On the Eve of Our Turning Point

The night before the lockdowns began, I laid alone in bed, listening to National Public Radio affiliate WNYC-FM in the dark. A newscaster grimly announced that New York Governor Cuomo would, the next day, issue a 15 day “Shelter in Place Order.”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. Put a state of 22 million on house arrest? Over a respiratory virus that was linked to deaths of a tiny fraction of old Italians and Spaniards? Over a hokey video of some Chinese guy laying on the sidewalk scissoring his legs? When had healthy people ever been locked down? What made this virus different from any other virus?

Exclamation points should follow each of the preceding questions. 

A few nights prior, on my way back from the county ice rink, I had stopped at Home Depot near closing time to buy a bucket of paint. The tall, fiftyish guy behind the counter and I both commented on how quiet the store was. He mocked the emerging notion that New Jersey might be shut down because one very sick nursing home resident well into his nineties was said to have died from a virus.

The paint mixer was the last reasonable stranger I would meet for a while. It turned out that he was smarter than many medical “experts,” governors, big city mayors, TV commentators, and college presidents. And the US President and Congress.

After millennia of human history and broad improvements in living conditions had enabled the world population to grow to 7.6 billion, why would anyone expect a virus unlike any other to suddenly burst onto the scene and decimate humanity? How was a society-wide shutdown going to crush a virus? How could a thoroughly globalized nation of 330 million people or a New York Metro Area with 25 million residents in a 50-mile radius be permanently made sterile?

Didn’t people know how tiny, pervasive, and adaptable viruses were? How could the government take away peoples’ inalienable, fundamental freedom to move through their world in order to pursue happiness? Above all, wouldn’t this sequestration of hundreds of millions of healthy people cause far more harm than it could possibly prevent?

Life needed to go on, with people chasing what they chase to give their lives meaning while assessing and managing their own, very slight risk. Life is hard enough for most people—especially the young—under normal conditions, without adding the immense challenges that mass isolation would create.

I shut off the radio and stared into the darkness, uncharacteristically filled with dread.

On the darkest night of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bob Dylan hunkered down in his room and wrote A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, which foretold what he thought was imminent nuclear war. I felt the same profound dread on the eve of the lockdowns.

I got out of bed, switched on my computer and wrote the following:

From: Mark Oshinskie <forecheck32@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 2:31 AM
Subject: Coronavirus and Generational Injustice
To: Editorial <oped@washpost.com>

THE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE AND GENERATIONAL INJUSTICE

I don’t hate old people. I am one, or so I’m told.  I’ve probably visited more people–including non-relatives–in nursing homes than have 90% of Americans. 

But it’s neither sensible nor fair to shut down society over Coronavirus, largely in an attempt to extend the lives of a small percentage of people who have already lived a long time or who have bodies made old by overeating or smoking.

The death toll from Coronavirus is not shockingly high. The vast majority recover from Coronavirus with little or no treatment.  In a normal winter, 20,000-60,000 people die from conventional strains of the flu; flu vaccines are typically only 60% effective and only 40% of adults get vaccinated. We haven’t shut down society over the flu. As with the flu, those at risk from Coronavirus complications can, and should, self-quarantine.

Most fundamentally, those who have lived into their sixties, or beyond, have had a good chance at life. It’s sad when old people die. But it’s not tragic. It’s how life is. 

Many people my age care, or have cared, for parents who spent years in poor physical, mental, and cognitive health. Almost all caretakers have wearily told me stories about caretaking’s physical and emotional toll.  Those who don’t complain about this tend to have done very little caretaking.

Upon the passing of their parents, most caretakers express that the departed person, and they, had undergone a too-long ordeal. These caretakers are not bad people. To the contrary, they are some of the best people I’ve known. They are simply reacting to the superhuman challenge presented by caring for those who would have died earlier of natural causes in prior decades, before we used life-extending, but not healing, medical measures. Should society and the medical system strive to keep every person alive until they are old, lonely, debilitated and incoherent in a nursing home? And, once they’ve reached the nursing home, for many additional years? 

In the meanwhile, by closing all places of human interaction, we are deeply damaging what remains of social life in the TV/Internet age, especially for young people. Students are being deprived of slices of their education, time with peers, and activities that create both near term happiness and lasting memories, e.g., school musicals, sports games, volunteer work, and class trips. Adults are also missing out on life and health-sustaining time with others.

Further, by limiting human interaction among the non-elderly, it will only become harder for previously working adults to earn a living. The stress caused by these earning shortfalls will itself cause physical and mental pathologies among those not already worn out or ill. Additionally, workers won’t be able to supply governments or NGOs with the tax or donation revenue needed to supply the goods and services that these entities provide.    

Moreover, younger people will struggle to launch careers and build families in a faltering economy as they pay increasingly more to subsidize a medical system that extends old age at high cost. With business profits and the stock market diving, those in their late fifties and beyond will need to work additional years to make up the economic ground lost. Social Security and pension funds will take a huge hit, compensated for by decades of higher contributions by young people. 

This country has sent millions of young people, many in their teens, to be killed or maimed in a series of wars, ostensibly to allow others to more fully live their lives. If we have invoked the collective interest to justify such extreme individual sacrifice from those who still had many vital years ahead of them, wouldn’t it be fair to weigh the costs to the larger, younger group imposed by shutting down the country in an attempt to slightly extend the lives of a relatively small number of old and already ill individuals? 

When the human life span was around 40, the Roman philosopher Seneca said, “The problem is not that life is too short, it’s that we waste too much of it.” 

This is truer, and more relevant, than ever. 

Mark Oshinskie

New Brunswick, NJ

732-249-XXXX

—

I sent it to many newspapers, none of whom would publish it:

The rest is history.

Republished from the author’s Substack