The Darkest Day of the Darkest Year

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Today is the winter solstice. The day in the Northern Hemisphere that is literally the shortest, and, therefore, the darkest of the year. It also feels, symbolically, that it may be the nadir in what has been a tremendously challenging year.

Currently, the United States is the undisputed world champion in COVID cases, with a lame duck president who refuses to concede and has evidently lost all interest in governing. This administration’s catastrophic lack of leadership throughout this pandemic is plainly evident in the numbers. The U.S. constitutes just 4.2% of the world population, but an astonishing 23.6% of worldwide coronavirus cases and 23.7% of worldwide deaths. The last five days, the U.S. has averaged 3,062 daily deaths from COVID — more than the total casualties of the September 11 terrorist attacks, every day. The total death toll in the U.S. stands at 323,745 — more than 3X the combined American deaths in the Vietnam and Korean Wars, more than 4X the annual drug overdoses at the height of the opioid epidemic, more than 9X the average annual deaths from influenza.

The pathetic rationale for this devastating human toll has been to protect our economy. But the administration has failed on that front as well. U.S. GDP in Q2 dropped over 9% from Q2 2019. Q3 will be down 3% from last year. Q4 is likely to be worse. That economic decline was significantly more severe than many countries, such as South Korea, Indonesia and Taiwan, that were far more restrictive in their health precautions. Japan and Germany, the third and fourth largest economies in the world, saw similar contractions in GDP to the U.S., but had dramatically lower death rates from COVID than us — 2% and 20% of our death rate, respectively. In fact, the countries that saw the biggest economic declines, including the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy, also were among the highest COVID death rates.

All this data suggests that the supposed trade off between health precautions and the economy is a false one. While COVID shut downs have certainly been devastating to some businesses, others have thrived as spending shifted. We likely would have been much better off economically as a country by simply propping up specific industries (restaurants, hotels, airlines, etc.) and implementing more restrictive health measures. The fact that the countries that have done the worst job protecting their citizens from COVID have also suffered the largest economic adversity should not be a surprise. As any life insurance actuarial can tell you, human lives have tangible economic value. When a person dies, we not only lose a life, but we lose their income, their productivity, their consumption. Death makes GDP go down.

Yet, on this darkest day, it also feels like there is light at the end of the tunnel. That it is possible things will get better from here. Of course, there are the vaccines that have been approved and are being administered as we speak. The first American was vaccinated just one week ago. Our Vice President and President-Elect have both been vaccinated on national TV, even if the right-wing media mocked Biden for it. Already, more than half a million Americans have been inoculated. As long as people do the right thing and get the vaccine when they can, which we seem gradually more likely to do, we could return to normalcy in 2021.

There is also the possibility that Congress will finally, in a rare bi-partisan act, overcome Mitch McConnell’s obstruction and pass an additional $900 billion coronavirus relief bill, possibly today. And then, of course, we are only a month away from a new administration taking office, and with it, hopefully, finally, a coherent, coordinated, fact-driven and science-based federal policy with respect to this epidemic.

This combination of factors could finally mean brighter days are ahead. That the end to the epidemic we had all hoped for is on the horizon. That we will look back at 2020, at the people and businesses we lost, and thank God that we made it to the other side. Here’s to hoping that the days, literally and figuratively, get brighter from here.