Public Health and Jobs: Where Are We Now, and How Can We Save Both?

With the monthly employment report and AJSN issue, I did not post last week on other aspects of our situation.  The largest jobs news since the previous one was on weekly unemployment claims, which had a 20^th straight week of over a million followed by the end of that streak. 

We now have a lot of chaos, ambiguity, and uncertainty about the jobless numbers, shown by, per Patricia Cohen in the August 6^th New York Times “New Unemployment Claims Decline, but Remain ‘Alarmingly High’,” 30 million people collecting benefits but only 16.3 million in last week’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary.  We have a lot of positions starting and ending, and, apparently, a lot of people just guessing when answering surveys whether their pandemic-lost job will come back.  That wildness is also going on with the virus in our country, which offers, in different locations, world-high infection rates and role models of nonspreading, numbers of cases increasing and holding and decreasing, and responsibility variation ranging from here in the Catskills where whole counties have no Covid-19 hospitalizations and maskless people at all close to others are nonexistent to a Florida sheriff actually banning masks for deputies and visitors.  Overall, though, we are still among our planet’s worst, with this latest New York Times map putting us with Panama, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Suriname, and Argentina, but no other countries, with daily new infections of over 14 per 100,000:

In these past two weeks there has been a flurry of published opinions on how we can end these two huge problems.  The first, “The Extremely Boring Idea That Could Save the Economy (Jordan Weissman, Slate, July 31st), proposed “automatic stabilizers,” which “could redesign unemployment benefits and food stamps to increase in value when unemployment spikes,” sort of like automatic stock-market shutdowns when losses reach certain amounts.  That, which unfortunately would have only partisan appeal, would prevent needing to develop and agree on additional assistances when they are suddenly and urgently needed. 

Next, we had “America’s Coronavirus Endurance Test,” by Howard Markel in the August 6^th New Yorker.  Markel, a physician and medical historian, recounted how he and others developed the idea of flattening a virus-infection curve over 10 years ago, that social distancing may have prevented over half a billion coronavirus cases in six countries alone, but keeping physically away from others “cannot cure or defeat Covid-19” and “only allows us to hide from the virus while scientists do their work.”  Such may be necessary in some times and places into 2022, so accordingly “businesses need to give up on the idea of a near-term return to normal and commit to letting people work from home or in staggered shifts until a vaccine or other treatment becomes available.”  Stern advice, but it is a clear conclusion that we cannot get the economy back until the virus is vastly less prevalent.

On the same date, the USA Today Editorial Board released “Coronavirus ride:  4 ways America can get back on track.”  The bullet points are “once and for all, fix testing results,” since, as few have dared put in print, “tests that take a week or more for results are virtually worthless.”; “ensure adequate supplies” (if multiple companies are not mass-producing them now, I don’t know why); “build a COVID-19 infection barometer to guide the states,” with which many Republicans and many state governments disagree; and “tell the truth” (it is out there, but it needs to contend with conspiracy theories, cherry-picked statistics, runaway tribalism, national priority confusion, and much more.)  These suggestions are useful, but preventing spread is most critical.

Only the day after that, we saw “Here’s How to Crush the Virus Until Vaccines Arrive,” by Michael T. Osterholm and Neel Kashkari in the New York Times.  It’s more castor oil – the authors called for “a more restrictive lockdown, state by state, for up to six weeks to crush the spread of the virus to less than one new case per 100,000 people per day,” or one-sixteenth of what the map above shows.  We failed as a country because “we gave up on our lockdown efforts to control virus transmission well before the virus was under control.” 

On August 8^th, the next day, the Times Editorial Board printed “America Could Control the Pandemic by October.  Let’s Get to It.”  The “six to eight weeks” the authors called necessary seems like a lot less time than it did in the spring.  The piece offered the new insights that “airborne transmission is a far greater risk than contaminated surfaces,” while “the virus spreads through singing and shouting as much as through coughing” and “superspreading events – as in nursing homes, meatpacking plants, churches and bars – are major drivers of the pandemic.”  They asked for “clear, consistent messaging,” which seems a doubtful product from our current presidential administration, along with “better use of data,” “smarter shutdowns” more severe for places doing worse, and the old favorites “testing, tracing, isolation, and quarantine.”  I found this piece less effective than two above, since it hoped for things with poor current prospects and advocated measures already taken. 

None of this is very encouraging, but we will do what we can, including on November 3^rd, to minimize damage before the vaccine arrives.  Only then will the pandemic, and employment with it, start to normalize.