What could go wrong?

More than 30 million Americans fired in just a few weeks, about 18 percent of the American workforce. That’s never happened before so quickly Such a thing was never even imagined.

With trillions of dollars being borrowed in a figurative blink of an eye, the national debt reached at least $24,011,523,316,653, (updated)  $24,921,325,976,814 larger than the entire U.S. economy. That’s never happened before so quickly. Such a thing was never even imagined.

The government has ordered hundreds of millions of Americans to imprison themselves at home. That’s never happened before. Such a thing was never even imagined.

Americans have been cowed into unprecedented assaults on their liberties, inconceivable threats to their well-being and crippling indebtedness for generations to come.

Never before have so many Americans been forced to surrender so many of their civil rights, from freedom of worship to freedom of assembly.

This dive into the deep, dark unknown is unlike the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve experienced pandemics and plagues before. We have centuries of history, research and experimentation into the causes, effects and treatments of epidemics. Not so with an entire national and global economy.  Not on a scale that risks the social and economic health of 328 million Americans. The shutting down of the economy is, at best, an experiment whose consequences were unknown, if not terrifying.

Throwing caution to the hurricane-force wind, we put ourselves in the hands of people who, with ex cathedra certainty that unless we took this untested, extraordinarily risky path, millions of Americans would die. Forgoing targeted policies learned from previous epidemics, this virus required all the force of a blunt force object.

Yes, COVID-19 is a deadly disease, a world-wide pandemic that requires serious, stringent and painful responses. But the demand for a total nuclear option is no longer just challengeable. It is increasingly becoming an existential threat.

ennis@dennisbyrne.net

www.dennisbyrne.net 

My historical novel: Madness: The War of 1812

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