16 Crucial Decisions
On May 1, 2020, four months after the first public reports out of China, there were just over 1,000,000 confirmed cases in the United States, and around 58,000 deaths. At the same time, the lockdowns caused over 33 million Americans to lose their fulltime jobs and another estimated 10 million to lose part time jobs. With a family dependence ratio of 2:1 in the United States (for every working person there is approximately one other who depends on them financially), 86 million Americans lost their primary income. So, while 0.018 percent of Americans were killed by COVID-19, over 26 percent lost their livelihood. Did It Work? Time, evaluation, and retrospect will answer this question completely, but it appears now that the short answer is no. The primary objective was to “flatten the curve.” Did that mean fewer people would get the disease? No. Why do it? To ensure that hospital facilities were available to treat those who got it. The concern was that if the disease spread too fast, then too many people would need to go to the hospital at one time. However, as of May 1, 2020, the total number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 in the United States stood at 164,0001 or an average monthly rate of around 70,000. This compares to a total of 924,107 total hospital beds in the country.2 Plus, the federal government spent nearly one billion dollars setting up temporary hospitals with over 13,000 beds that, combined, treated just over a thousand people.3 By mid-June, governments were faced with the reality that their economies may never recover. Fear of coronavirus “Laboratory Confirmed COVID-19 Associated Hospitalizations,” COVIDNET (CDC.gov), June 27, 2020. https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_3. html. 2 “Fast Facts on U. S. Hospitals,” aha.org, American Hospital Association, https:// www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals. 3 “U.S. Field Hospitals Stand Down, Most Without Treating Any COVID-19 Patients,” npr.org, National Public Radio, https://www.npr. org/2020/05/07/851712311/u-s-field-hospitals-stand-down-most-withouttreating-any-covid-19-patients. 1
