Sending People Back to Work Now Will Not Save the Economy. It Will Doom It.
Sending People Back to Work Now Will Not Save the Economy. It Will Doom It.
By JORDAN WEISSMANN at Slate
MARCH 23, 20206:01 PM
https://slate.com/business/2020/03/trump-economy-reopen-coronavirus.html
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President Donald Trump is already having second thoughts about telling Americans to stay at home in order to limit the spread of the coronavirus, because he is worried about how badly it will hurt the economy (and, presumably, the Dow). The president reportedly began talking privately about “reopening” the country as early as last week. He’s also being nudged in that direction by conservative pundits, advisers within his own administration, and Wall Street figures who have urged a quick return to normalcy, in order to limit the blow to businesses and workers. And so we got this all-caps pronouncement on Sunday:
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!
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Let’s recall why public health officials have asked Americans to stay home in the first place. It’s not because COVID-19 is incredibly deadly (though it does appear to be more fatal than the flu). Rather, it’s because the new coronavirus is so highly contagious that if even a small percentage of the people who stand to be infected end up hospitalized, it will completely swamp our health care system, as already seems to be happening in New York. If even 20 percent of Americans catch this thing in the next year—which is the sort of best-case scenario researchers are envisioning—vast swaths of the country will run out of hospital beds. We will not have enough room in intensive care units or available ventilators to properly care for the ill. Heck, we already don’t have enough masks. Lots of people with COVID-19 will likely die because there simply will not be space or resources to keep them alive. People with other serious conditions will die as well, because they too will not be able to get care. All sorts of acute illnesses will become more deadly.
Many people will not return to their normal lives in a country that is being ravaged by an unchecked disease just because the president has announced a “reopening.” Many aren’t going to return to restaurants and bars or go on family vacations to Disney. Many companies aren’t going to tell their employees to come back to the office. Many cities and states will keep businesses shut down in order to try to contain the illness as much as possible within their own borders. But some won’t. And many Americans will try to resume life as usual, the same way many are ignoring the warnings to stay in now, which means the virus will continue spreading. We will have a half-functioning economy and nonfunctioning health care system, with untold numbers of Americans dying from an illness that causes victims to suffocate as fluid floods into their lungs, on the way to total organ failure.
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