“Let’s Take Some Risk Here,” says Michael “Heck’ve a Job” Brownie about Virus

4 thoughts on ““Let’s Take Some Risk Here,” says Michael “Heck’ve a Job” Brownie about Virus”

1. It would be great to have Brown show his work on figuring the cure is worse than the disease.  The trained economists I've read don't seem to agree.  And I'd love to see him quantify the economic impacts of the already 190,000 reported cases and 4000 reported deaths, and then extrapolate that to the predicted scenarios of 100,000 to 240,000 dead, and the eventual risk of a million dead. 

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   1. And I've read some seemingly credible sources that say the 100-240k is a pretty optimistic projection, based on a higher efficacy of social distancing than may be warranted. And the fatality rate may be off because it relies on Chinese data that underreport deaths by an order of magnitude. 

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2. Heck’ve an idea, Brownie! . . .

   . . . because just going into the grocery store for five minutes — (. . . fully armed with all the best masks, gloves, hazmat suits, and sanitizing wipes that our government’s money can’t buy . . .) — in a country with completely inept and clueless leadership, just isn’t enough risk to one’s life, and one’s family, right now, already, huh?????!!!!!!??????!!!!!

   . . . You should be in charge of something, now!  Really!
    

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3. Why it’d be so cool to live in a real democracy, led d by a real democratic leader, right now . . .

   To be a democratic citizen, then, is to grapple with power and powerlessness at once, control over one’s own life but also regular subjection to the lives of others.

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   All of these elected leaders have called upon their constituents to take the virus seriously and make sacrifices for public health. None have done so in an explicitly democratic idiom. Listening to their remarks, you could easily forget that many Western countries are meeting this pandemic with their democratic norms and institutions under terrific strain. A startling exception is German chancellor Angela Merkel, who has shrewdly sensed that the outbreak presents an opportunity for democratic strengthening.

   Merkel’s nationally-televised address on March 18 explicitly framed the coronavirus as a problem of democratic action. “We are a democracy,” she said. Pointedly addressing not Germans but rather “fellow citizens,” Merkel articulated the democratic values that would be required but also tested in the weeks to come: transparency and open communication, expertise, social cohesion. As democratic citizens, she noted, “we live not by coercion but by shared knowledge and collaboration,” sharing a belief that “every life and every person counts.” As such, Merkel said, she wished to “explain where we currently stand with regard to the epidemic [and] what federal and state authorities are doing,” and also to “convey why we need you for this, what each and every person can contribute.” Democratic government, she reminded her audience, is always a two-way street. It should not ever be reduced to the passive receipt of orders and information from above.

   Merkel acknowledged the inconvenience of restrictions and border closures for the lives of her fellow citizens. But much more than other Western leaders, she also worried about the ways in which they would challenge the country’s “democratic self-understanding” and the political nature of its public life. As someone “for whom freedoms of travel and movement were hard-won rights,” Merkel admitted (referring to her earlier life behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany) these restrictions grated. In a democracy, she went on, they “should never carelessly and only temporarily be enacted. But right now they are vital to save lives.” 

   Most critically, Merkel framed the crisis as one over which citizens could still exert control. The future, she insisted, remained unsettled. Power still lay with the people. “It depends on all of us,” Merkel proposed. “We are not condemned to passive acquiescence as the virus spreads.” Hand-washing and social distancing should be seen not as technocratic regulations imposed from above but rather as new democratic habits to be cultivated, she argued, ways for a sovereign people to take hold of events and chart its course. “This situation is serious and it is open,” she said. “I am utterly sure that we will overcome this crisis. But how many casualties will there be? How many loved ones will we lose? To a great degree, we have this in our own hands.” 

   https://newrepublic.com/article/157112/germany-gets-coronavirus

    

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