“We may or may not have flattened the curve,” Fox News’s Brit Hume said recently, “but we’ve certainly flattened the economy.”
With that, Hume captured the fundamental dilemma of the nation’s response to the coronavirus crisis. The methods federal and state officials chose to reduce the spread of infection — stay-at-home orders, closing “nonessential” businesses, limiting the size of gatherings — have involved enormous damage to the economy. After a period of early optimism in which some believed the disease could be conquered and then — presto! — the economy quickly turned back on, a more sobering reality has set in. What lies ahead is a long period of restoration, as well as a tricky and difficult path back to physical, and then economic, health.
