Saving lives vs. saving the economy. Texas fuels the coronavirus divide.
State Rep. Rafael Anchia spent his Monday evening retweeting family photos and stories about mothers, grandfathers and abuelitas. His message was that they were more than a policy consideration and should not have to sacrifice their lives for the economy, as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick had suggested.
“Certainly I’ve been hearing from merchants associations and chambers of commerce about the pain they’ve felt and from their employees, and I don’t ever want to dismiss that,” said Anchia, a Democrat from Dallas. “But it is a bridge too far in my view to start suggesting you’re going to be affirmatively making calls on who lives and who dies. That is something I never expected any government official to be advocating for in this environment.”
But with stay at home ordinances locking down half the country’s population, including in Dallas-Fort Worth, a conflict is growing over whether tight restrictions enacted to reduce the spread of the coronavirus are outweighed by the economic costs. And Texas is fueling the divide.
On Twitter, Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said, “We must protect public health & work together to defeat this pandemic. But we also can’t let our response destroy every job in America.” Fellow Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn told Fox News, “We’re all trying to figure out what that balance is.”
Julie McCarty, chief executive officer of the True Texas Project (formerly the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party), said coronavirus restrictions damage and infringe on liberties. “We are a generous people. We are an educated people. We are an independent people,” she said over email. “If I’m 80 years old and at risk, I don’t need the government telling me to stay home. I’m smart enough to figure that out for myself. Guidelines are fine, but requirements? No.”
Michael Quinn Sullivan, leader of the influential Empower Texans organization, tweeted “We live in a fallen, sinful world. One result of which is we get sick and die. It’s either going to be from some crazy virus, or a distracted bus driver when I am crossing the street. Either way, are we so scared of dying we are willing to give up living?”
It was Patrick who brought the discussion to prominence. On Fox News Monday night he suggested he would be willing to die to save the economy. Patrick reiterated Tuesday in a telephone town hall that he wanted to put “life first” but that America could do “two things at once” and keep businesses open: “My focus is on my grandchildren and your grandchildren and the entire next generation that we have an America to leave them. On the path that we’re on right now, if we close down America, that American dream is going to disappear very quickly.”
Patrick said he had not spoken with President Donald Trump, but the president has expressed similar beliefs. Trump, defying the claims of public health officials, suggested America may be ready to jumpstart the economy and pack into churches by Easter, on April 12.
Minimizing loss of life
But Patrick was rebuffed by many others at the state level, including Gov. Greg Abbott. Asked about the economic implications of tight restrictions on businesses and gatherings because of the coronavirus, Abbott said Tuesday the state’s primary obligation was minimizing the loss of life of all Texans.
“If the goal was to get the economy going, the best thing we can do to get the economy going is to get COVID-19 behind us,” he said. “We must bend the curve on the growth of the coronavirus in Texas. As soon as we do that, the economy will come roaring back.”
Joe Straus, the Republican former state House speaker, called Patrick’s comments an “ignorant distraction.” Nearly all of Texas’ House Democrats signed a letter calling for Abbott to enact a statewide stay at home ordinance. Erin Zwiener, a Democrat state Rep. from Driftwood, said: “If we keep them where we’re at or tighten them, then we have a much better shot at getting this virus contained within a couple months and being able to resume normal economic activities sooner. And we don’t have to sacrifice grandma and grandpa for it.”
For health experts, there is no conflict. They say tight social distancing restrictions are necessary. Texas’ hospital system, according to estimates by the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council, will be filled past its 200,000-hospitalization capacity within a month if no protective steps are taken. If light restrictions that do not go as far as sheltering in place are taken, that capacity will be breached in mid-May, according to the Council. Shelter in place orders, like those adopted by Dallas and Tarrant counties, could prevent hospitals from being overburdened, according to the Council.
On Tuesday, the Council’s chief executive officer, Stephen Love, maintained that staying at home was the correct option. “The Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council is politically neutral regarding public health issues,” he said in a prepared statement. “We support ‘Stay at Home’ because the public health experts, our infectious disease doctors and epidemiologists feel it will flatten the curve regarding spreading COVID-19.”
Weighing the costs
Some economists have questioned the cost of shutting down much of America and whether coronavirus is as deadly as believed. And some proponents of scaling back coronavirus safety measures have also suggested a bad economy will claim lives. That line of thinking does not align with data from historical recessions. Erin Strumpf, an economics professor at McGill University in Montreal, was part of a research team that found the United States mortality rate actually decreased during the Great Recession and during past recessions.
But Strumpf said it is reasonable to assess the economic costs of widespread quarantine, which can cause human suffering, versus the benefits of saving lives, although perhaps not in the stark way Patrick suggested. “I think the sweet spot,” she said, “is how do we create actions that limit the spread of the disease and impact on healthcare systems and impact on people’s health while simultaneously minimizing the length of time we need to shut down the economy and limiting the length of time we’re in this social distancing mode.”
She added that a swift, forceful action to stop the virus’ spread would likely be better for the economy in the long run. “It seems like either not hitting hard enough or doing it too short or going on and off and on and off would not be effective from an economic or epidemiological standpoint,” Strumpf said.
‘Dangerous impulses’
The last two weeks, state Rep. Anchia has been on phone calls with experts on healthcare and the economy. He said they have suggested the stay at home ordinances are the best way to prevent coronavirus spread and deter economic pain in the long run. But he is concerned that Patrick and others will influence Texans to think the only way to improve the economy involves ditching the protective measures.
“During crises it is really incumbent upon all of us to resist dangerous impulses,” Anchia said, “and you’re starting to hear some of that in the public discourses when people are advocating for us to sacrifice members of our community, in my view unnecessarily.”
Anchia may find it difficult to reduce the effects of Patrick’s comments. Patrick said he had received a “tremendous response” from his Fox News appearance with a lot of it being supportive. He recommended going back to work as long as employees were being smarter about washing their hands and maintaining social distance.
“We can do two things at once,” he said. “We can continue to protect our senior citizens, and we can continue to get our economy back on track.”
Tessa Weinberg and Edward McKinley contributed to this story.
This story was originally published March 25, 2020 at 2:55 PM.
