IS THE CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE?

The overriding sentiment among those who are prepping for a pandemic is to isolate themselves and their families, perhaps for a year or longer, and wait for the pandemic to burn out. I understand this reaction, and most of you know, I have grave misgivings about what this strategy will mean for our society.

If everybody hunkers down, utilities will fail, medicines and food will not be delivered, and if a vaccine becomes available, there will be no one to distribute it, or inoculate the public. The Domino effect, I fear, will kill far more than the virus.

And by isolating ourselves, are we simply prolonging the pandemic? When will it be safe to emerge? When reported cases in your area go down? What happens when people emerge, still without immunity, and a new wave starts up? How long before you can be sure the virus has disappeared? Two years? Five years?

The number of people in our society that will be able to prep for that kind of isolation will be pitifully small. Most will be lucky to be able to hold out a couple of months.

The concept of a `cure’ for your family, locking the doors, barring the windows, and waiting it out is not going to be as easy as you might think. While most of you may be thinking about long evenings spent by candlelight, playing scrabble, monitoring your defenses, and preserving the `family unit’, the realities are likely to be far different.

I spent 13 years living aboard a sailboat with my wife and cat. I cruised among a subset of society that, of their own volition, had chosen that lifestyle. Most were couples. Some were happy. Many were not, and good marriages of many years were destroyed in a matter of months. Until you’ve lived under stressful conditions, in close quarters, 24/7 with one or more other people, you have no idea what you are in for.

And remember, the stress level sitting at anchor in paradise and enduring the occasional storm, sipping rum drinks, soaking up the sunshine, and munching on fresh lobster was less than you are likely to encounter in a barricaded home during a pandemic.

If the power goes out, you will either be too hot or too cold. If the sewers back up because the lift stations go down for lack of electricity, you will be faced with major sanitation problems, and may have to leave the house to bury the waste. Your diet will be bland and repetitive, and for many, short rations. TV and Internet may be non-existent. If you are receiving news from the outside, it is only likely to heighten your fears. And if you see fires burning on the horizon, or looters in the street, your panic is likely be overwhelming.

After awhile, you may find yourself caressing a butcher knife while you examine your spouse’s neck veins from across the dining room table. If you fear that the virus threatens you, consider that domestic violence and severe psychiatric illness may well become endemic among those who are sequestered.

What will you do when the cabin fever becomes over whelming? It’s a real consideration. Maybe you can handle it. But can your spouse? Or your kids? What happens if you discover your 15-year-old daughter has been sneaking out her bedroom window at night to meet her friends down the block? Are you going to banish her from the house? Quarantine her in the garage for two weeks? I’m sure either of those solutions is going to help the family unit bond.

What happens if a family member is injured beyond your ability to care for them. A child is burned, or perhaps an appendix bursts. Will you draw straws to determine who takes the child out of the house in search of medical care, with the understanding that the `loser’ will not be allowed to return?

I could cite hundreds of other sequestering nightmares, but I will stop here.

The question remains, is strict isolation for months on end really realistic? And is the price we pay as a society, the loss of infrastructure, worth it? While the virus may claim a million or more victims in the US, how many more will die from our reluctance to assume some risks and fight back?

In short, is this cure worse than the disease?