Thoughts on the Political

Containment

I would love to see San Francisco become a model of voluntary Wuhan containment. The Wuhan containment in China was powerful and took exponential growth into an exponential decline. However, it took an authoritarian government to do that. Our challenge is to prove that an open, Western democracy can do the same thing without sacrificing our values. (***Need a reference to what was actually done in Wuhan.)

Local matters

This virus is global, but it is also a community disease. The doubling rate of the US doesn’t matter to you. What maters is the doubling rate of your local community. The social challenge should be for all the communities to monitor their own doubling period and compare it to other communities and to challenge each other to find ways to reduce the doubling rate. Here’s an example of a potential challenge. As testing kits become available medical professionals should have first priority. I would then advocate for people involved in logistics as having second priority. I would like to know that of all the food stores I go to that all the people in those stores are getting tested regularly.

No discrimination

While I am extremely angry at the authoritarian Chinese government for letting COVID-19 loose, it should not be called “the China virus.” The US also stuck its head in the sand and did not act aggressively enough. The virus doesn’t discriminate between American and Chinese and it doesn’t discriminate between Democrats and Republicans. If you take this crisis and try to turn it to your political advantage (I’m looking at China and I’m looking at Trump,) you have blood on your hands.

The usefulness of government

Government can be very useful at protecting the American public from rare but catastrophic threats. The CDC is just one of a number of organizations that should be funded reliably even though the likelihood of an event in any one year is low.