Give people voice in how we handle COVID-19

It does seem that COVID is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. President Donald Trump's infection shows that the virus can impact anyone. But when it comes to treating COVID, one size does not fit all.

As the bombs were falling in London during World War II, the British coined the phrase “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Knowing they couldn’t hide under their beds for months, ordinary citizens refused to yield to a German military determined to destroy them. They needed to keep moving forward. To maintain as much normalcy in their lives as possible.

Part of this extraordinary response can be attributed to a strong leader in Winston Churchill. Part of it was British pragmatism — no matter how tough it got, they owed it to their families to move forward. And part of it was British pride, simply unwilling to give in to anything.

Residents of Connecticut are even more extraordinary. They want to put safety first — but they demand and deserve to have control over their lives. To have at least some input to government mandates around COVID to dramatically impact their loved ones.

The immediate and understandable reaction from leaders when hit with a medical crisis is to protect the physical health of their constituencies. Closing businesses, schools and restaurants, extended periods of isolation, and restrictions on travel are all reasonable responses if your primary goal is to eliminate any chance of the spread of new, highly infectious virus.

It is the safe way out for leaders to take. New cases or the number of people who died provide objective measures that can be used to evaluate performance — and politicians will inevitably focus on the metric that puts themselves in the best light.

In the end, nothing can make us totally “safe.” Life carries risk. Leaders could have locked down the entire country until a vaccine for COVID was found. Had they done this, more than 200,000 of our friends and family could still be alive today. But is it possible that the “cure” would have been worse than the virus?

We have two objectives in the fight against COVID. We must limit loss of life and other serious damage from the virus as it continues without a clear end date, and we must do so while also protecting the economy — jobs, economic growth and the ability for people to support themselves. Mile long lines for food giveaways at Rentschler field in Hartford are a harsh reminder that a bad economy can impact people’s health just as much as an insidious virus.

It is now clear that COVID can best be fought not by hiding under our beds, but rather by protecting our most vulnerable people, while the rest of us move forward, with caution.

Applying a one-size-fitsall solution ends up hurting everyone. For younger children, learning doesn’t come, primarily, from books or lessons but rather from their natural exuberance and curiosity. Children express themselves joyously into the world, and their growth requires games, physical movement, and vibrant social interaction. Sitting in front of a computer screen may provide a sort of facsimile of learning through adult eyes, but it’s simply not the same as tangible, in person activity for children.

This principle applies to kids of all ages. For high school athletes, the opportunity to compete in football, and other sports, represents a critical phase in their development and advancement. We should be cautious about stomping on long held dreams without more fully weighing the repercussions. Sports, plays, clubs and other school activities help young men and women build the confidence, leadership skills and discipline they can apply to the rest of their lives. It will take years to determine the impact this shutdown has had on the emotional development of young people.

But when the book on COVID is written, it is the number of people who died, not the positive tests, that will matter most. In Connecticut, more than 94 percent of deaths fell in those over 60 years of age, with a shockingly high percentage of those in nursing homes and assisted living residents. The science shows that people over 80 are hundreds of times more likely to die from COVID than those under 40. And the death rate from young people under 21 infected by COVID is less than 1 percent.

Will our fault really be that we didn’t close our schools fast enough? Or rather, that by failing to provide basic protection such as surgical gowns, gloves and masks to our must vulnerable in nursing homes, and inexplicably moving infected patients into the beds next door, that we didn’t focus on the people truly at risk?

Gov. Ned Lamont has now issued more than 60 executive orders related to COVID-19. Let’s have at least a bit of public debate on whether the policy decisions still in effect are prudent, and what we should do next. Our representatives in Hartford should be demanding hearings on Connecticut’s response to COVID, rather than deferring potentially unpopular decisions to the governor because they are up for reelection in November.

It does seem that COVID is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. President Donald Trump's infection shows that the virus can impact anyone. But when it comes to treating COVID, one size does not fit all. We need to protect our most vulnerable and, as importantly, have some say in how we do it. If we are in this for the long haul, let’s find a way to protect our most vulnerable while the rest of us keep calm and carry on.