Of Children and Lockdowns

July 28, 2020 2 Comments

Photo by Thom Masat on Unsplash

In the heavy lockdown state in which I reside, the early stages of shutdown closed the outdoor playgrounds.  They closed the outdoor basketball courts.  To drive the point home that children were not welcome, the rims and nets were removed from the backboards—the worry must have been that some child might think of defying the governor’s orders.  I noticed at the time that golf courses remained open and were actively used, but I did not hear that many children frequented the fairways or the greens.

We all can agree that the lockdowns and closures of the Great Cessation are not pleasant.  There is a general wish that they would not have to happen.  There is a variety of views about how necessary this all has been.  I have not, though, heard anyone deny that children have been hurt the most.

Consider this partial catalog of harm to the children among us:

Education was abruptly interrupted.  Schools were closed.

  • In my major suburban county, government efforts to provide “virtual education” were repeatedly tried and failed and eventually abandoned.  The virtue remained elusive.
  • Education that requires group participation, such as music and arts, became unavailable.
  • Field trips were canceled. 
  • All school clubs’ and extracurricular activities—educationally valuable and greatly desired by children—ceased.
  • Personal belongings were quarantined in school lockers for months.
  • Public libraries were closed.
  • For the fall, the local governments repeatedly tried and failed, and eventually abandoned, efforts to reopen schools.  Children will be offered second class education at best.  That may work, to a limited degree, for well motivated children with consistent parental supervision.  Expect much less success for all the rest.

Social and recreational interaction was interrupted.

  • School sports were stopped, including practices, training, games, and facilities.  For many, that can include a whole year of skill development, performing, and advancement, a potential disaster for youth counting on a final year to demonstrate skills to help with college admissions.
  • School sponsored social events, such as dances, proms, plays, and other recreations were dropped.
  • School organized or sponsored service activities have been canceled.
  • Children were ordered to stay at home.  Enjoyment of friendships and development of camaraderie among peers were interrupted.  Usual exchanges with friends and neighbors, and the normal creative interactions, have been stifled.
  • The personal exposure to a variety of views and interests and backgrounds became limited.
  • Summer camps were closed and seasonal outings were taken off the table.
  • Recreational facilities were closed, including parks, sports venues, and pools.
  • Movie theaters and other entertainment offerings, such as concerts and spectator sports, became unavailable for warding off youthful ennui. 
  • Visits to extended family members declined.

Opportunities for character development have been curbed.

  • Churches were closed, including worship services, participation in sacred sacraments, associating in youth groups and instruction, joining in varieties of spiritual development activities, and involvement in service to the needy.
  • Similarly, the activities of service organizations are curbed, limiting youth participation and volunteer experiences.
  • Summer job opportunities became fewer, whether for wages or as summer internships.

Children’s health has been put at risk.

  • Regular doctor visits were for a time banned, and then later merely discouraged.
  • Routine treatments for chronic ailments were missed.
  • Vaccinations and other traditional child medical treatments have been skipped.
  • Dental visits were put off, as have been visits to the optometrist.
  • Medical attention has not been sought except for what was considered serious ailments or until they became serious ailments.
  • “Elective” procedures have been put off.

What do we offer the children in place of what has been closed to them?  As mentioned in this litany of childhood harm, local authorities ordered children to remain at home, but what kind of homes?  Not all children have the safe, comfortable, well provisioned and lovely homes we would wish or that officials envisioned.  Many habitations, rather than a haven and venue for learning, are without parental supervision, are dirty, uncomfortable, and unsafe, exposed to crime, drugs, and gang activity.  Children have looked to schools and other facilities, now closed to them by the lockdown, as places of refuge.  Lockdown policies can quarantine children into zones of hazard.

As summed up by a recent opinion piece from the American Institute for Economic Research, “Shockingly, it now appears that suicide rates among the young are on the increase, which is concerning since suicide is the leading cause of death for those under the age of 25.” (“CDC Has Become Centers for the Destruction of Childhood,” June 25, 2020)

What do we offer the children in place of what has been closed to them?

Children are the age group least vulnerable to the virus, the fewest to contract it, the quickest to heal, with by far the lowest mortality rate, and the tiniest record for contagion.  They have been covered in masks and fed on a daily feast of fear.  The irony is that the age group least affected by the virus is the group most deeply harmed by the lockdowns—against which they can do little to protect themselves.

Filed under children, education, Great Cessation, healthcare, life, quarantine, religious freedom, sports, statism Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Of Models and Living

April 30, 2020 Leave a comment

Photo by John Matychuck on Unsplash

My sons and I are modelers.  We love to build models.  We have spent many a pleasant time, creating very pleasant memories, building models together.  I prefer constructing models of buildings, houses, and bridges.  My sons make those, too, but their preference is for vehicles, especially airplanes.

Building models is beautiful and satisfying.  Models and making them stimulate creativity.  Modeling is a bridge between fantasy and reality.  With enough abstraction, you can model just about anything, real or imagined.

Models are not reality, though.  They are a thin representation of elements of reality, on a scale reduced from reality.

Modeling, by intent and purpose, is always a tremendous simplification from actual things, a focus on certain characteristics.  If we want the fullness of reality, we go to reality itself.  You cannot model life, for example, only aspects of it.  Doing so can help with our understanding of a particular aspect, which new idea we can take back to life to see how it fits.

The model itself, though, is not reality.  You cannot live there.  I am reminded of a story from The Twilight Zone.  As I recall, it goes something like this.  A man finds himself trapped inside of a child’s model village.  At first it looks quite real, until examined more closely.  He looks about him, and with increasing anxiety finds that things do not work, discovering an artificiality in all about him.  In despair he discovers how thin a replication of reality the model village is.  He struggles to make sense of it all, until he hears above him the laughing voice of the child who built the model.  He abandons hope as he finds no way out.

Sometimes we build model environments for fish or other pets or creatures to live in.  They never seem to be quite convinced, always trying to get out.  Even the ants in the ant farm work to get beyond the limits of the glass.

In recent months we have all been placed by our governments—especially by our state and local governments—in a model and forced to live there.  We are assured that, according to the models guiding them and us, this will all be for our own good, or at least for the good of someone even when we can see that it is for our direct harm (such as farmers and business owners and their employees, all put out of work).

With each day we see how far from reality these models are.  They are growing increasingly thin in meeting our social, economic, and health needs.  In this model we are separated from family, friends, and neighbors.  Virtual reality turns out to be very little reality at all, highly artificial and daily less satisfying, the virtue going out of it.  Economic buffers like savings erode.  Government relief plans, based on economic models, do not seem to work anywhere near as well as the real economy did.  Educational substitutes are a joke to the students and frustration to their teachers.  Many valuable healthcare treatments are put aside, postponed to some indefinitely promised day, governed by those who control the model in which we are living.

Back to reality, as a cause for rejoicing, which should be embraced and celebrated by all, the horrific models of the future used as justifications for the models imposed upon us by our governors, are turning out to be very thin, indeed wrong.  That is great!  That means that fewer than predicted are dying, fewer are getting sick.  We are thankfully learning each day that the actual numbers used to measure the extent and effect of the flu disease have been and remain a small portion of the overall population.

Policymakers need to make policy based on facts, with a view of and concern for the whole population.  The gap between the models and reality yawns wide.  Time to let us out.

Filed under civilization, freedom, future, Great Cessation, knowledge, life, quarantine, statism Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Of the Great Cessation and Accountability

April 3, 2020 1 Comment

Photo by Remy Baudouin on Unsplash

The first Friday of the month is “Jobs Day” in the United States, when employment numbers for the previous month are released by the Labor Department.  A bit out of date for events moving quickly, the report—really for the first part of March when the data were collected—is that there was a net loss of 701,000 jobs.  More recent information from the Labor Department, gathered in the last two weeks of March, was that 9.9 million people filed unemployment insurance claims.

Those are firm, real, and disturbing numbers.  Perhaps you personally know someone tested positive for the virus or even made sick by it.  I feel more confident that you know someone who has lost his job, or whose business has closed, or one way or another is out of work.

Those people were not put out of work by the virus.  Up to this point the virus has reached but a small portion, some 240 thousand, of the 330 million Americans.  Those 9.9 million job losses were caused by government order and the fear spawned by government pronouncements and predictions of what may yet happen.

This unemployment is actual, not a forecast.  Each person of the 9.9 million has a very real story to tell, and it is not a happy one.  Many are tragic.  There are careers that have been disrupted, some only just started and some now ended.  There are businesses closed that will not reopen.  There are painful ongoing worries for people and families over what to do to cope.  None of us dismisses the sorrows involved with those who die, from whatever the cause.  I fear that the real, here and now unemployment wounds are too flippantly disregarded.

At some point, reasonable questions will need to be answered in a calm and deliberative way.  The actions taken and their consequences must be weighed, aside from professed intentions.  And the policies of policymakers will need to be evaluated in light of what they in practice wrought.  Among such questions might be these:

  • Did the realities of the Great Cessation—the sudden orders to stop activity and association, the practicalities of work lost, earnings gone, closed businesses, disrupted human interaction—caused by government decree, do more harm than good?
  • How many of those lost jobs are coming back?  How many of them are career-ending?  How many businesses are closed not to reopen?
  • Which actions ordered are unrelated to the health emergency but rather take opportunistic advantage of public fear and disruption?
  • What scars will remain on the body of our freedoms?

No doubt you also have important questions, calling for some explaining.

Involved officials might respond that the forecasts should not be unnoticed in the review.  Which forecasts?  Certainly good policymaking would rely upon future expectations.  Was a broad picture evaluated of what might likely occur?  How closely did policies applied align with appropriate and realistic forecasts (taken together)?  Which forecasts turned out nearest to what indeed happened?

Shall we go to the current forecasts?  Oxford Economics visualizes the loss of 27.9 million jobs in the U.S.  The most recent government estimates of U.S. virus deaths are between 100 thousand and 240 thousand.  For the full picture, we should include predictions of the fallout from prolonged social disruption and human isolation.  How much harm and how many deaths might those policies cause?  When we tally up the score to see whether it all is worth it, include all of that in the tally.

A deep recession caused by government order has never happened in our history.  Now it has and is part of our story.  Those who ordered it should, with due deference and full fairness, be called upon to justify it.

Filed under Great Cessation, jobs, quarantine, recession, rights, statism Tagged with , , , , ,

Of Social Disruption & the Great Cessation

March 25, 2020 Leave a comment

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

This is not an alarmist post. It is anti-alarmist.  It is a request for a better way.

Last evening, at the quiet end to a quiet day, I ran the numbers. These are not my numbers, but numbers from oft-quoted sources:  The Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the U.S. Census Bureau, and The Wall Street Journal.

I live in a state with 8,500,000 people, not far from the average of 7,000,000 for all 50 states.  As of last night, in our state, just below 300 people were reported infected with the virus, and 9 had died from it.

I ran the numbers.  The percentage of people in my state currently hit by the virus is 0.003%, that is three one-thousandths of a percent.  Very large and very small numbers are hard to visualize.  In visual terms, if you had one hundred people to demonstrate the numbers, have one person step forward.  He would represent the 1%.  If that person weighed 100 pounds, 4.8 ounces of that person would represent the three one-thousandths of a percent.  That is my state, so far.  You can multiply that many times before you get to just 1 person out of the 100.

There is genuine hardship for people infected by disease, and as their neighbors we are concerned for them and wish to help.  Are social disruption—which social distancing has become—and the Great Cessation of business the best way to help?  That is a rational and reasonable question.

What about all the rest of the people in the state?  Unfortunately, our governor has chosen to be alarmist.  Invoking worries fed by extreme scenarios of how bad things could get in the future if this or that happens or does not happen, he has declared that all should be affected today, that 100% social disruption should be applied now.  When you run the numbers, that is truly an abundance of caution.

But it is not an abundance of life. You do not see an abundance in the grocery store, in the churches, in the places of work, on the streets.  You have seen the Great Cessation where you live.  You are recognizing the social consequences of cutting people off from one another, people who are by nature social animals and who need real, genuine social interaction.  You have also seen how our economy rests upon that social interaction, and you are seeing how the Great Cessation is affecting the people—you and me and the millions of people who are that economy.  Ask yourself if this is healthy, personally, and for your neighbors.  It does not feel right, it does not look right, it does not sound right.

We hear that essential businesses and jobs may continue.  Which businesses and jobs are to be labeled “essential” and who decides?  That is another reasonable, rational question.  The answers so far have not been reasonable or rational.  In practice an unflawed answer proves impossible, yet the force of law is being applied anyway.  You have to look away to argue that some jobs are essential and others are non-essential, ignoring the many job roots of each designated “essential” job.  It is a fool’s errand—no matter how well educated or official—to make up such a list.

Tell the man and woman put out of work that their jobs are “non-essential”, and include their children in the discussion.  Tell the small businessman who has been forced to close his doors and receive no revenues to pay his rent, keep his infrastructure, and meet his payroll, that his business is non-essential.  On Monday we went out to eat, the last day that the governor’s edict would allow in-restaurant dining.  I was troubled by the fear that I saw in the eyes of the employees, which their gratitude for our business could not hide.  That is the human perspective, which the officials show little signs of considering in their orders.

As President Trump said this week, in the midst of the national social disruption/Great Cessation experiment, the cure must not be made worse than the problem.  Let cool, rational, and reasonable consideration prevail.  I recommend a Wall Street Journal editorial, “From Shutdown to Coronavirus Phase Two.”  It is a rational and reasonable call for a better way forward.  What we have now is hurting everyone.  There must be a better way.

Filed under Great Cessation, jobs, markets, quarantine, statism Tagged with , , , , ,

Of Bears and Working

March 23, 2020 Leave a comment

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

I can support a cute idea like this.  One of our neighbor dads plans to take his children “on a bear hunt.”  Dad has planned ahead.  He asked neighbors who have them, to put a teddy bear in the window to be spotted by his children as they walk around the block.

Being empty nesters, our home is more often host to grandchildren; few of many bears remain in our house.  Once we had dozens—of teddy bears.  We now have more than a dozen grandchildren, and I am fine with the trade.

Speaking of trading, I suppose that we could put in the window a print out of today’s stock market, sliding deeper into bear market territory, responding to yet another attempt by the Federal Reserve to stimulate market confidence.  A more than casual observation might be that these government intervention moves can do more to spook investors than reassure them.  Usually declared while the markets are closed, the moves appear lately to be followed by a sharp market sell-off.  No criticism of their intentions, but when the 5 governors at the Federal Reserve (Fed for short) are pitted against the billions of people who make trillions of economic decisions each day, the Fed is frequently worsted.  No matter how good computers are, the economy is too complex for any of the models upon which any team of experts relies.

So, no picture of the bear market for the window.  We do not wish to scare the children or their dad.

Fortunately, we did find a teddy bear in the house, left by our youngest (who still has lots of his stuff here).  The bear now sits on our front porch, awaiting discovery.  On his lap he holds a sign, one that our daughter gave us some years ago to announce the pending arrival of her first child.  The sign reads, “Grandkids welcome.  Parents by appointment.”

No, the sign was not mandated by the CDC or the governor.  Humans need social interaction.  That fact is not apparent in the government orders to isolate people indefinitely.  Dad may not go to work, children may not go to school, so it is great to see fathers and sons and daughters taking pleasant walks.  At some point, someone is going to need to pay bills to buy things produced by somebody somewhere.  I wonder whether the complex models on which the governors rely are a match for the billions of human interactions in which their millions of citizens need to engage in order to live and be happy.

Filed under economic growth, family, Federal Reserve, jobs, markets, quarantine, statism Tagged with , , , , ,

Of Introvert Heaven and What to Do with Extroverts

March 16, 2020 Leave a comment

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

The Introverts must be taking over the world.  Utterance from official sources is that gatherings—if they must take place at all—should be narrowly restrained.  The new limit is to be 50, tops.  Governors in states from New York to California are ordering these social curbs or yet stricter limitations.

Private sector organizations are closing their doors entirely, some with a mentioned end date, others indefinitely.  Sporting events—professional, amateur, scholastic, even clubs—have been shuttered.  The local rec center has closed its doors.  Movie theaters are locking up, voluntarily or by official order.  New movies are rescheduling their start dates or being offered on-line.  Schools, government and private, are sealed (home schoolers remain unaffected, no reports on what home scholars think of that).  The list grows by the hour.

In short, it all sounds like Introvert Heaven.  Stay home, keep inside, work on the computer, read a book, watch a cable movie, play a video game, take a walk, go for a drive, do a puzzle.  As an introvert myself, I recognize that while I would soon tire of it, the thought of solitary confinement has never held terror for me.

I ask, but what of the Extroverts?  No allowance seems to be made for them.  Being the father of both, I know that the sense of being “cooped up” comes quickly to extroverts, who draw personal energy from human interaction, the bigger the group, the better.  Sustained restrictions on access to people are not easily tolerable.  Social media can be a temporary substitute, but a poor substitute, clearly suboptimal for an extrovert, who craves face-to-face association, the more the merrier.  Suppressed long enough, they will revolt—no hyperbole.

Sporting events, theater, parties and such like were invented by and for extroverts.  Since they may make up half or more of the population (the Internet hosts a mildly interesting debate on the exact proportion), the broad assault on extroverts surely will have societal consequences, ones for which the introverts who seem to be making the rules (or who fancy themselves exempt) manifest little recognition.  Promising that the restrictions are probably for no longer than eight weeks offers little comfort to extroverts.  Neither should introverts who must live with them find therein any comfort.

Filed under bureaucracy, civilization, culture, freedom, personality, quarantine, statism Tagged with , , , , , ,