When Governors Go Bad
Some of my friends don’t seem to understand some of my points of view regarding the coronavirus, so I’m going to try to clarify them with an example:
Imagine you are walking down a street by yourself when you are confronted by somebody who wants to do you bodily harm. You have some martial arts training, but you now have a decision to make: How do you respond? You actually have several options:
1) Run — In many, if not most cases, this is an excellent option, especially if you are faster than your assailant. Collateral damage will likely be nil, you won’t get hurt (well, your pride might be hurt but you’ll recover) and you won’t have to live with having inflicted injury on another human being.
2) Cause pain — The objective here is to induce the attacker to stop their assault. Punches/kicks to the groin are great in that they typically will cause no lasting harm yet will temporarily incapacitate your attacker, allowing you to escape. Other vulnerable areas of the body can be targeted as well, as can actions designed to take them off their feet (knockdowns, etc.).
3) Cause injuries — In this category you can choose to cause injuries that you hope are light enough that they will fully heal over time. Breaking their nose, breaking limbs, breaking ribs, temporarily blinding them, etc., will deter all but the most determined attackers.
4) Maim — In this case you are choosing to permanently injure your attacker. You will cause damage that they will not fully recover from. They might lose a limb, their vision or hearing, their ability to walk, etc. While this can happen accidentally in lesser responses, I’m talking here about choosing an action that you know would likely lead to maiming someone.
5) Kill — In this case you have made the decision, for whatever reason, to end their life.
I would argue that a responsible and empathetic human being would always seek to use the least damaging response on this scale depending on the level of the threat. I think we can all agree that responding to every threat with maiming and killing, especially against an attacker who is half your size and with little to no training, would be morally wrong. Most people can look at this example and see that for the most harmonious life, you would choose the least damaging option that does the job, all other things being equal.
Herein lies my problem with our Governor, and several other Governors throughout the country regarding the coronavirus.
In my opinion, they have, out of either panic, ignorance, incompetence, political motivation or otherwise, skipped over the lesser responses and moved directly to the harshest possible responses, when lesser responses quite probably would have been sufficient.
No thinking person would try to argue that social distancing or the temporary closure of businesses wasn’t warranted. But was it necessary to close down locations that weren’t even hit by the virus? Was it necessary to close down certain businesses, schools, etc., when mitigation steps could have been taken (as we have seen successfully done in other areas)? How about you close the worst hit locations and secure those who we now know are most vulnerable…a strategy that has worked well in other situations and even today is proving to work reasonably well in other locations?
Too many people are arguing that if you think these Governors have gone to far, you must want NO response. Business as usual. No mitigation. That is faulty, intellectually dishonest and lazy thinking.
Some argue: “But you risk more people dying if you don’t take the most stringent lock down possible.” While there is some truth to this, the more accurate statement would be that taking the most stringent lock down choices for an extended period of time will cause rampant unemployment, which will cause a DIFFERENT set of people to die. The historical evidence that such unemployment kills people via suicide, substance abuse, crime, etc. is overwhelming. There are no decisions that are risk free. Even in the example above, the option to “run” has it’s own risks (what if the person goes off and kills somebody not able to defend themselves?). There is no risk-free decision here.
I support our Governor even though I did not and would not vote for her. I WANT her to do well, because when she does well the entire state does well. But I will NOT sit by silently while she takes the absolute most heavy-handed responses to this crisis, depriving citizens of their liberties, and then flippantly responds to protestors exercising their constitutionally protected rights, when she had other less-damaging options she could have considered.
I’ve held out adopting an opinion on her for as long as I could, but repeated press appearances has made it clear to me that she is not operating from a place of wisdom. Even so, I’m praying for her success.
