Nobody seems to be talking about the elephant in the room: the president's raging conflict of interest. He owns a major equity stake in a business that is being harmed by the public health response to the pandemic, and his actions are what you'd expect from someone who prioritizes that business over the interests of public health.
This is exactly why previous presidents have put their assets in a blind trust. We shouldn't have to question whether the White House is more concerned with their personal bottom line than the public interest, but here we are.
Sure, but a president with assets in a blind trust wouldn't be in a position where he could direct an appointee to bail out his own personal business with public funds.
It’s a company owned by his family, bearing his family name that he ran personally for over half a century. How could a blind trust make him forget how to benefit it?
When his presidency is over, he knows exactly what company he will be going back to. It’s not like it’s a bucket of anonymous stocks, that he doesn’t care about except for it to gain in value. People with family businesses care more about the success of the business, than simply being rich.
Nobody is talking about conflict of interest not because it's an unworthy issue of governance, but because this question has already been tested and America has already answered -- it's okay.
This was never up for a public vote, but every other public office and judicial appointment has clear ethical guidelines for conflict of interest. The only reason it was never legislated for the president was because up until now, no president has been willing to brazenly violate ethical norms.
Things don't have to go up for a public vote to test whether a message has political potency in the hearts of Americans. It was tested in the media. Similarly, Coke's messaging doesn't have to go up for a vote to see whether it has the potency to win over the hearts of Americans.
The message of President Trump's conflicts of interests has already been tested and America shrugged. When there's only so much air in the room it's important to pick messaging that wins.
There hasn't been a test of public opinion when the president's personal business could be the recipient of public funds at his direction.
To further refute your point: the public didn't shrug, they voted against his election by millions of votes. Furthermore, the duration that his approval rating has been above 50% during the entirety of his presidency is unprecedented in its briefness.
I'm not sure why you're talking about the election, because back then the story was that Hillary Clinton had a big lead, and Donald Trump was going to be transparent about how his money and business worked.
Since then, we've heard a steady drumbeat of news about President Trump's nepotism and self-dealing. How would you rank the impact of such news vs. the Mueller report, or the treatment of immigrants at the border? There won't be a Emolument Report either.
Yes, just one more Trump is Selfish and Plays Golf article, or Where are Trump's Tax Returns, or Why are Trump's Kids in Office, or Why is the Navy Boozing it Up at Trump Estates, or Why is there link between Trump and Saudi money. Yes, there's blood in the water.
Maybe a second push for impeachment on these very issues.
So are you arguing that conflict of interest is okay, or that the political system is so horribly corrupt that this is just another line item in the list and not worth pursuing in light of the more egregious violations?
Plenty of people who care about corruption are members of the public and are not okay with it, so saying 'the public' is 'okay with it' is simply wrongheaded. A narrow group of partisans are okay with it, because they are partisans.
People who care about corruption being rooted out aren't really the types of people who are gearing up to riot in the streets.
I should also point out the small matter of the 2018 election, where the republican majority in the House of Representatives was neatly demolished.
I don't think any president has ever been elected by the majority of the voting populace. The highest voter turnout in the past 50 years, as a percentage of VAP, was in 2008 with 58.2% voting. Obama received 52.9% of the votes in that election. That means he actively received the support of only 30% of the voting populace (.582 * .529).
“If you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy, then it’s no contest. No American is going to say accelerate the economy at the cost of human life” - Cuomo
Unfortunately, this just isn't true. Is life worth living if you're destitute and living in poverty or emotional turmoil? Won't a strong economy increase the pace at which we develop and produce life saving technologies?
At a certain point of economic ruin, I think many people will choose a strong economy over saving lives. The question is more so what the tipping point is. It seems hard to quantify and compare the total impact a strong economy has versus lives saved, but I think it's definitely worth having the conversation. Ultimately, this is a value judgment so there's no objective answer.
Actually, this pandemic can go away forever with a month of global lockdown, it's not like from now on people must stay at home forever or they will die. With good coordination, most things should be able to continue as normal. Many countries, rich or poor, have religious holidays that stop the economy for up to a week or two and nothing happens.
Besides, even if somehow the economy crashes it's not the end of the world. It's simply not a big deal as long as the society doesn't crash.
After a month of low economic activity, people will still be engineers or scientists or artists, the infrastructure will still be in place and the output it will quickly pick up.
It doesn't have to have any real costs, except maybe some goods to expire.
Therein lies the problem; people, countries, religions, politicians (dem/rep/liberal/conservative), etc would all have to actually work together. Coordination is what this entire response, globally, is lacking.
It's a real dilemma, and it's forcing uncomfortable questions about how many dollars a person-year of life is worth.
We can avoid this terrible trade-off by realizing it's a false choice. We don't have to trade lives for GDP. There is a third option.
We could take a lesson from Singapore, Taiwan and Korea.
We could test millions of people, even those with no symptoms. We could aggressively isolate the positives, and allow the negatives to get on with life, with common sense disinfecting, physical distancing and universal mask wearing.
There is a path out of this dilemma, but in the US it's pretty difficult to execute in the absence of national leadership, with every neighborhood, town, city, county and state left on their own to figure this out.
It's too late for extensive testing. The US is analogous to someone who was just exposed to a massively lethal dose of radiation, but still mostly feels fine for now. The damage is already done, and it's going to start showing up regardless of what is done to prevent it.
Covid-19 has already massively spread in the US, and it's just a matter of days before large amounts of the population become symptomatic. It's too late to do anything about what's coming, and what's coming is going to be really bad.
> It's too late to do anything about what's coming
On one side we have health officials saying "for the love of god, keep the barriers up".
On the other, we have politicians saying "we waited as long as we can, send in as many people as we need to sweep up the supercritical plutonium, it 'won\'t make a difference now' if the PPE isn't there".
Again, with "quality" versus "quantity" it sounds like you're saying that there could be a lower quantity of people (some people die) in order to increase the quality of life for others.
If you're asking for my personal evaluation, yes, I believe that at a certain point, it's clearly worth trading quality of life for quantity of life. This applies to my own life. For example, I would rather take a 50% chance at survival versus living the rest of my life in abject poverty and emotional turmoil.
I'm going to guess that you're no where near having to actually make that decision for your self, thus you're comfortable making that statement on behalf of others.
I only speak for myself and would feel uncomfortable enforcing my values on others. That's why my comment posed this more as an open question and discussion.
You seem to be aggressively avoiding any critical thinking, so here's a thought game for you to play:
You have two choices:
1: 0% chance of dying from Covid-19, but you lose your job, you're evicted from your home, and have no clear path back to normalcy for the foreseeable future.
2: 3% chance of dying from Covid-19, but you still have a job, a home, and a fairly normal life.
This is the choice being made for millions of people in the world without their input. It's not so black and white as you want to make it out to be.
World War 2 killed only 0.3% of Americans. When 3% of Americans die, you will lose your job, there's a very good chance you will lose your home, and good luck having a normal life.
Losing 3% of Americans, spread equally throughout the population, would be bad for the economy. Losing 20% of retirees, though... That would be fantastic for the US economy.
And guess what? Covid-19 kills mostly retirees.
So no, they probably wouldn't be losing their job in that scenario, unless of course their job is to take care of the old in some way.
I really don't get what the point of your argument here is. It's such a bad comparison.
The US came out of WW2 with an amazing economy.
Also this isn't a war.
And your augment is openly self defeating, since it takes 5 seconds to find out that 3% of the world population died in WW2, and slightly more than a minute to find out that 12.7% of the Russian population died - only for them to become a world super power immediately after the end of the war.
Are you arguing for bringing the economy back online?
There's no free win option here. Every choice has its cost.
That social support system has to come from taking a slice out of the economy. And who is going to be paying for that social support system while the economy is shut down? There's no god of socialism who will simply rain infinite amounts of manna upon us in the form of debt just because we will it to happen.
> That social support system has to come from taking a slice out of the economy. And who is going to be paying for that social support system while the economy is shut down? There's no god of socialism who will simply rain infinite amounts of manna upon us in the form of debt just because we will it to happen.
Surely, you're aware that we're currently printing money hand-over-fist, to help corporations make ends meet in the short-term? We've already printed 1.7 trillion dollars, for this purpose, and that was entirely at the discretion of the Fed.
When the dust settles, and QE ends, many of those loans will not be made good on.
If a stroke of a pen by an unelected bureaucrat can parachute 1.7 trillion in corporate bailouts, surely, we can figure out how to make grocery bills for a few months.
Helicopter money is fine if it exists to prop up the market. And if it vanishes ~30 minutes after we put it in, who gives a toss?
Helicopter money is never acceptable if it is sent directly to households to ensure they keep spending. It's far preferable to allow the machine to seize up without oil.
This contradiction is somehow the bedrock of American fiscal policy.
There haven't been any bailouts issued yet. Congress is still in the process of working out what the stimulus bill is going to look like.
You're referring to overnight loans made by the federal reserve to facilitate liquidity in the market. If you're not aware of the significance of the difference, this isn't the appropriate place to go over it.
Regardless, the stimulus package is going to have some form of social support in it. My point is just that it's not going to be a free win, it's more of a least bad option at this point. There's going to be long term economic and social damage from this even with the most generous of social support offerings.
In the US a prosperous economy is only good for the rich, minimum wage and workers’ right haven’t really improved over the years while the stock market skyrocketed.
It’s just that this time EVERYBODY is being impacted, including the rich. And their incentives are to restart the market as fast as possible. If you look at the Spanish flu of 1918, the economy was barely impacted because a worker’s life didn’t matter as much back then.
Net worth going from 40 million to 1 million is less impact than not having money for groceries next week because your bank account started at $400 before the place you work was shuttered.
It's amazing to see how, when faced with the dilemma of "Industrial development, at the cost of have millions of people die", so many people want to follow in the footsteps of the USSR.
Continuing with business as usual in an epidemic will condemn millions to an otherwise preventable death. This virus' mortality rate shoots up when health systems are overloaded.
1. There's a human cost to not industrializing a country, too. The surviving Soviet citizens got to take advantage of things like electricity, running water, universal education, a functioning industrial base. [1] Yet, for some reason, industrializing a country, while causing a famine is condemned as butchery... Yet preserving stock valuations, while causing an epidemic is laudable?
2. Then change the distribution systems. It's an emergency. Treat it like one.
[1] And eventually luxuries like radios and private apartments!
It's quite complex, and (though certainly neither is an expert) the words of Cuomo and Trump overlap to a considerable degree. Economic damage absolutely will kill people--a lot of people.
Total lockdown probably will save some people, but it's hard to really know at this point. It may turn out that most people are going to get the virus, and that the number who die will actually turn out to be fairly invariant with respect to whatever actions governments take.
Even if we had a truly brilliant scientist who had all of the information that's presently known, I doubt the call would be obvious. Just too many unknowns.
It appears to be an impressive result, so far. What's less clear is what happens after they release the lockdown, which must inevitably happen.
Flattening the curve to a fair degree was very likely worth doing. But it could happen that like the common cold, this will ultimately pass through the entire population, and there simply might not be much we can do about it.
My guess is that we're still in the first act of this play. It might take a decade or more to gain real insight. Right now we have to guess.
I think he wants to ensure he can take responsibility for the market rebound. If and when it happens, people will more likely attribute the rebound to him if he takes decisive action. And, if the market doesn't fully rebound, he wants to have an excuse. In this case, he'll be able to say "I told you we should have restarted the economy sooner".
I think it's simpler than that. It's The Button. Would you be willing to push a button and get a million dollars knowing that someone somewhere else will die. A lot of people are willing to push it for a lot less than a million.
It seems obvious that we will have depression anyway, even if we "go back to normal" now: when everybody knows someone who died, and when hospitals won't help you because they are already full, people will stop planning for a vacation, and start saving money.
So the only realistic choice is (major depression) vs. (major depression + many people dies). There's no way out without economic turmoil now; the ship has sailed a month ago.
Imagine if a competent leadership partnered with companies to design and deliver test kits for the majority of the population. Just like a 23andme kit. Turns up at your door. Gets turned around. We have an actual idea of hotspots, and can design treatment plans. Making decisions with actual data. As opposed to this unmitigated shitshow.
I had to go to the hardware store to get protective gear for my wife, who is a doctor at a hospital with none.
My Proposal: Set a 3% limit on credit card interest for the next six months. If a credit card company complains, nationalize it. Use the six months to set up a debt-forgiveness plan that works for middle and low income earners. At the end of six months, consider lifting the limit incrementally.
Get spending power into the hands of common people and ease the cash-crunch anxiety immediately, without any stupid one time payments that will be too late, won't be large enough to help, and require the entire legislative branch to agree.
I think Trump is in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't predicament.
He _could_ enforce a federal 18-month lockdown and wait for a vaccine to become available (assuming that we _can_ make a vaccine for this within the timelines proposed). As software engineers, we know that we almost always optimize for Big-O, so assuming that the US will be effectively shut down for 18 months is probably the best way to model this, especially since waves of people seem to become symptomatic at different times. I don't have hard data to back this, but I don't think the US could afford to keep millions of people fed and housed for that long, and recovering from that is likely to take WAY longer than us finding a way to control this virus. This could cause us to lose our global hegemony and have dire long-term effects.
He _could_ also basically say "yolo" and keep the US running at full force. People's jobs will be protected and society will continue to function...until people start dying en masse because herd infection happens before herd immunity. The stats tell us that people are _more than likely not_ going to die from this, but more people could die if hospitals run out of capacity and protective gear.
In either case, we don't know when hospitals will run out of capacity, though we _think_ that this will happen sooner to much sooner if we cover our ears and pretend that things are fine.
Also, this is a completely unique situation since we haven't had a large scale pandemic like this before aside from smaller-scale ones like SARS or MERS and the last big one happened in a completely different generation.
I have my opinions about our current administration, but I would not want to be Trump right now because this sounds like a vortex of suck.
It's easy to say Trump is crazy when you're a privileged tech worker who can work from your nice home office and not worry about money running out or the unemployment line.
Meanwhile, in the real world, we can't shut down the global economy for months without dire consequences. Shortages, civil unrest, total anarchy are the next things coming if we keep this shutdown going. If you're not a fan of violent crime, or don't have a lot of guns, I'd recommended considering opening the economy sooner than later.
Here is a measured piece by an actual expert. We need to start getting the least vulnerable back to work and school, while keeping the most vulnerable isolated. Eventually we can let everyone out, but we need to keep the gears moving in the meantime.
I will continue to maintain that Trump's instinct to reopen things is largely selfish in nature, but that does not mean that opening things back up to a certain degree does not make sense for those most economically vulnerable. Right now we are stuck between getting sick and getting those we love sick, or risk losing our livelihood, homes, and a way to support our families. Really not a great place to be, and some balance between the two extremes must be struck. It seems sensible that those least likely to suffer deleterious effects should be allowed to return to work and school and we should try and continue to support those most vulnerable as best we can at the state and federal level. I have also seen suggestions that any direct stimulus funding should have an expiration date so that we can be sure that the money get used immediately, otherwise it does little good.
Long term, I really hope that more Americans wake up to the threadbare reality of our healthcare system and social safety net so that systemic shocks like this are better planned for.
The guy is a zillionaire. The idea that he's primarily motivated by the desire to be a double-zillionaire seems like a bit of a stretch. Personally, I think he'd rather continue to be adored by the masses.
Can somebody link me to where this 15 day shutdown was declared? I can see many articles talking about Trump walking it back but none about it actually being declared or what it entails.
Cuomo's briefing today was absolutely scathing. NY State has 25,000 cases and is rising unabated and the federal government is doing next to nothing to support them while publicly seeking to move on from emergency measures. Trump is looking for a >$1T stimulus bill and unlimited Fed bond purchases but thinks that applying the Defense Production Act would be government overreach. People are dying and he only cares about goosing the stock market.
I grew up in Western New York and have watched New York state policies and taxes decimate my home town. Needless to say I'm not a big fan of Cuomo. In a town that used to have oil, manufacturing etc. now the largest employer by far is social services and the jail. These new jobs have not come close to matching the income generated from businesses of the past. Every year when I go back I see the town decay a bit further. To make matters worse, houses that have 1/3rd of the value of my house in Atlanta have much higher yearly taxes and crime has gone up significantly.
I moved south and reduced my overall cost of living while living in a much larger metropolitan area and more opportunity. States that feel it's necessary to stay closed can do so. The high regulation states such as New York can force people to stay closed while others open up further. After this is done, probably more will continue to leave it and other more draconian states for greener pastures.
The fact is that the fed cannot print enough money to sustain a multi month national shutdown and it would decimate the economy and drive the national debt to un-sustainable levels. Right now my employment prospects as a software developer are a lot better than those for restaurant workers, hotel and airline employees etc.. Even with that I'm freaked out about what will happen with my employment prospects if we go into a depression because I would be naive to assume it wont eventually affect me. So I can't imagine the amount of stress and uncertainty many of them are feeling about the economic fallout from a prolonged shutdown.
There are no easy answers here, but there are tough choices to make and both choices suck.
For one, the governor can't do much about dying industries. Cuomo has, in fact, invested billions in trying to spur investment in upstate and western New York and failed because businesses just aren't interested in being there. It's been decades of decline.
Secondly, if you watch his briefing, he's not calling for longer shutdowns or anything like that. He is calling for ventilators. He needs 30,000 ventilators or people are going to die. The crisis in New York is urgent and acute. Infection rate is higher than anywhere in the country and growing quickly. They expect it to hit a peak in 14-21 days and they don't have enough resources and the federal government can do something to help and they aren't. NY State is already on full lockdown and has already pulled every lever it has to ramp up their response and it's not enough. Federal action is desperately needed and it's not forthcoming.
Would the cases be rising unabated if effective social distancing was being practiced?
Not sure if the particulars of the federal government matter at this time/context; i.e. historians point to Americans from both sides of the aisle losing faith in the federal government since Vietnam. It’s been downhill since then.
Invoking the DPA might be a lot like calling in a gaggle of executives to "save" a failing software project by individually directing the hour-by-hour work of each programmer. Would it work? Maybe. But there are an awful lot of ifs, and experience suggests that it's often disastrous.
Sometimes it's better to just make sure that everyone knows that something is really important, and then let them try to get it done for you.
The president's actions, specifically his lack of action, are a huge part of why the pandemic is so bad in the US. I hope people remember that he is the reason for the late action, the bungled tests, the lack of cdc funding, the lack of preparedness and stockpiles. And ultimately, he is the reason we will have way more deaths that could have been prevented. Even now we don't have the proper testing capability. We don't have masks and the government is still lying about their effectiveness. 60k testing kits is nothing. He's still not doing what he could and should. I'm glad states are no longer listening to this administration. Doing that would kill a lot more people. Trump and his administration can go fuck themselves. And at this point, so can the people who still stand behind this president who is so callous to so many Americans dying. It's almost impossible to imagine a worse response than what has happened. I hope the markets do not recover before the election as, unfortunately, the mass unnecessary suffering and deaths of Americans will likely be forgotten by many voters if they do.
He was acting on this back during the impeachment scandal, while the mainstream media was still calling it "no worse than the flu", creating the task force on Jan 29, and getting called racist for the international travel restrictions days later.
It would be worse in the US than it is now if not for his early actions.
Is that because you've picked a side and want people to blindly follow your side?
It's not so cut-and-dried as my make it out to be. Not fixing the economy means more people out of work and unable to provide for themselves. That means more death. It doesn't matter which way you choose, if you go all the way that direction, people die who don't have to.
The real question here is how to best help the most people. There isn't a simple path to that.
Neoliberalism is a death cult. Look at its high priests demanding sacrifice to Moloch! The vast majority of economic activity is absolutely useless to maintain essential supplies, infrastructure and services. Very few people have to work to keep society intact while we ride out the pandemic. Recession caused by a drop in activity is easy to fix provided you manage debt obligations in the interim. That can be a delicate dance but it is well within the means of modern capital.
All of these problems are ideological. You see people in these threads lately who literally cannot imagine anything possible outside of the status quo and are willing to sacrifice the vulnerable to get it back. If you break the facade that debt obligations are a moral obligation and not a social construct whose relevance in extraordinary circumstances is marginal, a central pillar of free market ideology collapses. At this point I'm not sure if it's a charade being pushed to its absurd extreme or if the ruling class and their sycophants' brains are completely hollowed out by ideological brain worms.
I don't know Reuter's opinion of 'too early', but reducing quarantine before the current exponential growth has stopped and before hospitals are not overwhelmed seems like a bad idea.
We're WEEKS before the climax. The rate of spread is almost 35% clearly we will not peak until after April. So 15 days (what Trump proposed) is too early, even 15 weeks would be too early.
You don't know the "rate of spread". We only started mass-testing 5 days ago. What you're seeing now is more accurately called "rate of improvement in testing".
WA (the former epicenter) has stabilized the situation and it gets constant (and decreasing) number of daily cases at the moment. So has CA, it looks like. The United States will behave more or less like 50 different states, save for some closely bunched up states on the East Coast.
Until we have different data, this is the data we have. I agree that the rate of increase in confirmed cases probably indicates rate of improvement in testing. But we simply don't know that. You cannot make public health decisions based on hope, assumptions or guesses. You can make public health decisions only based on data, and data indicates we haven't peaked yet. In this case, it's devastating that people in power position have guts to say we can continue business as usual in 15 days.
> make public health decisions based on hope, assumptions or guesses
In the absence of data, which you've acknowledged, that's exactly how decisions are being made now, worldwide.
> even 15 weeks would be too early
Not if you want to avoid starvation and riots. It's not like there's some magical grocery fairy or "the government" putting stuff on the shelves. People have to work to put stuff there.
> Not if you want to avoid starvation and riots. It's not like there's some magical grocery fairy or "the government" putting stuff on the shelves. People have to work to put stuff there.
The proposal has never been complete shut down, this is a cheap strawman argument. I support what CA and NY is doing currently. My state MA issued a similar shelter-in-place order yesterday but the definition of "essential" business is so inclusive that my random software startup qualifies for "essential" business (even though we're all WFH). What needs to be done is picking businesses that are required for the society to function. This includes markets, logistics (UPS, USPS, FedEx etc), hospitals etc. And every other business need to be shut down on gun point.
> In the absence of data
It seems like you misread my comment. There is no absence of data. The data indicates that NY alone is expected to surpass Italy level outbreak in a week. I said there is no data to support the sudden increase in cases is tied to testing. I agree that that's possible, but we have no evidence. So we should act like this is spreading like wildfire, today.
Early, in the article, is a statement about the States rejection of Trump's hinting at loosening social distancing measures, not Reuters' opinion. Though all news is editorial to some extent, choosing to amplify the states' voices here is a choice, and reporting on their resistance to the president is also.
You're over thinking this, or trying to start a controversial argument. That violate's HN's rules.
I think to make a solid argument one way or another, one needs also to take into account medical and scientific opinion regarding the number of people that are going to die in the longer run because of economy stagnation.
Heads up- I made an edit that may make your comment seem off I originally had just responded "Medical and scientific experts" or something to that extent.
Appreciate your comment, it does make a good point. I think the difference is that virus deaths are more predictable than the economy as a whole, so if we know we can move one lever to limit the known damage, the desire to move to a nebulous and often partisan economic approach is a bit concerning for a lot of folks.
I heard Trump and his lackeys were talking about dates as early as a few weeks from now. Meanwhile healthcare officials are all claiming many months, upwards of longer than a year.
This isn't just about listening to the experts. Ultimately, we need to make a value judgment between saving lives now vs saving the economy. There's no clear answer when a stronger economy saves future lives.
I'm seeing lots of experts talking about the potential deaths if we don't shut down.
I'm not seeing a lot of experts giving estimates of the ramifications of economic fallout here. Just politicians worried about their reelection and business people worried about their personal fortune.
I'm sure they are out there. But right now they are overshadowed by professional doofs like Larry Ludlow.
Are you seeing experts estimating the number of deaths caused by the economic damage? Because the rate of suicide does tick up when there's economic downturn. I would not be surprised if, at the tail end of this, the downturn causes more deaths in the sub-50 y.o. group due to suicide than due to the virus.
Besides, are experts estimating whether or not it will be easier to deal with the epidemic with an economy that functions or the one that's almost totally shut down, causing supply chain disruption and delays worldwide, and (in a month or two) shortages of goods?
What you're seeing in his messaging now is called "anchoring". It's a common negotiating tactic, literally the oldest trick in the book, which he uses literally in every single case, nearly always successfully. It baffles me that he's been using it for years and people still don't recognize it and think he's just doing this at random.
We know the US is a big country, and not all of it is affected equally. Epidemiologically it'll likely behave like 50 smaller countries. We also know that if Trump tried to re-open just those parts of the country where per capita infection rates are very low, public would howl.
So what he's doing is proposing a big, unacceptable offer, to then tone it down shortly before the final decision is announced. That way you will all exhale and accept it more easily. So if NY gets much worse, it'll stay shut down. If it levels out, it'll be partially re-opened. If a miracle happens and clinical trials currently underway show efficacy in some drugs, things will be able to be re-opened much further. WA has already leveled off. CA is leveling off as we speak. In other places there's not enough testing to make any conclusions, something that will change this week.
You will see this play out exactly as I described it over the next 2 weeks. Bet on it.
I apologize for the overtly political comment, as I don't like going there, but this is about Trump's reelection. The economy was going to be the linchpin of his narrative.
It likely won't be. But it'll take a few months for it either to be back to business as usual, or a few months for the economy to adjust to the new reality of takeout and greater ecommerce focus.
This implies a false binary between shutting down the economy and millions of deaths by not isolating.
Look at other countries like Germany, Denmark, and Ireland who are moving to cover wages and providing paid sick leave. Germany is offering companies unlimited loans to prevent them from collapsing.
I am not an expert in economics, but it does seem like competent technocrats are finding paths to maintain the economy while maintaining public health, and it's only in the US where you have a president who doesn't have a strong grasp of economics, or the experts to advise him, who only sees an option of trying to force back the old system, despite all the experts (economic and health!) who are advising the exact opposite.
This is exactly why previous presidents have put their assets in a blind trust. We shouldn't have to question whether the White House is more concerned with their personal bottom line than the public interest, but here we are.