By RICK NEBEL
Los Alamos

This is a response to my old friend Pete Sheehey’s recent article. While I don’t have an issue with anything that Pete says, I think that the message it conveys has some problems.

First of all, it is highly unlikely that closing “non-essential” businesses has prevented a single death or even a single infection in Los Alamos county. Why? Because the overwhelming number of workers in Los Alamos have been deemed “essential”. 

My understanding is that 95 percent of the GRT collected by the county comes from LANL. That would indicate that the number of employees at LANL outnumber the non-LANL employees by roughly 20:1. 

Now let’s look at the remaining 5 percent of the employees in Los Alamos. All of the county employees are categorized as “essential”.  So are most of the hospital employees. Grocery store employees are “essential”. So are construction workers, financial workers, auto mechanics and plumbers. 

The bottom line is that the number of employees that are deemed “non-essential” (and have been shut down) is only a few percent of all of the employees in Los Alamos County. That would also suggest that they make up only a few percent of the social interactions in the county. So far we have had 6 COVID-19 infections in Los Alamos. A few percent of 6 is a number considerably less than 1. There have been no deaths in Los Alamos. A few percent of 0 is 0. 

So if I don’t have an issue with what Pete wrote, what is the problem? The problem is the perception.  As Henry Kissinger said, “Perception is far more important than reality”. The perception is that “non-essential” businesses are dangerous places to frequent. The cautious attitude of Pete’s piece as well as those of Sara Scott and the governor don’t say that, but their tone implies it. 

Are these businesses really dangerous? We haven’t had a single case of COVID-19 in Los Alamos for the past month. Right now, we don’t have any community transmission in Los Alamos. These “non-essential” businesses, particularly with their social distancing protocols, are safe places to visit. Our politicians need to stand up and say that.

Franklin Roosevelt’s most famous line is that “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself”. Right now, people are scared. This fear is a serious problem. If a business reopens and people are scared to come in the front door, the business is going to fail.

That’s what is going on in China right now. Their industrial capacity is now largely up and running, but they don’t have any customers. This is true both internationally (which I think they richly deserve) but domestically as well. Given the heavy-handed way their government dealt with COVID-19, their public’s fear is understandable.

Consumption is a huge part of the GNP in the US. If people are too scared to spend money, our economy is going to remain a mess.