Here’s a factoid that should make you angry: As of Monday, The Wall Street Journal reports, the U.S. was averaging 56,000 new Covid-19 cases a day. Meanwhile, China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong combined have averaged less than 1,000 new cases a day.
On the guise of “controlling the spread,” the political class has closed most bars, restaurants and craft brewers, distillers and winery tasting rooms. Feeling pressure as an election approaches, they are letting them reopen just a tiny bit. Meanwhile, bars are doing a booming business in China, even as bars, restaurants and craft producers and their workers in the U.S. file for bankruptcy.
What’s the difference? Why just 1,000 cases a day in Asia vs. 56,000 in the U.S. Do Asians have some magic gene that protects them from Covid-19? Not at all. But “across Asia, where the virus first emerged, (life) has mostly returned to normal. With infections at low levels, bars and restaurants are bustling, subway trains are packed and live concerts and spectator sports have resumed,” the Journal reports.
Eight months since the virus emerged in the West, joblessness is rising, business failures are increasing, and people are giving up hope. Meanwhile, in Asia, aggressive contact-tracing efforts, quarantine programs to isolate those infected and strict international-travel requirements have succeeded in allowing life to return to something pretty much resembling normal.
It’s not that our politicians don’t know what to do. They are as able as researchers at Indiana University or a group of New England colleges to learn from what is working elsewhere. At Indiana, the positivity rate in Greek housing fell to 1.3% last week from 1.5% the week before. In residence halls, it fell to 0.6%. Among Greek-affiliated students living off campus, rose to 2.6%, but for all other off-campus students the positivity rate was 0.5%.
Among a group of 108 colleges in New England that conduct regular testing through the Broad Institute and laboratory that is a joint venture of MIT and Harvard, the positivity rate is less than 0.2%.
Compare either of those two sets of rates to the U.S. as a whole. According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the overall positivity rate for the U.S. is 7%.
This is a massive failure, and while Joe Biden likes to pin the blame on President Trump (who certainly deserves a huge amount of blame), the fact is Democratic governors, congressmen and senators have been equally asleep at the switch, preferring to grandstand while bars, restaurants, movie theaters, live stage theaters and their workers totter of the edge of bankruptcy.
The U.S. can bring this epidemic under control and let normal life mostly resume. It’s just that none of our leaders want to order people to get tested regularly, wear masks, wash their hands and socially distance. That’s all that’s needed. That’s all they are doing in Asia.
Yes, progress is being made on vaccines and on therapeutics. But until those are widely available and used we have to do what we can, with what we have, where we are. That means frequent testing — at least twice a week — of a substantial part of the U.S. population, requiring masks to be worn all the time in public, washing hands, socially distancing and requiring those who test positive to be quarantined. Based on the experience in Asia, those actions alone would let bars and restaurants reopen, along with theme parks, theaters and similar venues.
As for the political class which has been willing participants in the crucifixion of the hospitality industry, this might be a year to vote against all incumbents. That’s exactly what I plan to do.