NEWS AND OPINION
Should states ease pandemic restrictions or extend lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders into the summer? That question confronts leaders across the United States. President Trump says that “we have to get our country open.” And many governors are moving quickly in that direction.
Critics are dismayed. Citing forecasts that COVID-19 deaths could rise to 3,000 per day in June, they say that reopening without better defenses against infections is reckless. That assessment may well be correct. Many insist it is immoral, too. The columnist Amy Z. Quinn says the Trump administration is “choosing money over lives.” In a CNN news analysis, Daniel Burke offers this characterization of America’s choice: “Should we reopen the economy to help the majority or protect the lives of the vulnerable?”
Denunciations of that sort cast the lockdown debate as a straightforward battle between a pro-human and a pro-economy camp. But the actual trade-offs are not straightforward. Set aside “flattening the curve,” which will continue to make sense. Are ongoing, onerous shutdowns warranted beyond what is necessary to avoid overwhelming ambulances, hospitals, and morgues?
The answer depends in part on an unknown: how close the country is to containing the virus.
A vaccine, which would teach people’s immune systems to recognize and fend off the virus before an infection can take hold, would be even better. An inoculated public could get back to work, stop sheltering in place, resume normal life. Developing a safe, effective vaccine against a new pathogen typically takes years, if not decades. That’s because, unlike with experimental treatments, it’s impossible to know right away if a vaccine has worked. During testing, researchers have to wait for participants to encounter the real virus in the wild, which if people are sheltering in place or an outbreak has ended, can take a very long time.
Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said he would cover a fine owed by Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther, who is serving a seven-day jail sentence. A spokesperson later confirmed Patrick did just that, CBS DFW reports.
Luther, owner of Salon A La Mode, was sentenced on Tuesday after judge Eric Moye said she violated statewide stay-at-home orders when she reopened her business nearly two weeks ago. She also publicly tore up a cease-and-desist letter from Dallas County that ordered her to close. Luther was ordered to pay a fine of $3,500, along with $500 for every day her salon is open until Friday, May 8. Texas Governor Greg Abbott's new executive order from earlier this week allows businesses like salons and barber shops to reopen in the state that Friday.
This month there has been a distinct dissonance in the national atmosphere — even more so than usual, which is saying something. It went from resigned despair to collective rage and protests. Protests which, for the most part, are not unreasonable.
I’m not talking about those carrying nooses, swastikas and guns — especially assault rifles. The group in Texas who guarded an illegally opened bar while reportedly brandishing loaded AR-15 type weapons, and people who marched outside without masks to scream at healthcare workers, assaulting them with their airborne saliva, are terrorists who aim to threaten people into doing what they want. They seem to forget that living in a community means abiding by a set of rules and giving up certain things for the common good — and the “freedom” they’re screaming about is actually anarchy.
But there are also people like Texas salon owner Shelley Luther — who peacefully opened her hair salon in Dallas despite a stay-at-home order in a state with 34,000 cases of COVID-19 and 946 deaths. She was sentenced to seven days in jail and a $7,000 fine but the judge told her he would commute her sentence if she admitted her actions were selfish — to which she replied (while wearing a face mask): “I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I am selfish because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hair stylists that are going hungry because they’d rather feed their kids… So sir, if you think the law is more important than kids being fed, then please go ahead with your decision. But I’m not going to shut the salon."
Imagine being told to inhale a nasal spray full of the coronavirus. More than 14,000 people in the U.S. and elsewhere are putting their names forward to do so.
They are volunteering for what's called a "human challenge trial," an ethically controversial way to test vaccines that would deliberately infect people with a virus that has killed over 270,000 people worldwide and has no cure.
"It's not every day we give a healthy individual an exposure to a pathogen — the very same thing doctors are trying to protect people from," said Dr. Nir Eyal, director of the Center for Population-Level Bioethics at Rutgers University. "But it becomes increasingly clear [that] the only sustainable exit from the current health and societal crisis is a vaccine, and there are ways to conduct such a trial that are perfectly ethical."
In my state of Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order six weeks ago banning elective surgeries and procedures in order to conserve beds and equipment for an expected onslaught of COVID-19 patients. These orders have been in force across the country, and yet here and in many other areas, the onslaught never materialized. Instead, hospitals are half full or less, and are furloughing or laying off nurses and other staff. Likewise in other parts of the country. Hospitals and private medical practices in small towns and rural areas are struggling to keep their doors open.
What many people don’t know is that “elective” does not mean “non‐essential.” It means the procedures can be planned instead of being rushed as an emergency.
When elective procedures are restricted or discouraged, patients can suffer. Some are in pain from abdominal conditions. Others wait weeks for possibly malignant tumors to be evaluated. Cancer patients see chemotherapy and other treatments interrupted. People remain immobilized awaiting hip replacement surgery or are deterred by blinding cataracts. Non‐emergency cardiac catherizations have to wait, as patients hope they won’t get a heart attack in the meantime. Cancer screening colonoscopies don’t get done.
