Covid-19 Update | March 18 at 10:55 PM

After an amazing day on the beach with some of my favorite people, that even included my kids, I’ve checked the data and am ready to come back on with my corona virus update. So we have a case in Walton County and another in Okaloosa County. The good news is the Walton County case is a vacationer and is travel related. The Okaloosa case is also travel related. So again, the key is in all of Northwest Florida not a single case of community spread. Florida is over 300 cases and 2/3 of them are Miami, Naples, W Palm, and Ft. Lauderdale. No surprise to me, but the stock market continues to fall. This may be due to a study made public by the Imperial College of London. If you want to hear good news, STOP READING RIGHT NOW. So unlike our CDC that is probably to scared too tell the public some hard truths. The Imperial College put its data right out there. These policies of extreme social distancing, school closures, case isolation, and home quarantine are only effective if we keep them up for 3 months. Then, this only buys us time through the summer until we have 1 of 2 choices. Implement these policies once again or have a peak in November that is 50% less severe than if we didn’t engage in the initial 3-month pseudo-economic shutdown. To some degree, we are being lied to by being told this is for 2 or 4 weeks. This is a 12-week program. It prevents our health care system from being inundated with millions of cases that require ICU care and flattens the curve dramatically, but as soon as we let up, the cases will rise and the Imperial College notes it will take 12-18 months to develop a vaccine that is safe and effective. I encourage you all to read the article and decide for yourselves. It’s by Ferguson et. al. and it was published 2 days ago.

So if we do nothing the economy would have little impact, but 2.2 million Americans (primarily over 65) will die. If we do one 12-week pseudo-shutdown, we have a recession with millions of unemployed and huge government debt that we will never be able to repay and we let it peak in the late fall and just over 1 million Americans die. Or we do a second major economic shutdown again in the fall to prevent another peak and bring on a full blown depression but save the most lives from the virus and about 500,000 Americans die. I don’t think any of us are jumping up and down for options 1,2, or 3; but it would be nice if our media and government would give it to us straight and let us decide which option we would prefer. Here is serious food for thought and I’m not advocating for any specific option: how many people will die from lack of economic opportunities due to the shutdowns and the long lasting effects they have on the economy? How will this affect the young people who have potentially the most years left to live as they bear negative interest rates and higher tax burdens for decades? Things to consider as the 12-week shutdown gives us a lot to contemplate, especially if we end up getting asked to do this all again in the fall.