The author seems to take the position, though perhaps warily, that the economic fallout from the lockdown will have been too high a price to pay for the debatable (he suggests) advantage gained in the fight against the virus. I personally think the economy will fire off the mark pretty quickly once the crisis is over, but what do I know? Economic predictions are hardly worth the time it takes to make them.
The trouble is, it's in part a scientific question and as such does not have a clear answer. We don't know enough yet. How many would have died, if not for the lockdown. Will we ever know?
The other trouble is, the whole issue has been poisoned by politics. If you're against the president, well then everything he's done is all wrong. If you're for him, he's been a paragon of virtue, a great leader in a time of crisis.
Now the next decision-point we face is when and how to open up the economy again, and that question has been utterly politicized as well. One section of the population thinks it should be lifted now, at least in most parts of the country. Indeed, there might be a valid case for that, but most of the protestors of recent days seem to want to recycle incredibly moronic conspiracy theories rather than to make that case, which would take some nuance, not a thing mass-protest is built for.
This question of when we should reopen the economy is not only an epidemiological question and an economic one, but it is also a political question. As the article minds us, "Never let a crisis go to waste" is a maxim of both parties. The article states:
From this perspective, the coronavirus is not only a deadly pathogen. It is also a political opportunity. It is too soon to say who will be able to make the most of that opportunity. A presidential election looms, which makes our hall of mirrors more fraught and disorienting than ever. The intensity of the scramble is a token of the high stakes involved.
For the president, anything that goes wrong must be blamed on the Dems, the "Deep State," or perhaps foreigners. If the strategy works, he wins the coming election.
For the Democrats, giving more money to people, more and more, is the order of the day. If the Republicans propose so much, they propose more. The ante keeps soaring upward. Then, later, make sure that you blame the mounting debt entirely on the Republicans. But one crisis at a time, thank you.
In the coming election Joe Biden will charge the Trump Administration with incompetence and corruption, and he will not be far wrong. He will associate himself, inarticulately, with the articulate Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Donald Trump will run a campaign based on fear (of that ever useful "Deep State," of foreigners, the libs). He will stoke the disenchantment of the protestors, saying the coastal elites are out to get them. Oh, it's going to get interesting around here!
More from the article:
there are the interrelated issues of widespread docility, on the one hand, and eager authoritarianism, on the other. We suspect that aspiring totalitarians will ponder the response to this epidemic with thoughtful anticipation. How quickly an entire population can be herded like obedient sheep, willing to be subjected to the most extravagant prohibitions! We speak of “sheltering in place.” Is it clear that we are not “cowering in place”?
I quibble with some of the language of this article (as when they call the number who will die from this virus "a minuscule percentage of the population"), but it brings up some things worth thinking about, including the long C. S. Lewis quote toward the end and the James Burnham quote in the final paragraph. Worth a read.
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Musical accompaniment while writing this:
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