I have recently been reading William Shirer’s excellent, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. What is striking, and probably unknown to most people is that World War II (at least in Europe) was the high price the world paid to purchase a scant few weeks of peace for the rest of Europe at the expense first of Austrians and later Czechoslovakians.

Granted, Europe had just suffered through the horrors of World War I, so perhaps Neville Chamberlain should be forgiven a bit of his naivete concerning Adolf Hitler, but the megalomaniac dictator’s continued lies and broken promises should have been a clue to the British leader long before Nazi tanks rolled into Poland.  The irony is that had France and Great Britain stood up to Hitler when he moved on Austria, the German dictator most likely would have been overthrown by his own generals (who were not eager for a conflict they knew they would certainly lose). 

Instead, Hitler was appeased which only fed his obscene thirst for power and his irrational and evil hatred of the Jewish people. Unfortunately by the time that Chamberlain (and to be fair, he wasn’t alone) learned what the true cost of peace at any price would be, history had lost its chance to avoid an unimaginably deadly second world war and a holocaust of indescribable horror. It was too late; the bill was due and millions of mostly innocents would pay the price.

So what does all that have to do with coronavirus? Well, the idea that we should bear any economic price to prevent as many coronavirus deaths as possible is akin to peace at any price. The truth is, like Chamberlain, we are almost certainly only deferring the cost of the pandemic and as in World War II, the bill for such naivete, when it arrives, may be much larger than the cost of the pandemic itself would have been.

Life is precious. No one wants anyone to lose a loved one, friend, or colleague to this disease. However, this is true of all diseases, accidents, and other things that cause people to die.  Nearly 60,000 people die from the flu each year on average, for example. And last year, nearly 35,000 people died in traffic accidents. Yet we haven’t outlawed cars and we never instituted a lockdown for the flu in the past.

Coronavirus, is, admittedly, different from those things.  It appears to be much deadlier than the flu (although just how much more so is uncertain and apparently not so much as initially feared) and it is particularly hard on the elderly and people with underlying health problems. It is, as President Trump has described it, an invisible and chilling enemy. People are scared, and no one can blame them for being scared. I am not indifferent to these fears. My mom (mid-seventies) and my dad (late seventies) both have underlying health conditions. My own health could be better. My parents are rightly concerned about their prospects should they be exposed to this virus, as am I, both for them and for myself. I think my parents (and anyone who knows themselves to be at risk) should lock down—I mean really lock down, not this half-baked, sort of semi-lockdown that the country has been engaged in for the past two months—one that has arguably failed to slow the virus but has successfully wrecked the economy.

Such self-lock down by the most vulnerable people should continue until we have a vaccine or we have achieved verifiable herd immunity by letting everyone else (and here is the tricky part) go back to work, school, restaurants, gyms, bars, massage parlors, etc.  Why is it tricky? Because yes, some people will die. Why? Well, because some people may not know they have underlying health conditions, some may decide to risk it and suffer the consequences (others may get lucky), some may just get unlucky and be exposed in some bizarre manner, some will have family members selfishly expose them, some will have family members accidentally expose them, and some will die for reasons we just don’t really understand (the same way this happens with the flu and countless other diseases that are usually just uncomfortable but occasionally are fatal to an unlucky small percentage). Again, why? Not to sound callous here, but because we are all, after all, mortal.

There is ample evidence that the lockdown, such that it is, just is not working. After all, we have been in lockdown now for nearly two months and yet the number of infected individuals for a disease with a 14-day incubation period keeps rising. Fortunately, the mortality rate keeps dropping.  However, even a low mortality rate applied to a massive infection number will produce hundreds of thousands of deaths.

So, isn’t the lockdown worth it? Well, maybe not. Turns out, coronavirus is not the only thing that kills people. In the United States about 5,000 people each day are diagnosed with cancer. By one estimate, about 80,000 cases have likely gone undiagnosed during the COVID crisis. Many of those may be diagnosed later but for some aggressive cancers this delay will be the difference between beating the cancer and dying. Others who have already been diagnosed have missed crucial chemotherapy treatments because these have been postponed or the patients are too afraid to risk going into health care settings, especially with immune systems often compromised by cancer treatments.

And it isn’t just cancer. Many elective heart surgeries and other important elective medical procedures have been postponed either by facilities or the fearful patients themselves. Don’t let the term “elective” fool you. These procedures are not “elective” in the sense that they are not needed but in the sense that the patient elects to have surgery (which carries some risk) that may prolong their lives rather than foregoing such risk and accepting a potentially shorter life. Many people make these choices every day and most choose to take the risk for a longer life—though virus fears have dramatically altered this calculus. 

The human cost of lost jobs, lost opportunity, and lost optimism is harder to determine but no less real. The virus is no doubt wreaking a tremendous toll on our country. It will continue to do so no matter what we do. The question to be answered: Is the short-term benefit worth the long-term cost? We are flattening the curve on corona virus deaths, but we are also flattening the curve on our economy. And remember, a totally flat line is a symbol of death.

Okay, first, let’s make the necessary assurances: all life is precious, every death, whether from coronavirus, flu, or other cause, is a tragedy in some respect. My heart breaks for those who have lost loved ones, friends, and colleagues to this virus. I can’t imagine how difficult that must be.

Next, let’s stipulate to the main and first argument that anyone who dares question current conventional wisdom on the coronavirus response is assailed with: no, I’m not an epidemiologist (doctor of infectious disease); nor am I a medical doctor of any kind. I’m not a scientist either.

However, it does not take a scientist or a doctor to look critically at a situation and notice that some of what is being said (by the same experts noted above) does not seem to add up. I’m not saying they are wrong, but I am saying, I need help understanding why they’re right.

I have heard many news reports that describe scientists’ continued search for the so-called “patient zero,” i.e., the first person to acquire the virus (from a bat they think) and from whom the pandemic sprung, officially infecting (as of 10:35 a.m., EST, on May 1, 2020) some 3.3 million people worldwide, including almost 1.1 million here in the United States.  Almost a quarter million people have died—more than 60,000 of them Americans. Preliminary research suggests the actual number of infected may be much more—perhaps as much as 10 to 50 times more (the so-called orders of magnitude).

Still, as we near the halfway point of our second month in national lockdown, nearly 31,000 new confirmed cases were reported just yesterday (almost 4,700 in New York alone).  Yet, we are told we are “flattening the curve” and that our businesses and institutions will begin reopening very soon. Indeed, many have already started, joining the many businesses that never shut down at all in beginning to draw us back to something resembling normalcy.

So, pardon me for asking, but how exactly is this going to work? If 3 million cases sprung from a single patient zero case in Wuhan, China, how is it that we can start to return to normal when tens of thousands of new cases are popping up across the nation without incurring a spike similar to—actually one would think intuitively worse than—the one that started the lockdowns in the first place? I’m sorry but that doesn’t make sense. Please explain.

The truth is the lockdown was never meant to “keep us safe.” In fact, if we parse the words carefully, it wasn’t initially sold that way. Remember, “15 days to slow the spread.”  Slow the spread, not stop it. The lock down was intended to save not individuals but our medical system, as our experts feared the COVID deluge would overwhelm our hospitals and leave patients without treatment. This is the only scenario in which a lockdown makes any sense. Otherwise, as explained in the previous paragraph: What is the point?

So why isn’t it working. Well, it probably is—somewhat. However, not to the extent Americans were led to believe. The main reason is that we didn’t truly lock anyone down. We couldn’t; people would starve to death among many other problems. So, instead, we left so-called “essential” businesses and institutions open. Obviously, this includes grocery stores, police, fire, and ambulance, hospitals, etc., but also others. After all, if your pipe busts in the middle of the night a plumber is pretty essential, so also hardware stores, etc. To get to work these people need to drive their vehicles so add in gas stations, mechanics, part shops, etc. In other words, we didn’t really lockdown. What we did do is more akin to patching a leaky boat with a piece of screen door.

Now, as new evidence comes to light as to how easily this virus spreads, it is clear it never could have—at least not in the way most Americans assumed. Fortunately, this same new evidence is showing that the death rate is much, much lower than feared as well. Yet, faced with the optics of a decision that might seem callous to deaths, politicians have made a “political” decision to continue extending and tightening (in some cases to near draconian levels) the lockdown. This as our economy crumbles.

As these new findings emerge—seemingly falling on the deaf ears of our leadership—some people have begun calling for a different approach. One that has a commonsense chance of actually working. From the very beginning, I’ve told people we should severely lockdown people in the at-risk group because, despite the cursory examples that we must endure daily that some younger, seemingly healthy people do die from the disease, it is overwhelmingly a problem of the elderly and/or people with underlying health problems. Meanwhile the majority of the country could get back to work, school, etc., contract the virus, build the so-called herd immunity, and save the economy. Yes, certainly some people would die from the virus under this approach just as some people continue to die from it under the current approach (not to mention deaths caused by the lockdown itself from postponing elective medical treatments—biopsies, cancer treatments, etc.).  At some level of herd immunity, it would be safe for the at-risk population to emerge as the potential carriers dwindled.

Unfortunately, people who pose such questions or ask about such approaches are shut down—typically with the “you’re not a doctor” or a “listen to the scientists” justification. However, the fact is that many doctors and scientists, including leading epidemiologists, are asking the same questions, pondering the same theories. They are being ignored—even censored—by the media. And it isn’t just theory. Leaders in Sweden took such an approach, and guess what? They’re death rate is no higher than other countries in Europe (better than many) and they haven’t totally flushed their economy down the toilet. But again, the media does it’s best to keep this story from us.

Why? Why is the media suppressing the voices of scientists who offer different solutions and ignoring evidence that such solutions work? Science is supposed to be the realm of inquiry. Aren’t Scientists by nature continually questioning previous laws and assumptions? After all, even some of Einstein’s theories have turned out to be incomplete or incorrect. The answer, unfortunately, as it usually does whenever one side wants to shut down debate as “settled” lies in the politics. Most politicians first concern, despite what they may tell us is to keep their own jobs (even as millions of Americans lose theirs). No one wants the stigma the media would attach to any leader who didn’t follow the conventional wisdom. Can’t you just imagine the on-screen CNN body tally for a state that dared ease restrictions against the advice of the preferred scientists? The second concern of a good many politicians, is (again unfortunately for a suffering America) to remove Donald Trump from office by any and all means. A broken economy with tens of thousands of dead Americans due to his supposedly slow response is the perfect vehicle to do so.

Yes, I know. I’m not a doctor. But I’m not a mathematician either, yet when someone who is tells me that two plus two no longer equals four, I should be allowed to ask: since when?