There has long been an unwritten rule that columnists don’t use their columns to take shots at what other columnists have written. That’s a position I have always embraced, but there are exceptions.
Wyatt Emmerich’s column, published in Monday’s edition of The Dispatch is one of those.
Here’s the thing: I generally admire Wyatt’s columns, even though I disagree with them about as often as I agree. His columns are almost always thoughtful and information-driven. He does his homework. I respect that.
Monday’s column fall well short of that standard.
Columnists can — and do– sometime arrive at the wrong conclusions. It’s just one person’s opinion, after all.
But on the important issues, being wrong matters to the point where it begs for correction.
That’s the case with Monday’s column on COVID-19.
If he were simply wrong, it would pass without comment. But in this case, Wyatt isn’t simply wrong.
If he were to say 2+2=Fish, that would be more accurate than his view on this subject. He is not just particularly wrong: He is dangerously wrong.
In establishing his premise, Wyatt cited the numbers of people who die in various ways — car wrecks, falling off ladders, etc. — as if that were in an way relevant. His logic appears to be that since murder is worse than robbery, we shouldn’t worry about robbery. So he trots out all the things that are more likely to kill you than COVID-19, as if that’s in any way illuminating.
Putting aside Wyatt’s “100 Ways to Die” fixation, here’s something that is actually pertinent. The University of Washington’s Health Metric and Evaluation used modeling to predict when COVID-19 would peak in each state — in other words, when the number of cases would first begin to decline.
According to that model, COVID-19 will peak in Mississippi during the week of April 27-May 4.
That means for a solid month the number of cases and deaths in Mississippi will rise and, perhaps rise exponentially, based on what we’ve seen in other areas of the country.
It is against this backdrop, that Wyatt suggests that sheltering in place has become an overreaction, that at some point we have to remember that a prolonged halt in economic activity produces its own share of misery.
That’s not an invalid point. Where he misses the mark is that you can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy population.
Yeah, maybe, but it ain’t so bad, he says.
Yet to have arrived so early at this conclusion is like adding a column of numbers, stopping halfway through and shouting out the answer. Until we know what we are dealing with, we had better cool our jets.
Wyatt’s having none of that, though. He opines that by not resuming normal activity, we are giving in to fear. He appears to suggest we should all go out there, if for no other reason than to prove “we ain’t skeered.”
What sort of juvenile bravado is that?
As far a I am concerned, whatever emotion motivates you to use good, sound judgment is what you should do. If that means you wind up cowering in the corner in a fetal position, I’ll send over a blankie and a binkie and sing you lullabies over the phone to ease your suffering. Whatever keeps you safer — and by extension, the rest of us safer — I’m all for it.
One thing’s for sure: I would not want to be stuck in a tornado shelter with Wyatt. He’d be throwing the doors open every few seconds to see how the barn’s holding up. I’ll wait until the storm passes. Then, we’ll see how the barn made out.
Every reputable source is telling us to hunker down and let the storm pass before we try to get on with our business.
As of Wednesday, there were 1,073 COVID-19 cases and 22 deaths in Mississippi. Both numbers are going to go up probably by a lot. How much they go up will rely on our ability to follow the precautions our health officials recommend. What we do individually impacts us as a whole. That’s why Wyatt’s view is dangerous.
Listen instead to the health experts and do as they said. In the meantime, you can be as scared or frustrated or angry or bored as you choose to be.
But it’s a foolish thing to poke your head out in the middle of a storm just to prove a point.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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