Many readers will recently have watched a delightful viral video of two Italian girls, one 11 and the other 13, on the flat roofs of Liguria, playing tennis across the gap between their homes.
It’s a charming example of how people adapt to circumstances to survive — or merely to do what they wish to do. There are thousands of others: In Israel, kiosks have been built to serve as sanitary coronavirus testing booths, and road crews are mending potholes at record pace because there’s no traffic to interrupt them; in Bethesda, a restaurant wholesaler has switched to supplying retail customers who need only drive to a local school, pop the trunk of their car, and have it filled with ordered groceries; or there’s the seamstress at my dry cleaner who switched to making face masks and selling them at premium prices.
In the Baltics, as The New Yorker magazine reported, forward thinking became natural as the clock ticked toward the end of Soviet tyranny. Now, public spaces in Lithuania are being turned into giant open-air restaurants. As long as tables are set 2 meters apart, businesses can operate in the open air, where infection is unlikely. Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius is quoted by the Daily Beast saying, “Plazas, squares, streets — nearby cafes will be allowed to set up outdoor tables free of charge this season and thus conduct their activities during quarantine.”
One hopes these displays of imagination and of a will to succeed will be nurtured rather than suppressed at all levels of government in America. They should indeed be replicated in our vast bureaucracies, which have a mixed record at best — viz the boneheaded prohibition on recreational fishing in Maryland.
The whole country is about to emerge from restrictive lockdowns that have slowed the spread of COVID-19 infection but have inflicted unprecedented economic damage. There is simply no way businesses or many people would accept a second round of extreme social distancing — there is dark talk of such a thing coming this autumn — so federal, state, and local officials have no higher duty than to provide clear help so people can get back to work and to their (near) normal lives without letting the flattened “curve” soar upward again.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued disinfectant guidelines on Tuesday so businesses know what needs to be cleaned and how often in the workplace. This is just the sort of thing, facilitating adapted normalcy, that is needed to give both employers and staff the confidence to get on with their lives. It is right, too, that President Trump should use the Defense Production Act to order meatpacking plants to remain open, for the supply chain is breaking. That order will not force reluctant people back to work, and extra protective measures will be taken for those who do so voluntarily. But it will allow people to earn a paycheck, and it will prevent a vital industry from collapsing.
On the flip side, our pols sometimes seem to want to stanch industriousness. The Wall Street Journal reported that half of all workers earn more from recently boosted unemployment benefits than they did in their jobs before being furloughed. It always seemed at least partly contradictory that Congress and the president would stimulate the economy by splashing out cash with one hand and yet, on the other hand, order a deliberate suppression of the economy with shelter-in-place policies. Yes, putting money in people’s pockets gives them spending power for rent and food, but giving more than double the money they’d normally receive for unemployment is not a way that helps get the economy back on its feet quickly when possible.
It may well be the Democrats don’t want a V-shaped economic recovery — a snap back with fast growth that undoes the hideous damage of the past seven weeks. They certainly don’t want rapid expansion and rebounding optimism when voters go to the polls in November. Most of them don’t say so explicitly, although Bill Maher yearned only partly in jest in 2018 for a “crashing economy” to defeat Trump.
Let us hope and give the benefit of considerable doubt, let us assume that at least most of those people animated by a desire to oust the president, do not obsess so much about that goal as to accept the destruction of the hopes and dreams of millions of their fellow citizens. That being so, it is vital that all official efforts now nurture imaginative thinking, entrepreneurship, and individual wealth-creating activity. Don’t get in the way. Where possible, grease the skids.
If young girls on Italian rooftops can bridge the gap on their social distance, it’s the least we can expect of people who put themselves forward as fit to govern.
