The country has been in the process of re-opening for a month now and you might have a variety of thoughts on it ranging the gambit...
- It's right to re-open fully because
- it's a hoax
- it only effects the old so they can shelter in place while the rest of us enjoy our lives
- "there are worse things than dying" (Texas Lt Gov)
- It's right to re-open a little because
- I want to support my local businesses and buy things from them.
- it's safe enough for us to do a little as long as we're cautious
- we should find the happy medium between lockdown and completely open
- It's wrong to re-open because
- we're not ready yet and we're going to see cases spike
- we're putting people at risk by re-opening too soon
- we should be prioritizing essential services as we re-open rather than the cosmetic
I would argue that it's absolutely the wrong time to re-open but it's far worse than what is indicated as reasons above. So, first, there's the obvious things that are wrong with re-opening:
If people are following the restrictions, starting to re-open increases the risk that those people are taking. The whole point is for people to engage in riskier behavior in an effort to get the free market going again. Let me repeat that, the WHOLE point of re-opening is for people to engage in riskier behavior in an effort to get the free market going again. The point is not that it's safe to engage in this behavior or to avoid economic disaster... we'll return to that second point later.
That said, people already were not taking the situation as seriously as they should have for quite a long time, if ever. By starting to re-open, many are taking the government's actions as indicating that it's safe now, so they are relaxing their adherence to the rules as well. Which means that people are going to start engaging in much more risky behavior. Even if we were ready for the types of activities as the government is suggesting, the people engaging in riskier behavior are going to engage in, well, riskier behavior. And in this scenario, what others do VERY MUCH impacts everybody else. If someone else gets sick because they had a party, and then they go grocery shopping and touch something and put it back on the shelf, guess what happens? And that's just touching something, it gets worse if they're not wearing a mask at the grocery story or going to a restaurant (where, obviously, they wouldn't be wearing a mask).
And with all this risky behavior, we're going to increase the risk by increasing the population that is getting sick. The more people get sick, the higher the risk factor becomes.
Ok, let's move off the whole people being risky thing.
Next up, we're essentially forcing people to work. There's the obvious where people who have been out of work because their business was closed due to COVID-19, either have to work or be kicked off unemployment. So... essentially, we're saying that the economy is more important than people's lives.
Businesses are facing a similar situation where they need to open up or risk losing more money. It's hard to say "it's not safe so I'm going to risk my business based on the potential that it could do harm to the community." I get that. And your landlord or debt-holders are unlikely to agree to postpone payments or forgive payments if the government isn't forcing you to not provide your full services. I'm SO thankful that the business I have responsibility for is so small and has no debt and no landlord. I don't have to make this decision. I don't know what I would do. Worse yet, as a business owner/manager, if I were to follow the ideals of not taking the risk, if I were to shut down, I would be entering the same job market and problems that all other workers are facing in the above paragraph.
But this where it becomes far FAR worse than it at first seems. This is not just simply a fight to get the economy moving again, because the federal government could provide aid to keep people going through this all. This is a fight over whether we should let the government do its job. As long as we say "oh, it's fine for you to open your business" and "it's fine for people to go back to work" we don't have to tackle the question of "what else can we do?" We don't have to say "should we help people more than we have been?" We don't have to say "we can get through this, together" anymore.
And the federal government CAN help us get through this. We borrow money all the time for wars. We borrow money all the time to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. We borrow money to pay for tax cuts for big business (including banks... yes, banks and Wall Street are another form of business and we've bailed them out recently). We could come together and provide basic income, temporarily, to all individuals (or limit it to those who did not make over a certain amount last year, through wages or otherwise). We could come together and provide programs that would help support businesses in this time of need. We could come together and decide that our economy AND our people are important to us and we should support both, because we can support both. We could come together. But as long as we say "we don't need to do this thing, everything's fine," we won't....
oh, and the further complication is that local governments and state governments are re-opening because they too need support. Many are not able to run up the debt that the federal government can and therefore, without the support being provided by the federal government, cannot maintain the support they need to provide to their citizens.
Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay companionate.
