When the coronavirus hit hard in March, Americans surprised me by voluntarily complying en masse with government safety recommendations. I thought our independent streak would cause many to ignore the rules.
There is often wisdom in the masses: If the vast majority of people do something on their own, it’s a sign to me that there is some legitimate reasoning behind it. Most of our people realized that the virus was a serious threat and took action to try and lessen its impact.
Of course that was a grand experiment based on what experts thought might happen: No one, even now, knows for sure how much social distancing, hand washing, wearing face masks or any of the other things we’ve been asked to do actually help.
But I’m not a big believer in second guessing decisions that had to be made quickly with incomplete information. Of course after you know what happened you can point out mistakes, but that’s like waiting until after the lottery drawing is done and then mocking someone who chose the wrong numbers.
It’s been interesting how the differences in reactions between Republican and Democratic governors reflects the general thinking of those parties. Democratic governors have pushed more restrictions, which naturally follows from their belief that government should intervene to help when problems arise. Republican governors have generally implemented less serious restrictions and opened up more quickly, a logical choice if you have the conservative belief that the collective resolve and intelligence of people acting freely can solve problems more efficiently than government planning.
Perhaps there are merits to both sides. Republicans were strangely silent on their normal anti-government position when they joined with Democrats to use the federal government’s vast resources to prop up the economy through unfathomable amount of spending, all fueled by debt. And I think that was the right course: The economy would have dropped off the cliff into a depression, not just a recession, if the federal government had not intervened to keep households and businesses afloat.
But at the same time, the more conservative position remains true that the government, which is funded by the tax revenues of current productivity or the expected future productivity of its citizens, cannot go on forever paying for everything if the economy is shut down. Money just represents productive work by someone, and America must get back to work soon or we’re all going to suffer far worse than through the virus, which thankfully turned out less deadly than feared. Republican governors seem to have gotten this message better than Democrats.
But what I resent is the unfounded speculation that everything that has gone wrong with the coronavirus response is a conspiracy. I’ve heard some say China started it on purpose. That makes no sense because no country stands to lose more than China. It has risen to a world power because it’s become the place where rich nations make cheap stuff, but it will likely lose much of that wealth and influence because American and other Western companies have realized they made a huge mistake by putting all of their eggs in the basket of one country, much less a repressive and anti-democracy one.
And I don’t buy that health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci intentionally scared people or provided false information. They were doing the best they could with the limited information they received for what is a “novel” — that is, not seen before by humanity — virus. Of course they are focused more on health rather than economic repurcussions, but that’s why they don’t make the decisions. We have executive branch leaders like the president and governors who weigh all sides and choose what they think is best for the public welfare. Let’s be generous in our evaluation of such leaders who are in the arena fighting as best they know how.
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The C-P. Reach him at (601) 736-2611 or csmith@columbianprogress.com.
