Righteous Anger

In all this talk about 'reopening' the economy, I feel it's important to point out some hard truths and face the realities of our situation. First, our economy isn't closed. It isn't shut down or locked down. It's reduced. We all still go buy our groceries. We can order pretty much anything we want off the internet - most of us still have our jobs and income. This isn't to minimize the serious economic collapse that is happening, but words matter. We can't reopen something that isn't closed, but we could ease up the restrictions that are limiting our economy.

But easing up restrictions wouldn't magically return our economy to normal. It's a false choice when people say we have to decide between a few people dying and the economy crashing. First, even without the severe social distancing restrictions imposed by the government, many (most?) people would still choose to restrict their consumption. Restaurants, sporting events, concerts, airlines - anything that groups lots of people in tight spaces will not see a return to normal. They will not have enough business to be profitable and they will fail. Many people will still be out of a job. Most people with jobs will cut back their spending due to uncertainty. The economy will still be crashing, just maybe not so quickly. And that's just the short term.

Second, it isn't just a few more deaths. People look at our current fatality numbers and think 'it's not too bad'; 'it's only the sick and elderly who are dying'. Regardless of the inhumanity of those comments, there is a truth that we make economy vs. life decisions all the time. We could save thousands of lives a year with stricter environmental laws, but it would cost money. Thousands die in car accidents - we could reduce that if we put another $10k in safety features on every car, but we, as a society, feel it's more important that people can afford cheap cars. So yes, we accept fatalities for the sake of the economy all the time. But we aren't really talking about just a few old, sick people dying.

No one knows for sure what will happen if we just stop social distancing, but what evidence we do have is pretty clear. This virus spreads and kills exponentially. You can't have a 'little' exponential growth. We either clamp down and stop it like we are currently doing, or it takes off and our death rate skyrockets. Millions will die (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf). And not just the sick and elderly. At those numbers, thousands of working age, healthy people will die. And when they do it will cost the economy money. It will result in more people choosing to shelter in place and more governments to reimpose the same restrictions (and worse) that people are complaining about now. If we just 'reopen' things a lot more people will die and our economy will be one of them.

But it is true that our economy and society can't continue like it is indefinitely. No one is saying it should. All the experts, including most state and the federal government, are saying we can and should loosen restrictions, but we should do so in a tentative way based on the best science and information we have (https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-coronavirus-reopening-Gov-Gavin-15200205.php). We need to be able to test better to track the disease and we need to trace contacts better to stop the spread and exponential growth. That's the current plan - the real question is why is that taking so long. The answer is the federal government.

Now testing is a complicated issue, but it mostly boils down to money and material. In the U.S. the testing is primarily being done by commercial companies and they don't have the monetary incentive to invest in greatly expanding testing when the need will be for a relatively short time. It doesn't make sense to invest in training extra testers if they'll have to fire them in a year. It doesn't make sense for companies to increase making the materials needed if their demand will crash in a year. The market is failing us. But the federal government can get around that. It can order companies to expand testing capabilities. It can pay them to do so. It can coordinate all this. It's simply choosing not to.

The federal government also has many tools to fight a crashing economy that state and local governments simply don't have. It can give people money (borrowing money is basically free with our current interest rates and every reputable economist knows that government spending in a recession/depression is the best way out). If you don't want to give people money, it can create a massive jobs program (we already have a small one). We need people trained to do testing - let's hire and pay people to learn how. We need people to do tracing. We need people to support the sick and elderly. Heck, we need a ton of infrastructure work that will greatly help everyone and our economy - let's hire people to do what needs to be done.

Most states are constrained by balanced budget amendments (this is why they are a stupid idea). Many states, especially those red ones, simply aren't rich enough to spend this kind of money. And even if some states could do it, their resources would be taxed and failed when all the people from the other states either come to take advantage of them or come to bring more virus into them. We need to handle this on a national level because we are all in this together.

People are angry. I get it. It sucks that so many are losing their jobs or facing financial uncertainty. It sucks that our kids aren't in school and many of them are now going hungry. It sucks that our economy is crashing and we are suffering even though we didn't do anything wrong. It's not fair. Your anger is justified. But the response still needs to be appropriate. 'Reopening' the economy now isn't going to work. The economy will still crash; more people will die. We face nothing but bad choices but the current path we're on is a bad choice that involves fewer people dying and our economy ultimately recovering better. So go ahead and be angry, but learn to live with it. And maybe learn to direct your anger where it can do more good - by changing the people in power who are making our choices worse than they have to be.