A Medically Induced Economic Coma is Our Only Hope

We also can and should resurrect the spirit of community and volunteerism that carried the LGBT community through the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Doing so would restore much of our country’s soul. 

By Timothy P. Holmberg

If we view the economy as an living body that has just received a massive trauma, which it surely has, then the medical profession has an answer for what ails us at this moment. A body so traumatized is often put into a medically induced coma to help prevent total collapse, and give vital time to apply the proper therapies. 

The analogy is quite apt, if you think about it. Look closely, and you will see our economy has a circulatory system, respiratory system (currently infected), digestive, nervous system, all of which are descending into shock. 

The Coronavirus presents us with a unique circumstance; we must slow the rate of spread in our population in order to prevent a calamitous breakdown of our medical systems and possibly society itself. But doing so requires extreme interventions that will, out of necessity, shutter major components of our economy (as is well underway). 

To hear some political leaders discuss the needs at hand, one would think this a brief malady to our economy which will pass in a few weeks, as it does for the luckier COVID19 patients. But those sentiments belie some fundamental realities.

This pandemic will be with us for at *least* 8 months before a cure can begin to change the disease dynamics. Which means that our attempts to “flatten” the infection curve will have to be sustained for at least that time. 

While our current sequestration of the population will surely deliver a slowing of our viral foe, it will not erase it. And it will certainly pick up where it left off once such measures are lifted. That in turn will require the reimposition of sequestering measures. 

Such a rolling economic blackout will ultimately do immeasurable, and perhaps permanent damage to the global economy. It should be noted that doing nothing would likely net the same result, but with a grizzly and hopefully unthinkable consequence. In either case, swaths of small businesses are already set to vanish just from this first round of pain. 

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin likely momentarily stepped back from the universe of alternative facts when he let slip that the US unemployment rate may surge to 20%. 

That is optimistic. But it's far more realistic than we are used to hearing from an administration that has made lying into a tawdry art form. In truth, virtually every sector of the economy will be touched, and no pile of cash, no matter how large, will stave this off. To commit to this path would surely drive the US government into a fiscal meltdown in the not too distant future. Beyond that, a $1000 check is almost an insult to the hardships starring down every family in this country. 

Our country’s economic health chart, if we are to be brutally honest, would make us an unlikely survivor. We went into this crisis with over half our population having cash to handle less than a month worth of expenses. The combined litany of health and economic statistics that were the daily staple of Bernie Sanders’ campaign, would make his gadfly warning chant seem more prophesy than anyone was willing to hear. 

Our national healthcare system, if it is to be called a system at all, was already stretched to capacity. Emergency rooms were the de facto point of access for much of our population; overcrowded and thus virtually made to transmit an aggressive virus. Millions are uninsured, in spite of the Affordable Care Act, and many millions more are underinsured. Ours is a system dominated by quarterly profits that knows less about healing than it does about dividends. 

Legions of working poor are already relying on food assistance. A soaring homeless population. Runaway rents. And a crumbling infrastructure whose paint alone is peeling faster than we seem to be able to keep up with. With so much of the country’s wealth piled up on the balance sheets of so few, we are forced to use a maxed out credit card to simply keep our nation (and mostly large corporations) afloat in the coming weeks. 

It is thus unsurprising that many are mining the New Deal and wartime mobilization of our economy in the 1940’s for ideas. The truth is that we never so much got ourselves out of the Great Depression as we sidestepped it. That in no way diminishes the accomplishment, which was and is extraordinary. It is a period, that if studied well has a wealth of lessons to light the way for us today (would that we had an FDR to go with them). We did, in point of fact, place much of our economy on pause, and refocused nearly everything else available to the war effort.

So, what is needed for this day and this crisis is to place the majority of our economy into a medically induced coma of sorts. We must do this to preserve not only its capacity, but its balance. Non-essential portions must be shuttered and placed in stasis, so they may be resuscitated later once the storm has passed. 

Mortgages must be suspended, rents reduced to basic sustainment of properties. Car loans, credit card debt and all other manner of recurring financial obligation must be halted or reduced to a minimum, interest only mode. Food and income assistance must be rapidly ramped up, and relevant industries converted to serving vital functions such as food, energy, water, etc. Basic subsistence programs could be formed for small businesses. The arts too must not be neglected, for we surely will need them to help document and articulate the meaning of all this to future generations. 

The pause in action for our infrastructure provides a grand opportunity to fix and renovate it. So when the economy revives, it is to a more capable and secure infrastructure. Basic income must be provided, and all profit removed from pricing so as to stretch assistance to its maximum. Airlines must be shifted to logistics operations and emergency transport. Restaurants could be temporarily repurposed to providing hot meals to those who lack that ability. 

We also can and should resurrect the spirit of community and volunteerism that carried the LGBT community through the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Doing so would restore much of our country’s soul. 

Were we to have the leader we need, this would also be the inflection point at which we make our largest shift away from fossil fuels so that the clouds of CO2 will not come flooding back as we reopen for business. 

This is a moment of reckoning for humanity. We could pull from this tragedy a better future, and later generations would thank us. Or, we could resume our selfishness and reap further disaster that will eventually break global civilization. Hopefully we will be called to the former, rather than slouch to the later.

Timothy P. Holmberg is a former staff reporter and contributor to the Gay & Lesbian Times, SD LGBT Weekly and San Diego Free Press. He currently writes independently on politics and LGBT issues.