The NY Times has been the barer of negative on the virus for a while now…
Seems the editors want make sure they get a counter every time someone says that the country should reopen…
The NY Times is out with a piece that touches on the tough place Governor’s are in…
Putting aside Donald Trump’s effort to get re-elected by looking to give a general ‘all clear’ on the virus?
Governors DO have to weigh health concerns and economic ones…
There is little media focus on the bottle line for state and local officials….
Their budgets…
Trump and Congress don’t really have this issue…
They just print money and float bonds…
The hole in the Federal budget has been there since Bill Clinton balanced things back in the day…
20 million people have lost their jobs…
Budget holes in government budgets mean more people will lose their jobs…
The jobless numbers are the worst since the Depression almost 100 years ago…
Some officials HAVE to be worried….
If the tell people to keep staying at home?
Will there be much of an economy to come back to ?
At some point soon?
Governors and local officials will NO choice but to try to restart their businesses….
And THAT IS gonna be before the vaccine and treatment drugs are here in amounts that will cover everyone…
The hard part will be people who have been home for long periods of time?
Finally stepping out into the fresh air….
Social distancing, mask usage , where needed, and smart actions by all of us will be required to keep the drop in infections from spiking back up again…
Economists, including liberals and many conservatives, warn that prematurely ending efforts to aid businesses and workers without enacting a new strategy could force the economy into a summer of partial recoveries, rising infection rates and insufficient support for struggling businesses and those out of work.
In that case, the experts warn, today’s government-financed bridge through the crisis will have become, for vulnerable people and companies, a bridge to nowhere.
“We’re at the choose-your-own-adventure part of the book,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who is now the director of macroeconomic policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a liberal think tank focused on inequality.
The reopenings are continuing apace.
I don’t think that’s much of an issue anymore.
The questions now are:
1.How many more people are going to suffer from the virus and how many more people are going to die.Lets not kid ourselves.Forget the justifications for the actions.The results of this are going to be exactly that.Just a few weeks ago we were being told that the death count would be well below 100,000.Now? That’s number is well within view ,maybe as soon as the end of the month.
2.What will consumer reaction be?So far,and this is anecdotal of course, there appears no pent up “rush” to patronize reopening businesses.Indeed, many businesses themselves are leery of reopening at all in the near future .
3.How many presently unemployed people will be reemployed.Even Trumps economic advisors caution that this will be a long slow slog back (his “happy talk” notwithstanding)and the idea that employers ,some still shell shocked from this whole experience ,will act very quickly to reemploy is probably illusory.
There’s a lot of talk about something called a “new normal.” That is emerging before our eyes over the next few weeks and months.and the results ?Still very much unknown.
I agree with ya Jack…
We will have to come to a tolerance level even though that sounds heartless…
It isn’t…
And people will decide on their own when they will ‘open up’…
It certainly will be slower then Trump wants or needs…
The economy part COULD turn out to be HUGE mess dropped in Biden’s lap….like Obama from Bush….
Let them eat coronavirus
Trump is willing to let thousands die to save his re-election.
By Renée Graham [Boston] Globe Columnist,
Updated May 8, 2020, 4:00 a.m.
President Trump wants to resurrect the economy — and boost his re-election chances.
Forget vaccines — science takes too long. Forget widespread testing — the White House already has.
Like a TV show he’s grown tired of binge-watching, President Trump has had it with this social distancing drama. Ignoring recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he wants the nation flung wide open again so that people can order a beer in a bar, get their hair done, play golf, or die alone on a ventilator from COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.
To force herd immunity, Trump is willing to let thousands die to resurrect the economy — and boost his re-election chances.
“Will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes,” the president said recently about the probable cost of abruptly relaxing social distancing guidelines. “But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.”
More than 70,000 people haven’t just been “affected badly.” They represent a death toll increasing by nearly 2,000 daily.
Like the savage men with bloody hands he admires, Trump is encouraging his own citizens to get sick and die so that he can maintain power. Instead of poisonous gas or starvation, he’s relying on the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s the balance of something that’s a very difficult choice,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a White House Coronavirus Task Force member, recently said. “How many deaths and how much suffering are you willing to accept to get back to what you want to be, some form of normality, sooner rather than later?”
No matter how high that body count gets — and Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC chief, testified that there will be “at least 100,000” COVID-19 deaths by the end of May — it won’t obscure Trump’s focus on himself. He has always believed a strong economy, one that overwhelmingly benefits his big money pals and supporters, is his best path to a second term. He’ll lose no sleep if that path is paved with the dead.
So get ready, “warriors,” as Trump now sees the American people. Your president wants you to be cannon fodder for his re-election.
Trump’s plan is especially egregious for communities of color, already getting infected and dying at disproportionate rates. Of course, that would never give a racist president pause before inflicting even more pain and sorrow….
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/08/opinion/let-them-eat-coronavirus/
In fact Trump has NO PLAN.,..
Things are in the Governors on one level…
But each of us in the end…
Gonna take a while ….
Slow walking back has started …