The nation’s monthly jobs report published earlier this week was jarring. I write before its publication, but expect the unemployment rate to more than double. Monthly job losses are sure to crush the previous record of September 1945. Despite this, it is worth noting that September 1945 was surely the most welcomed month in all of human history, marking the end of World War II. We would be wise to view the unemployment rate and other short-term economic data as imperfect measures of human flourishing. Last week, Dr. Fauci, a man who no longer requires introduction, predicted 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from COVID-19. This eye-popping figure accounts for the extreme measures now being taken in many parts of the nation. Business as usual would’ve likely resulted in a tenfold loss of life. Faced with these large numbers, we need to place a more personal context on this tragedy, and muse upon the potential change this will lead to in our economic lives. At the top range, Dr. Fauci’s estimates are more than five times the annual American deaths from automobile accidents. This means that by late April, nearly every adult will know someone who has died of COVID-19, and someone in every neighborhood, school and place of work will have been sick with it. Such suffering cannot fail to have broad effect on the structure of our economy. ►MORE FROM MICHAEL HICKS: We are still underreacting to COVID-19 risks Like Americans in the Civil War and World Wars, the COVID-19 imposes sacrifice upon nearly everyone. This is far different from 9/11, or other recent shocks. Today, we face weeks, if not months, of home isolation. The risk of spreading the disease will influence matters great and small in all our lives. As economist, I see several things open to meaningful change. Federalism has been too ignored in American politics and budgeting. I’ve long argued that state and local governments are more critical to securing the general welfare than is the federal government. This crisis makes that clear. Likewise, the role of the presidency has grown too strong, and must be limited by Congress. Whatever else his flaws, Mr. Trump provides a singularly exquisite example why we need to devolve power away from the federal government and place more limits on the presidency. Our wisdom on state and local budgets will also evolve. Many state and municipal governments pursued low tax rates as a source of enduring prosperity. Places with large, unfounded pension debts, like Illinois and specifically Chicago, are viewed as especially imprudent. COVID-19 reveals new unfunded liabilities in state and local governments who believed in error that their low tax rates marked them as fiscally responsible. Today, millions of students nationwide are out of school with no meaningful instructional alternative. Their schools don’t own sufficient computers for use at home and faculty don’t have the software for instruction. The inability to meet Constitutional requirements of public education is a more damaging unfunded liability than a grossly underfunded government pension system. Moreover, the students least likely to have instructional material are more likely to face other economic and educational challenges. The aftermath of this disease will necessitate tough choices on both higher taxes and unpopular cost-cutting in education. COVID-19 will influence how we perceive the rural and urban divides. Rural places will be short on key infrastructure, like broadband internet, but urban places are likely to bear the brunt of economic dislocation. The most "at risk" sectors are clustered in cities. This is a very different turn of events from the Great Recession and will alter the political economy of government interventions. Much of this seems like "bigger government," but I suspect the reaction will be more nuanced. The CARES Act has many deep flaws that will unroll over the coming weeks. The bill does far too little for the most disrupted workers, small to medium-sized companies and state budgets. It is bad enough that this might be the relief bill that influences all future relief bills. I predict Americans are about to be incensed over bail-outs to highly profitable not-for-profit hospitals and tourism industries, while Main Street business disappear in droves. COVID-19 also uncovered more than usual bureaucratic problems. The Food and Drug Administration is an agency begging to be entirely reworked, preferably into a not-for-profit like Underwriters Laboratories. Likewise, states now scramble to undue licensing restrictions on healthcare workers and foreign physicians. These should be permanently undone. We can find other ways to ensure provider quality without building tools for anti-competitive labor markets. We will also find that many neglected social institutions matter more deeply to our lives than most of us expected. The disoriented feeling that grips so many of us today is nearly identical to what I felt as a young soldier heading to war. My comrades and I had only days to prepare, possessed little idea of what to expect and had no idea when it would end. We depended on one another, more than at any time in our lives. Strong social institutions haven’t been this important to the well-being of Americans in almost 80 years. I have been watching COVID-19 since early January as it threatened domestic manufacturing production. The only enduring feature of the past three months is that the outlook worsens every day. As that continues, nearly every institution, every government, every business and every family will be affected. One day the outlook will be better, and we can look forward past these tough days. Then, we must be introspective. The changes this disease brings will be crafted by us, for good or ill. Michael Hicks is the George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Economics and the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University.
Nicole Boivin of Berwick has always been a healthy person, and she has taken extra care to keep a safe distance from other people and wash her hands since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Despite all that, she got it — and it was bad.
“I have just come out of the darkness of this thing after 12 days of the worst illness I have ever experienced in my life and hope to never experience again,” she told her friends on Facebook Wednesday. “If you think the social distancing practices are a joke, if you think the stay-at-home order is bogus, if you cannot appreciate the major risk you are putting yourself, your loved ones, or your neighbors in by not following these parameters, you are so very wrong.”
For Boivin, 45, her ordeal began on March 18. During the workday, she had no symptoms, she said — but when she came home, she had a slight headache. In the night, she woke up with a low fever, which spiked in the morning.
“At that point, the cough also started — the dry cough they talk about,” she said on Friday.
Boivin called her doctor, who told her she should get tested because of her symptoms and because she works with a vulnerable population. The doctor called in an order for a test, and Boivin went to a tent outside of York Hospital. The tent had a special ventilation system, but the health care workers inside didn’t even want Boivin to touch a pen to sign a consent form for fear of contagion.
“I have to say, it was a pretty surreal experience,” she said. “They were very serious and wonderful.”
Within 48 hours, she had the results from her nasal swab test: positive for COVID-19.
Because there is little that can be done, Boivin rode out the course of the sickness at home, where she was quarantined with her partner, who also ended up catching the disease. Their symptoms included continued fever, dry cough and a headache that Boivin described as “excruciating” and worse than a migraine.
“It was the most painful headache I’ve ever experienced in my life,” she said.
Her partner’s headache was so severe that she ended up in the emergency room to seek relief.
“Tylenol was not touching it at all,” Boivin said. “They ended up prescribing her a narcotic. That was one of the worst symptoms.”
It also hurt to breathe.
“The cough was exactly like [health officials] described,” she said.
Dry at the beginning of her illness — but then it “shifted over” to a phlegm-producing cough.
“Clearly, I was trying to clear something out of my lungs,” she said. “But I couldn’t because I couldn’t get a breath deep enough to do that.”
Unlike those with the most serious cases of the disease, Boivin didn’t require medical intervention to help her get oxygen — but riding out the virus at home with her partner wasn’t easy.
When she was first diagnosed, the women found movies they figured they’d have time to watch, and got the guitar out, too.
But that wasn’t the kind of sickness they experienced.
“We barely got out of bed for pretty much the entire 12 days, basically,” Boivin said.
A good friend called to check on them daily, and brought them supplies when they ran out, dropping things off in the driveway so as to not touch a doorknob or get close to the house. They didn’t need a lot of food because they barely ate anything, Boivin said.
“It was a lot of drinks. Just please bring us drinks, so that we stay hydrated,” she said. “It was so discouraging. I just couldn’t get better. I’d never been sick for so long.”
There were a couple of times when her fever broke and she thought that she was turning a corner, but it always came back.
Finally, on Monday she began to feel better. Her energy started to come back, the fever faded and food started to seem appetizing again. She’s now been cleared by her doctor to return to work. Her partner is about 48 hours behind her, in terms of the illness, and she is feeling better now, too.
Boivin doesn’t have asthma or suffer from other underlying health concerns. She generally goes to the doctor just once a year for her preventative health check up, and rarely gets sick. That’s one reason why she wanted to tell her story to other people. She doesn’t know where she contracted COVID-19, but figures it was somewhere out in the community.
The Maine Center for Disease Control has determined that York County has had community spread of the disease for some time now. That means that there are cases in the county where the source of the infection is unknown. As of Saturday, there were 95 confirmed cases there.
“As a generally healthy person who takes good care of herself and followed all the right protocols and washed my hands — I still got it. I want people to understand that everybody is at risk,” Boivin said. “This illness is very serious. I feel so fortunate to be on the other side of it, but now I will live with the worry of my loved ones coming into contact with it until someone can find a vaccine. Please take it seriously, please be safe. We all have to look out for each other until this ordeal is over.”
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