COVID-19 is serious, but so everyone and everything else. “And that’s the point we’re missing, even here,” she concluded before redirecting our attention back the laptop.

This doctor is not a conspiracy theorist. She is not a Trump supporter. She does not deny the existence and threat of COVID-19. She simply sees what many in the medical community have been saying for months: endless lock downs, overreactions to bad data, and making guesses instead of guidance have consequences for the American people that, in the long-run, will likely cause more damage than COVID-19.

However, given the constant inundation of information regarding COVID-19 including its political aspects during an election year, it’s understandable that we can’t stop saying the word “coronavirus.” But that does not make it okay. In fact, every moment we spend obsessing about COVID-19 is a moment lost to effectively intervene in the lives of others being severely damaged, and perhaps ended, by our hammer-meet-nail approach to both action and messaging during the pandemic.

If we really are in the business of saving lives (as so many governors have claimed) we need to do a better job at having the very difficult conversation of personal responsibility, accountability, the value of livelihood, and the long-term damage we cause when lockdowns and isolation become our only solutions.

American journalists, reporters, politicians, and officials have largely abdicated on conveying the long-term human costs associated with extended bouts of isolation, poverty, and hopelessness. Media narratives have adopted a weird, dystopian fetish that reads like “We are all screwed until there is a vaccine, and we need to shut down because these ‘experts’ say so.” The problem with this narrative, aside from inducing fear and provoking sadness, is that it oversimplifies a complex topic. We cannot and should not debate pandemics, depression economics, and human suffering in 280 characters or less. Instead, we need to take input from all experts and read between the lines.

I fear, as have many others much smarter and more qualified than I, that in the effort to wage a “war” on COVID-19, we’ve collectively signaled it’s okay to prioritize one set of lives over the others. And just as in all things inequality in America (and around the world for that matter), the lives we are not actively protecting are those with fewer economic, social, and psychological resources available. These are people that have effectively no access to healthcare, especially in areas where primary care, community health, and non-ICU wings have shuttered. These are also the people most likely to wait in long lines at food banks wearing, like most of us, inadequate PPE.

On July 30th, America posted a 33% decline in GDP and an increased uptick in unemployment. Congress, per usual, has waited until the last minute to not resolve the unemployment benefits issue. This liver punch to the economy, health insurance rates, and access to critical services and products will take years to recover from.

It would be all too easy to blame this on Donald Trump, the GOP, and the Democrats. But local leadership isn’t all that better. The response of many governors to a potential increase in COVID-19 cases is to slinky the economy at will and indefinitely, ignoring any alternative expert advice that may not conform with the ill-fated logic that the only way lives are protected is if COVID-19 numbers are low. And with the main mechanism of getting people to stay inside are to, essentially, induce fear to the point where people are scared of leaving the house, we are now facing a true humanitarian crisis in this country that is just as much of a public health crisis as COVID-19.

With state leaders and their health experts applying narrow logic to COVID-19, they are implicitly conveying to their constituents that the pandemic takes priority over all other suffering. But what about the month-over-month increases of child sexual abuse victims? How many of them will not get treated because a parent fears COVID-19? How many of them will have to continue to live with their abusive partners until the “quarantine” is over?

Too many already have. And if we continue down this path, too many will.

History will not let us deny that long-term depression and economic destruction will cause a prolonged suicide epidemic. Present data will not let us forget about how, during the height of lockdown orders, 79% of callers to the National Sexual Assault hotline reported still living with their abusers. Globally, Oxfam estimates 12,000 people will die each day from hunger. Overdoses, particularly those from fentanyl consumption, have increased by 40% in some states with no end in sight. Yet COVID-19 with its declining fatality rate in relationship to the number of infected still dominates our health messaging and efforts.

None of this is to say that we don’t need to aggressively handle COVID-19 through a combination of reduced activity, social distancing, and mask wearing. However, America can offset what is essentially a new Great Depression by investing in new technologies, services, and products that can keep us not just safer from COVID-19, but a host of other viral and bacterial illnesses that, unknown to many, kill well over 100,000 Americans each year. We have many smart, hard-working people living in the United Sates that are out of work through no fault of their own that the government, both and the state and federal level, can employ immediately.

Nationally, we can invest in infrastructure projects. Contact tracing (as long as privacy and liberties are clearly protected). PPE production grants designated for consumers. Really, there is a long list of projects America can invest in that would stop the depression in its tracks and restore the funding for important services. Similarly, we need to stop fear based messaging. We can’t have a functioning economy and a functioning safety net if people are too afraid to leave their house. At the same time, we can’t pretend that there are not clearly defined and better emerging risk categories of COVID-19 that need extra protections, funding, and mobility to take additional precautions that protect these individuals from job losses.

If America is built on the idea that personal responsibility and freedoms matter, extracting common sense policies and culture change from irrefutable data shouldn’t be politically controversial or difficult. Like it or not, it’s not the time to convince three-hundred-million Americans that our new national philosophy is “think about your neighbor.” However, if you get the country invested in how it can better the unit as an individual and as a family, you have a winning proposition that can also protect others without fear and pandering.

For those concerned about the debt: Now is not the time to have conversations about fiscal responsibility that, given spending by both parties, amounts to mere political theater. The amount of money it takes to climb out of a depression is far greater than the amount it takes to prevent it from spiraling out of control. Everyday we let the media narrative be dominated by the politicized version of COVID-19, the framework for a massive loss of non-COVID-19 lives is getting stronger in both intensity and duration. Again, the premature loss of lives will be painful and expensive, especially to already hard-hit communities.

But make no mistake: the way to fix the economy isn’t just pumping money into it. We need to restore the confidence and alleviate the fears of the American people as well. That means technology, innovation, and holding leaders accountable for their decisions. That means restoring the idea that, even with increased hardship, there is something to live for. And that means understanding if a COVID-19 vaccine comes on the market tomorrow with a 50% efficacy, there would still be millions of Americans afraid after months upon months of being told the reaper’s giant scythe hovers over us all.

Crippling lockdowns are not the answer anymore. Expanding American healthcare capacity, investing in American companies, and positive leadership are. And anyone that calls for endless lockdowns, economic instability, or denial of the severity of COVID-19 needs to look in the eyes of:

• The victims of sexual assault, adult and juvenile, who felt living with their abuser was more important than seeking help
• The families of those who committed suicide due to prolonged isolation and reduced access to counseling services
• The people who will have their livelihoods wiped away
• The recovering alcoholics and drug users who, without access to treatment services, have relapsed
• Those suffering of hunger and malnutrition
• The children at risk due to lapsed vaccine schedules
• The parents who will lose their jobs if children are not allowed back in school come Fall
• The families of those who have died in vehicular fatalities that could not get adequate first responder help due to limited contact orders
• The millions of others who are missing preventive treatments, cancer screenings, critical followups, and other health initiatives that will keep us all healthier

In America, fear and instability are short-sighted, inadequate, and lazy ways to govern. We don’t win our “wars” by telling people that it’s not okay to leave the house. We win our “wars” by recruiting people to help battle the enemy in the best way they can.

We can wear masks, social distance, and listen to other common sense advice provided by health organizations. We can put all of our hope that a magical vaccine will be available soon, putting this all behind us. Or we can live in the real world where the loss of lives and livelihood, even if we can’t view it now, is a profoundly sad threat that we don’t need to ignore. If we are going to truly wage a “war” on COVID-19, then no one should be left behind.