Last week on the news I saw that Dr. Wilma Wooten was receiving some award.
For those unfamiliar with Dr. Wooten has been with the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency since 2001, initially as Deputy Health Officer and, since 2007, as the Public Health Officer.
Statewide, Mark Ghaly, MD, is the secretary for the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS). Every week or two he is on the TV news and in the newspapers announcing the latest Covid stats for California and it’s individual counties. He then relates which counties are doing poorly and thus are going to be punished via business closures and cutbacks.
While most everyone is familiar with the health gurus . . . think Dr. Fauci . . . are there any coincident economic gurus? If there are, I do not know any of their names or faces. In good faith I would assume that the leaders in our state, and our city are consulting with economists when decisions are being made. However, when the state and local health gurus read off the one week or the two week Covid stats, I never hear anything about the economic consequence of dropping a county from the red tier to the purple tier. Do Dr. Wooten and Dr. Ghaly know what happens to certain struggling small business owners when they are bureaucratically forced to shut down, sometimes for the second or third time? My gut response is “no,” they have no idea, and if they do have an idea, why is this not announced?
How come we do not hear something like this from the bureaucrats that know best and are running the show? For example: “This week the number of new Covid cases went from xxx to yyy. Because of this increase, your county’s new number is above our guidelines, and consequently your county will be going down a tier. This ratcheting down of a tier at this moment in time is likely to cost xxx people their jobs, and it is likely to result in an additional yyy restaurants, bars, gyms, etc. closing forever.
Does these practical consequences have any import? Obviously the economic impacts have dramatic consequences not only in 2020, but probably for many, many years to come. Most of these businesses that are continually being forced to close will not be coming back.
Does the public deserve to know more than just the weekly Covid health stats? For the Kens and the Karens all they want are the worrisome Covid stats. However, I think that more good would be accomplished by providing stats that tell the whole story, including the economic death-knell that is being forced down our throats as well as the throats of many slowly dying business owners.
Should there be a balance here?
Should we all be aware of the entire story?