Health or economy is a false choice

OUR SOCIETY does not get to choose between a bad pandemic and a bad economy. This is not an either/or decision, despite what President Trump intimates.

We get to have the bad pandemic no matter what. It is the biology of the situation. The bug is going to go through us based on its own biologic proclivities, no matter what. We can choose as a society to mitigate it or not. It will continue until it is done with us.

On the economic side, health care in the U.S. represents about 1/6 or 18% of our GDP. If we ignore the COVID-19 pandemic and go on with our lives as if nothing has happened, this 18% of our economy would be devastated. Not only that, but how much of the economic system downstream depends on a functioning health care system?

What happens to our health care system if it is allowed to crumble in the face of this catastrophe? No number of ventilators, ICU beds, N95 masks means anything if we burn out our health care workers through exhaustion and the virus itself. In fact, they are already at risk. What would the country be facing if the pandemic is allowed to run its course with no intervention? The real bottom line is even more of an economic hit.

If we do nothing, the economy takes a huge hit. If we do something, the economy takes a huge hit. It is not one or the other. It is not, as the president says, the “cure being worse than the disease.” We are not going to “cure” the pandemic through our activities. We are only going to mitigate it, if we are both smart and lucky. We have only a chance to lessen the impact on that 1/6 of our economy.

We can only live through this pandemic while doing everything in our power to find treatments, vaccines, whatever might lessen the impact. Magical thinking will not help us. Pray and hope that we do find ways to blunt its impact.

But please. We must disabuse ourselves of this notion we have a binary choice – the economic vs. the pandemic. We get both.

TIM N. TAYLOR Albuquerque