Lockdown cannot last forever - is mass civil disobedience on the horizon?

Personally, I am dealing with lockdown as well as a single person in isolation with zero social contacts for 2.5 months can - it's disorienting and dystopic, to be sure. But I am able to work by telecommuting, unlike most people, and I have what I need to survive and minimally entertain myself - I feel a bit like Gus the Polar Bear from the central park zoo, stuck in a confined habitat with no alternative on the horizon, but with access to food and water and basic necessities, and making the best of an intolerable situation.

Having said that, I also realize that nothing I care about will be coming back any time soon, whether or not we stay on lockdown. Music won't be back for a long time, and neither will sports or international travel. So for me, whether or not I can go to the book store or sit 6 feet away from someone in a bar or restaurant (what the hell is the point of that, when the only reason to go to a bar is to be social?!), the dystopia is virtually guaranteed to last an unacceptably long time.

That said, based on what I hear from friends and family, not to mention what we can all plainly see in social media (if you get out of your bubbles), I do not believe that Americans will agree to stay on government-imposed lockdown much longer, nor will they submit to a second lockdown, should cases start to rise again, despite the consequences and the risks.

The economic and psychological consequences are simply unacceptable to an enormous swath of American society, and people will be willing to take the risk of catching a nasty virus, and even to accept that it means a lot of people of advanced years, and those with pre-existing conditions will die a bit prematurely. Nobody is happy about that, but the virus is part of nature, and nature will take its toll.

Flattening the curve is about controlling the rate of infections, not about preventing them, after all. And the psychological and economic costs are becoming unacceptable to many. Government cannot impose its will indefinitely. And the public have been very good sports in trying to do their part to slow the spread of this virus. But at some point you have to say "fuck it", as despite our best efforts, the virus is everywhere now, and there really isn't any possibility of eliminating it until a vaccine or cure is available, and that is not going to happen in a time-frame that people are going to find acceptable.

I am fine with staying in my apartment and having groceries and other goods delivered, as I have a salary, and can work from home. I have to accept the abhorrent reality that even if people refuse to continue to "shelter in place", Madison Square Garden won't be open for hockey, there will be no orchestras or chamber music ensembles, and international travel won't be a practical option with governments around the world continuing to flex their atrophying muscles by imposing quarantine conditions on arrivals from abroad. Even if we end "shelter in place" tomorrow, my life won't be any better as the things I love involve crowds and airplanes.

I am not one of the people clamoring for a return to barber shops (my last haircut was more than 3 years ago anyway) or socially distanced restaurants or bars (social distancing defeats the entire purpose of going to such places). But as an objective observer, with lots of friends on all sides of the political spectrum, I just don't believe America will agree to go along with government-imposed lockdowns for much longer, even if it puts grandma at risk.

Why do so many infectious diseases seem to come from China?

Everyone needs to stop blaming everyone else for this virus.  Let’s talk facts and reason here.

I have argued for the last 25 years that we invest way too much money in studying the trivial effects of genes on chronic diseases, to the detriment of infectious disease research.  Infectious diseases have only been in check for 100 years or so, mostly because of improvement in sanitation in the Western world, and to a lesser extent, antibiotics, vaccines, and antivirals.  But bacteria, viruses and parasites are also subject to natural selection, and are adapting by random mutation to survive despite our interventions.  Evolution is a powerful force, helping all organisms adapt and survive.  

In recent years we have seen many dangerous bugs emerge, disproportionately in China. Why China? Because of population density, substandard sanitation (compared to the West), and economic prosperity.  Yes, economic prosperity...  50 years ago, if a disease emerged in China it would have been largely contained there for a very long time because there weren’t direct flights to everywhere as there are now. 

Viruses mutate all the time, and sometimes these mutations increase either transmissibility or virulence.  But virulence is generally bad for the virus, as if it kills the host, it dies as well, if there aren’t alternative hosts around which can be infected before its current host dies...  When such mutations occur in sparsely populated places, the effects are highly localized and do not spread.  But in densely populated Chinese cities (remember than New York City would be a small to medium sized city in China), there are tons of potential hosts around to infect, such that even highly virulent bugs can take root and become serious problems.  And the connectivity of the world allows them to spread internationally once they reach critical mass in the population.

These sort of events happen all the time in Africa, but because it is still underdeveloped, there is much less connectivity to the world, so they are often localized and can be controlled before they spread.  Climate also plays a role as many tropical diseases spread largely through insect and other such vectors, and don’t therefore do well in more temperate climates...  But as those countries develop and the world becomes more interconnected, these things will inevitably become a bigger and bigger issue over time.  This is simply how evolution works, and just as we develop countermeasures, mutations happen and sometimes will confer advantages to the bugs that allow them to circumvent out countermeasures.  

The current levels of domination humans have over pathogens is not unlikely to be temporary. I have often posited that we may outlive our great grandchildren because we are lucky to be alive in the era when we have suppressed many infectious diseases, before they have had time for adaptations to arise and spread...  But ultimately nature has a balance...   Overpopulation breeds disease, and connectivity helps it spread.  

We shouldn’t blame China for its rapid economic development - but that really is why these problems are starting to emerge as global threats.  And China shouldn’t blame us for germ warfare, as that is as silly as blaming China for our current problems.  These things are inevitable.  And perhaps ending absurdly inefficient big-science genomics research programs like “All of Us” in favor of more research on infectious disease and epidemic preparation measures would be wise (as I have argued consistently for 25 years).

Furthermore, while this virus is pretty mild for most of us, this is an important exercise for the world’s Public Heath system - just as SARS, MERS, and H1N1 were.  By taking this very seriously we can learn a lot about how to better prepare ourselves for truly horrific bugs that will inevitably emerge in densely populated and connected parts of the world.  And if you deal with old folks or sick folks, it’s really important to isolate them and keep them as safe as possible while we wait for countermeasures to keep this infection in check for a while....

But we need to stop blaming China, and China, Russia and Iran need to stop blaming us. We are in this together, and have to accept that in an interconnected world, we have to work together and not worry about casting blame....

"Diversity of ideas"

So, in Spring of 2017, I attended a writing workshop at Columbia University taught by journalists about how to write OpEd pieces. In the course of the seminar they espoused the need for openness to the diversity of ideas, and that it was fine to disagree with ideas but never to disrespect the person... Then they talked about how it's okay in this current political era to be intolerant because what happened in the election is unacceptable.

I was a bit shocked by this hypocrisy and wrote my OpEd exercise piece about this intolerance being practiced by people claiming to respect diversity of ideas while teaching how to express unheard opinions, which mine widely is in the campus environment. While the instructors seemed to be a bit troubled by what I wrote, every colleague, most of whom were humanities professors at Columbia, agreed emphatically with the position I took in my OpEd, and many later told me they had exactly the same initial reaction even as they agreed with the political position of the instructor.

What I want to say is how proud I am of the faculty of my "coastal elite" university for agreeing that my position was completely valid and they added that they were also largely troubled by the very same intolerance to different opinions on campus... Here is a draft of what I wrote trying to be provocative....

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The Public Voices program of the OpEd Project, in which I am excited to participate this year, has been billed as a "diversity of ideas project", which "was founded to ensure that all human beings have a chance to be heard". Furthermore, in the ground rules, it is clearly stated that "we believe in a wide range of ideas, including ideas we may disagree with", and it was suggested that "it is rare that we can have an open, frank discussion about what we think...but take care to be respectful. Disagree with the idea, not the individual." And ground rule 3 explicitly is entitled "everyone is welcome".

Despite this statement, during the first day of the workshop, it was repeatedly alluded to that this class is more important now than ever because of what happened in the recent election. At one point the lead instructor went so far as to say it is okay to be intolerant. I fail to see, however how intolerance is compatible with "diversity of ideas" and "respect for the individual".

Surely among an audience of twenty Columbia professors, it may be unlikely to expect significant degrees of support for President Trump. But those individuals who do support him would seem to be the people whose voice is most strongly silenced by the current political climate, not the opposite. The recent election's results came as a shock to many people largely because people who do support the president often felt inhibited from speaking openly for fear of of being attacked as an individual, rather than for the ideas about which disagreement may exist. In context of this workshop and the desire for open, frank exchange of ideas, this strikes me as a direct violation of Ground Rule number 3.

Personally, I am a libertarian, not a Republican. I was a delegate at the Libertarian National Convention, and helped Governor Gary Johnson in his presidential campaign and even helped write his science policy over the past year. I live in New York, where the election was not competitive, and as such I saw no downside to working for the Libertarian party during the election cycle. That said, Donald Trump was the first mainstream political candidate I was excited about since Pat Buchanan's primary campaign in 1992 which led to the unseating of George H.W. Bush. I agree with President Trump on about 70% of issues which is far more than any candidate offered by either main party since Ronald Reagan. To this end, I donated to Mr. Trump's political campaign, and am very satisfied that the efforts of the Libertarian party to get out the vote for Governor Johnson in swing states helped elect our new President.

I entered this program with much optimism to learn how better to express myself in writing, and learn to better make a visible and open-minded argument for what is a minority view among "the coastal elites", as the instructors called us on Friday. Obviously I realize my political views are the minority view among Columbia faculty, but I was encouraged to participate in your workshop because I believed that diversity of ideas includes everyone, as the ground rules state, "regardless of which side of the aisle you come from, you are welcome."

When instructors openly suggest it is okay to be intolerant of the ideas that won the recent election, or that the people who elected him are just misinformed or ignorant, somehow I am forced to question what was meant by celebration of the "diversity of ideas". I work as a professor at Columbia, as a free lance musician, and am actively engaged in diplomatic outreach in such diverse places as North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan and other troubled areas of the world. I am able to do this because I treat everyone with respect, engage them politely, and celebrate their diversity of opinion. Obviously very few people in my professional or personal life agree with my political views, and yet I have always engaged them with respect and never disparaged anyone for their political views, including my friend North Korean leader Marshal Kim Jong Un. But today, hysteria over the election, and the coming changes to American political life has created an environment where it has somehow become acceptable to attack the individual by openly calling people racist, misogynist homophobes just because they didn't vote for Hillary Clinton. That is not "tolerance" or "celebration" of diversity of opinion by any definition.

I must say that during Friday's presentation, I frequently felt attacked personally not because the instructors disagreed with me about politics, but because of the frequent allusion to it being okay to be intolerant of those who disagree, implying that President Trump and his supporters are horrible people who disparage elites and are destroying American values. In this era, perhaps it is wiser to encourage us to stop being silent and speak up to encourage people to understand and respect that diversity of thought on our campus. I would suggest that this lack of respect creates an environment that silences the frank discussion that the ground rules state are to be encouraged. To this end, I suggest the instructors answer their own question of "whether the ground rules are unacceptable to you". Perhaps it is time for a re-evaluation of what it really means to you to celebrate diversity of ideas, and to respect those who disagree as individuals...