If we think we overreacted to coronavirus, it will mean we did the right thing

Last week, when Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine closed his state’s schools for three weeks in response to the coronavirus outbreak, it struck me as a stark overreaction. Days later, it became clear that my own son’s school may be closed at least that long. The sliding scale of what seems rational is moving by the day, if not by the hour.

The stoppage of the NBA season was stunning, even with the discovery of a player who tested positive for the disease. But days later, as the NHL and XFL suspended as well, joined by Major League Baseball delaying its season, a sports drought became the new normal.

Now, we are asked to absorb vast business closures coupled with the government recommending against or outright forbidding gatherings of smaller and smaller groups of people. As the ripples of this economic and societal shutdown prepare to dislodge the lives of millions of Americans, we are surely entitled to ask: Is all of this necessary?

And then arrives the added frustration. There is no way to know.

Coronavirus cases in America continue to climb upward — not yet like the spikes erupting in Europe, and no nation is close to the total cases amassed in China, where the virus originated. But it’s a concern of serious proportion to mobilize states of emergency across the landscape. Business are shutting doors, many on order from government. Luckier employees are able to work from home, while countless others have been sidelined indefinitely.

We have no idea what the coronavirus toll in America will be. But we do know this: The effects of the current shutdown will be staggering to the lives of millions.

Businesses will fail. Families will struggle. Households will scramble desperately as incomes fall or dry up completely. Church doors are closed, with only a few able to offer a worship alternative online. Kids approaching moments anticipated for a lifetime — a prom, a graduation — may see those moments eaten alive by the decision to grind life to a halt to stem the spread of a virus with a small fraction of the lethality of past outbreaks that did not prod us to actions this severe.

But that may be the point. Perhaps the human cost of past viruses would have been mitigated had we taken actions this stringent. There is no do-over that would prove that, just as there is no way to know whether the draconian measures under way today are necessary.

None of the doctors and government officials preaching the wisdom of these responses will lose their livelihoods as they are enacted. It is a giant leap of trust they are asking of people, many of whose lives will be ruined.

But as surely as some lives will be knocked off kilter, others may be saved by the closures. So comes the uncomfortable question: Is the trade-off worth it?

We have endured past viruses with far higher death tolls without dropping a bomb on our standard of living. The lives spared, however many or few, will come at a cost: countless shattered lives and shuttered businesses, with untold billions lost in terms of current income and retirement nest eggs.

No matter the response, we are gambling with people’s lives. A harsh response means vast hardship, but a less arduous response may mean a higher death toll. No one has the predictive ability to know the best balance to strike.

When we as a nation can get back to work, back to school and back into church — when we can start going to sporting events again, put weddings back on the calendar and embrace the normalcy we should never take for granted — let us hope that we look back on this chapter and say it does indeed look like we overreacted, and that will be the evidence that we did the right thing.