Thread by @ASlavitt

COVID Update August 1: I suggested that the US consider the option of throwing every resource at defeating the virus for 4 weeks to get back to normal.

To do this, we would need to make the decision that crushing Coronavirus is the single most important thing. We aren’t. 1/

If you haven’t seen it is summed here.

Why should defeating COVID-19 be the single most important thing?

Because it is the pathway to everything else: safe schools, hiring, reuniting families, in person voting, travel, bars & restaurants, and sports.2/

coronavirus.medium.com/we-can-elimina…

We choose to make each of these things equally important— & therefore really get none of them.

In fact we also make our supply of beef, restaurant delivery, bars, and well— an obscure extension of our civil liberties— the right to breathe on strangers— equally important.3/

The other reason this is so important is because the American way we prize makes this crisis harder to solve. 4/

We are asking Americans to defy how we’ve been trained. We bestow everyone here with the belief that if we look out for ourselves, capitalism & individualism will somehow benefit society.

While that strategy has created great wealth, it has made for a selfish nation.5/

So that now when we need people to take actions to benefit others, from wearing a mask to avoiding crowds even if the data they’ve seen leads them to feel confident they aren’t at risk, it’s like asking a country to levitate. Who us? 6/

We have little national culture of caring about each other and our society as much as we do ourselves. 7/

So 4 weeks. 4 weeks or so is not only about what it takes to flatten the virus, I think it’s all we can possibly ask of many people. And even then we’d need to sell it hard. 8/

But you might argue, what is more important than our kids & their education? What about people with mental health conditions? What about people who have invested their whole adult lives & savings in a small business?

How can we risk them because of the virus? 9/

It’s because those things are so important that we have to commit those 4 weeks. That will allow us to salvage these things and live at 95% of normal vs. today where we live at 70% of normal. 10/

Because we need to rescue ourselves from ourselves, if we don’t give 4 weeks, pulling out of the 70% existence makes it less & less likely with each day.11/

As long as we’re confessing some of our flaws, here’s another one: we have to have things now and we don’t trust cause & effect even though we’ve seen it around the world.

Short term sacrifice for a few weeks seems unimaginable. 12/

Since I released that piece, I hear a lot of: but what about our kids? School? Or other important things.

If I say we could send them safely October 1, walk them there confidently, or gamble with no tests or confidence September 1, what do you say? 13/

There’s a guy on Twitter @kerpen who all he does now is tweet about schools. Bif school guy. He insults people & calls anyone who disagrees with him anti-child.

Oh, so he’s an educator? A pediatrician? A a lifelong passion for child development? Or maybe not? 14/

His political favorites are the people who put kids in cages & won’t do a thing to address school shootings, but there’s a new found importance in starting schools on time and how wonderful our children are.

I hope it’s sustained. 15/

Yes, we know in person school is vital. Got it. But the start date matters only if you’re worried about the economy.

The start date doesn’t matter. The number of kids educated for how long & how well is what matters.

4 weeks & we can do that. 16/

Managing a national crisis requires a few things. I did this in 2013 and I learned a lot. I’ve also spent time talking to the people who managed the financial crisis.

Right now we are following none of the principles to get out of this crisis. Here they are... 17/

1. Decide the single most important thing. Solve that & do the best you can with everything else.
2. Communicate on a regular cadence why the priority is what it is & report on progress.
3. Take accountability for every tough decision. Give out credit for each success.18/

4. Bring in the best people in the world and empower them.
5. Coordinate with people on the ground & state & local leadership to provide resources, solve problems & coordinate.

You can decide on a scale of 0 to 5 how we’re doing. 19/

One of the hard parts is sticking to the most important thing. Tim Geithner had to make a decision whether to bail out banks or risk total financial collapse. His most important thing was to save the economy & so he did what he and many felt was an unpleasant thing.20/

This situation here isn’t nearly as tricky. For the simple reason that it’s only 4 weeks of sacrifice.

The Great Depression was a decade. WWII was 6 years. I would be embarrassed to tell my grandparents we couldn’t hack 4 weeks.21/

We’ve sent 18 year olds to war & yet some of the parents sending their kids off to college this year are complaining their kids are being “forced into a single without their roommate.” 22/

I’m just going to say this to the parent on the parent chat page, to the new found champions of public schools, to people with more serious concerns: this is a global pandemic.

Sorry it’s inconvenient.

We can’t have everything for once. We have to pick.23/

Once we pick, it’s not as if we can’t have anything else. But you have to choose?

Rather have bars open or schools?
Rather have nurses and doctors working or food delivery?

And Congress & the rest of us have to financially support those making a sacrifice. 24/

How about a one-time tax in corporations making excess profit from the pandemic?
How about a one time surcharge on people who are well off & safe to support everyone who isn’t?

25/

I promise this won’t be much longer, but I have something else to say.

Drop me any time. 26/

And that is this: consider the alternatives.

One alternative is not to choose the most important thing, to go on just like this and hope that a vaccine changes everything. That’s a big hope. We may feel like we‘re entitled to that. But science doesn’t always work that way.

27/

In 6 months, things could be better but they are likely to be only partially better. And 6 months could mean another 50,000 to 100,000 deaths.

What is possibly worth that price? Why do we even have the power to make this decision? Some personal liberty?

28/

We’re belittling science just as we expect it to rescue us.

29/

Another alternative is pick something else as the most important thing.

The president has chose his re-election. But there are other options.

The economy.
Education.
Mental health.
Treating others illnesses.

Ok, explain to me how that would work. What happens... 30/

Show me the plan.
Show me the plan to make the economy better without addressing the public health crisis.
She me the plan to educate our kids without addressing the pandemic.
Show me the plan to end people’s anxiety without addressing the COVID-19.

I’ll wait. 31/

I’ll read below. Go ahead and put the ideas here. Link to an article.

Link to one that says we can get herd immunity.
Link to one that shows people under 55 are unlikely to die.
Link to one that shows the “cure is worse than the disease”

The tell me how the f*ck it happens. 32/

Use the following metrics: Lives lost, amount of disease, pick up in GDP, increase in jobs, length of the recession.

It’s hard. Because these things aren’t plans. They’re contrary sound bites— partial truths. They assume facts that don’t exist around how this spreads. 33/

All of those storylines are just an excuse to do nothing. To decide we shouldn’t have to pay a cost. That we shouldn’t have to inconvenience ourselves. To sacrifice. FOR PEOPLE WE DON’T KNOW AND ARE MORE AT RISK. 34/

I don’t blame these people. We’ve been taught selfishness and privilege from an early age. Some of us believe we’ve achieved so much because of the rugged individualism & our amazing talent (not because we stood on the shoulders of other generations & the backs of other races).35

(I know I need to stop making you read all this very very soon). 36/

But ask ourselves what is wrong with us?

It’s not an insult. It’s a question we’re supposed to ask when we fail.
Not are we bad individuals but are we bad as a collection?
Can a society that has little value for so many people’s lives afford not to re-examine.
37/

Let’s pick the most important thing. That thing is each other. That thing is a chance for people to live and thrive. That thing would make us the country we never were but strive to be.38/

Never quit on each other. Never quit on this country. Criticize it. But be willing to do the hard work to improve it if you love it and love the people in it you’ve never met.

Now I’m done.

/end