Covid-19 Update | March 22 at 10:43 AM

Daily Update on corona virus. We did have our first case of corona virus in Bay County yesterday. It was not a Bay County resident and he didn’t contract it here. Okaloosa County is up to 12 cases now, so it has all of a sudden blown up with cases. Outside of Okaloosa county, most of the Panhandle is still very low on the number of cases and are not hot spots. The governor is considering a statewide lock down and here’s the reason that is a really bad idea. We are a large and diverse state. Using data from DOH there are only 4 counties with case rates above 60 per million. The national average is 74 per million. It is very easy to place those 4 counties on lockdown. Also, look at whether draconian lockdowns have worked. Italy is the first country to go one hard lockdown 2 weeks ago and Lombardy has been on lockdown for 3 weeks. They continue to have higher numbers of cases and deaths every day. Here in the US, yesterday we had fewer new cases than the day before for the first time and we have two consecutive days of fewer deaths. So what we are doing is working short of requiring everyone to stay home. Here’s the other why. The business community cannot survive it. Some people have businesses that can work from home. Most of those people do work for the businesses that can’t. If a business like mine is required to stop operating, we have cash on hand to pay expenses for about a month. After one month, we would run out of cash. So a business like mine, if the governor orders it non-essential and shut, would then be forced to immediately lay off most of its workers and stop paying all of those other businesses that work from home. Those work from home businesses won’t realize they aren’t going to get paid by my business for a month when their invoice goes unpaid. The money they were counting on to pay their bills then isn’t there and its a cascade that cripples the American economy. Even before the ripple down to the work from home businesses, economists expect jobless claims to come in at 2-3 million this week. Last week it ticked up but it was before several states did what I am referring to by going on lockdown. For a frame of reference, during the worst week of the great recession of 2008 the highest number for jobless claims was 1.5 million. Poverty and joblessness will kill more Americans than corona virus and its all due to a response that has been harsher than necessary fueled by media driven hysteria and fear. I am not saying that corona virus isn’t bad. It is bad. It is almost as virulent and lethal as the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic; it will kill somewhere in the ballpark of 50,000- 500,000 Americans. I think there are major flaws in the study that I initially cited as up to 2 million. We can and should do the common sense approaches of at risk people staying home, anyone sick staying home, keeping schools closed to prevent community spread (which is bad for the economy but necessary), and a robust public health campaign to remind people about hand hygiene and social distancing, and those that can work from home doing so. Many people think I am saying it is nothing to worry about and that is not the case. I am saying we can do BOTH, which is flatten the curve and not wreck the economy. We just can’t freak out every time the media tells us there about more cases and deaths. These will be more, but new cases are already declining.