Apologies in advance to the misfits of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, who treat even the mention of reopening the U.S. economy as a threat to human existence, but this piece is going to be all about the eventual resumption of normal business. It will have to happen sooner or later — and preferably sooner rather than later.
As of right now, we have another 20 days to go under federal guidance that everyone in the country, outside of essential business workers, stay home, not work, and avoid friends and family. Individual states and Washington, D.C., may very well extend those guidelines on their own, as they assess their particular outbreaks and infections of the China-born virus.
But even though it’s the federal government’s job to defend the nation, it’s also responsible for tending to the health of the economy, which cannot sustain an open-ended shutdown for the long term.
Things have to begin reopening, one way or another. No matter how difficult, it will happen, even if the circumstances aren’t ideal.
Granted, that won’t make the Morning Joe people happy. On Friday, show co-host Mika Brzezinski insisted that testing for everyone in the country of 330 million people is “months and months away,” as is a vaccine. “That’s the only way to start to get people back to work,” she bellowed. “You have to have millions and millions of tests, frankly, faster and better than we have done to date.”
Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreed, telling Brzezinski, “Is it going to take us months to come to scale on rapid testing? That’s the only way to start to get people back to work.”
I’m not sure where any of them get the idea that 100% of the country needs to have been tested in order for people to start getting back to their livelihoods, but it’s not going to happen. Even if there were enough tests for everyone, there would be no way to ensure everyone made sure to get it done.
There are a lot of communicable diseases that can lead to death — HIV, the flu, and meningitis, to name a few. We have never tested every single person for those things and then quarantined them for coming up positive. That’s not a direct comparison, of course, but despite the prevalence of deadly communicable diseases, we manage to get along.
We have to accept that, yes, a number of people will continue to die from the coronavirus, just as some people die each year from car crashes (more than 35,000 in 2019) or unintentional drownings (about 10 per day).
The administration has previously suggested that the opening of the economy might happen gradually, with certain regions of the country getting back to work more quickly than others. There might even be subsequent new calls for more social distancing.
The social distancing, according to health experts, is working. The number of hospital admissions has fallen, a step toward the first goal, which was dampening the rate of severe infection.
It’s not over, but the fact remains that the vast majority of people experience only mild symptoms of the virus, and among those who are admitted to the hospital, at least 97% recover. (Globally, it’s looking more like 99.5% recover, but data are still coming in.)
In order to begin the steps of reopening large portions of the economy, there will need to be some assurance that more testing has become available and hospitals are not in danger of being overwhelmed by new cases. All indications are that we’re heading in that direction, with even New York, the most severely affected city, managing the crisis and seeing a drop in hospitalizations.
Trump said Friday that he would make a decision once we reach the end of the month. If the current trends continue, it’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to justify yet another month of universal quarantine.
