NEWS AND OPINION
Totally consistent with the dynamism of our U.S. economy, the report card is a mix of excellent and poor economic responses. Despite the doom and gloom reported, it’s clear that many states are acting effectively to reopen and restore growth.
Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther, who was ordered jailed for seven days Tuesday after she violated a local coronavirus-related business closure order, joined "Hannity" for an interview Thursday, hours after her release.
Luther said she is feeling much better after being allowed to go back home, and told host Sean Hannity she stands by her decision not to apologize as instructed by state District Judge Eric Moye.
"That was the last thing I was going to do, honestly," she said. " ... I just couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to apologize."
On “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host Jimmy Kimmel deceptively cut and reviewed footage of Vice President Mike Pence delivering boxes of protective medical equipment to a health care center. Kimmel cut the video to show Pence “caught on a hot mic” asking to deliver empty boxes for the cameras.
“Here [Pence] is, with no mask on, wheeling boxes of PPE into a health care center and doing his best to lift them. What a hero,” Kimmel said sarcastically.
The new study, released Friday by the Well Being Trust and the American Academy of Family Physicians, factored in isolation and uncertainty when it calculated the expected deaths from suicide, alcohol and drugs, based on nine unemployment scenarios.
The likely toll from these "deaths of despair" was the loss of an additional 75,000 lives, the study found. Death estimates ranged from 27,644 if the economy recovers quickly, to 154,037 if recovery is slow.
At the same time, most academic efforts to cast the lockdown debate along racial lines miss or omit another dimension that belies their critical theory-infused attacks on any attempt to reopen the economy. The very same lockdowns, social distancing mandates, and shelter-in-place orders that these writers defend are also backed by heavy-handed enforcement by the state. And in many cases, that enforcement falls disproportionately on racial minorities, the poor, and people with fewer means to defend themselves.
We saw one of the first examples of this in a video from early April when police violently tackled and dragged an African-American man off of a city bus in Philadelphia for failing to wear a face mask. It later came to light that Philadelphia had no official policy mandating masks on public transportation – it was only a recommendation.
Should science play a role in guiding our responses – both private and governmental – to the COVID-19 pandemic? The answer, of course, is yes. No thoughtful person would for even a moment think to answer otherwise.
To answer this question “yes,” however, does not mean that you should turn yourself into an android programmed by epidemiologists, physicians, and other natural scientists. Even less does a “yes” answer imply that government policies should be crafted only, or even mainly, by these scientists. Indeed, to the extent that governments do treat the factual findings of natural scientists as sufficient grounds for commanding and controlling people, governments commit a logical fallacy – which is most irrational and unscientific.
Thank you for your recent article on Sweden’s response to COVID-19. I would just like to add my thoughts to the ongoing public discussion. I am an American living in Stockholm. I have been living here for 17 years and am fluent in Swedish. I am from Northern Virginia.
Regarding this article, I will just point out that the American people have been buffalo’d into a very binary way of thinking – there are only two possibilities when dealing with COVID-19 – complete lockdown or nothing at all. This is also referred to as TINA (There Is No Alternative).
For many of my American friends, they find it difficult to understand that there are many possibilities in between the two extremes. In fact, a more nuanced approach not only makes more sense, but is more sustainable. That is precisely what the Swedish approach is all about.
If you look at the numbers, you will see that there is negligible risk to those aged 4-50 years old. This group also happens to represent the most economically productive group in society as well as the group that spends the most money. So why shut them down?
The response I get from friends is that they must be shut down because otherwise people will die. This is an emotion based argument.
The reality is that in Sweden all at-risk people have been asked to self quarantine. If they do that, how will their lives be threatened by allowing the under-50 crowd to go out, with some social distancing guidelines?
Naturally, the stock market rallied on this "good" news, fortified by the notion that really bad news is good news because it can't get any worse. At the same time, the market was heartened to see that 18.063 million, or 78.3% of unemployed workers, were categorized as being "on temporary layoff."
The latter implies an expectation among those who were laid off that they will be employed again soon. That is an encouraging thought, because the U.S. economy does a lot better when more people are working and making money. This categorization also provided some fuel for the recovery trade as it sunk in that the economic recovery could happen more quickly if these workers are asked to return to work soon.
We don't disagree with the premise, yet we have some regretful doubt that the masses will be asked to come back as quickly as they were told that they were being laid off or, if they are, that they will all be asked to come back in the same capacity. That is, some may be asked to return to work soon, but at reduced work hours (which means less income than before).
That should be particularly true for the leisure and hospitality industry. Employment rolls there dropped by 7.7 million, and while states are pursuing reopening plans, limits are being set. For example, a restaurant may be allowed to reopen but only at 25% of its normal capacity. Clearly, under such conditions a restaurant would need far fewer workers than it did before.
Hotels, meanwhile, could see more business as economies reopen, but both the business traveler and leisure traveler will be slow to return amid ongoing health concerns. Hence, a hotel with a 30% occupancy rate isn't going to need as many workers as before.
In fact, we already see some light at the end of the tunnel. During the week ending Saturday May 2, 939,790 passengers went through TSA checkpoints at airports. That’s up 26%from the prior week and up 40% from two weeks ago. The amount of motor gasoline supplied has grown three weeks ina row, and is up a total of 16%. Hotel occupancy and railcar traffic are both up from a month ago. These high-frequency data will give a clearer read on the pulse of the economy as we gradually reopen.
