Crisis comes with political agenda

By RICK WAGNER

Resolving issues while opening the state for business after the viral lockdown is going to be as difficult as dealing with the virus itself.

For starters, there’s resistance from certain groups to opening anything at all. Some folks are legitimately concerned about being exposed and that’s fair, particularly if they fall into the high-risk categories of being elderly, immune-suppressed or having compromised respiratory issues.

Others, unfortunately, have more than a smidgen of a political motive for not wanting the state to open. Some people can’t let a crisis pass without nailing a political agenda to it.

Before the emergence of COVID-19, the upcoming presidential election had been analyzed to be in President Trump’s favor because of a roaring economy. Lengthening the economic shutdown brought on by the reaction to the pandemic might damage those re-election odds.Keeping the country in financial turmoil may not be, on balance, such a bad thing.

That only makes sense if one believes Donald Trump is so harmful that letting tens of millions of people continue to suffer financial and personal mayhem is more appealing than having him president for another four years.

Even if one believes that, it’s only a workable theorem if the public is convinced that their distress should be laid at the door of the president. But it is unlikely to work, not just because most voters are too smart for that worn-out tune, but because other influences are at work.

One of those is the public becoming aware that the “models” of the COVID–19 virus’ impact, in terms of hospitalizations and lethality, have been wildly incorrect. Yet government officials continue to use them as motives to dictate policy.

While the models certainly have been extremely incorrect about most things, such as respirator requirements, it does not mean our situation is not a very serious one. It just shows that planning based on repeatedly bad predictions only makes things worse.

One wonders if officials are not getting this modeling technique from the same people doing the climate change models. You know the ones, that 15 years ago, predicted we would be waterskiing across the Grand Canyon by now. OK, I’m making that one up. Most of the predictions were not that optimistic.

As increasing amounts of information leak out, despite efforts to reshape or ignore it, public patience with those who want to keep people from working is quickly slipping away.

We see polling that would have us believe, nonsensically, that most want to stay home. However, reality and polling have been moving further and further apart and polling results are now mostly skewed as a weapon to shape public opinion.

We get a better sense what people are thinking when we examine what they are doing through things such as people’s activities tracked by their cellular telephone data, which while creepy, tells us in the last 10 days a substantial upsurge in movement has taken place across the country and our state.

Most of the population seems to be analyzing what they see and believe it is time to move forward, because standing in place is starting to do more damage than the virus.

We now have an improved assessment of the damage the virus can do and we have a solid understanding of the damage financial ruin can produce.

Everyone should be concerned, even those who mistakenly believe they are less likely to suffer financial damage, such as those receiving pensions.

In Colorado, even when the economy was quite good, the public pension system was only funding about 60% of its obligation and now has $31 billion in unfunded liability.

Pensions make their money off investments and employee contributions to the fund. If this financial atmosphere continues, critical changes to pensions are inevitable.

Despite the necessity, opening for business still means sensible safeguards are needed, particularly concerning the very vulnerable and limiting obvious methods of transmission.

However, draconian measures using clearly flawed data not only lead to an unhappy populace but drives a few to be reckless with their precautions, as a type of rebellion.

That is not good, but generally the mood of the nation seems to be an appreciation of realistic data and a desire to begin to get back to work with reasonable protections.

Politicians who want to stretch this out for political reasons have not learned the lesson that when the public starts a parade, the smart ones jump in front. They don’t try to order it back.

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