Even if we on paper “end” lockdowns, people won’t be going out in public in droves until we have a mitigation plan in place. They won’t be cramming into planes, hotels, bars, restaurants, cruise ships, tourist attractions, sporting events, malls, stores, etc anytime soon. So the notion that ending the lockdowns (again without a plan) is going to magically get the economy back to where it was before in an instant is bunk.
Having said that, and after losing 57,000 Americans to COVID-19 just in April (WITH social distancing), I never thought that we as a society would reach a point where we are actually discussing how many tens/hundreds of thousands of extra Americans (working Americans) should die to eek out an extra 1 trillion more in GDP (out of a 19 trillion dollar economy), and those leading the conversation are the wealthy/corporatists doing so from afar, from the remote safety of their basements. Actual death panels.
And if they push too far on this and cause additional waves of dead working Americans in the process, it won’t be long until the torches and pitchforks start coming out. People aren’t going to take lightly losing a parent, grandparent, sibling, friend, colleague, just so some hedge fund operating from a distance can scrape out another 2% in capital gains.
Speculation goes hand in hand with the bait and switch we’ve been fed, steadily, for decades. No manufacturing? No problem. No real jobs? No problem. No healthcare for all? No problem. Healthcare for which some pay two and three times more than the rest of the world? But we have the best! Pandemic and no supplies? No problem. We’ll start making them at full capacity in a few months. Meanwhile, take $1200 and see you in six months.
Massachusetts just got a bad batch of masks from China. I blame Trump. It’s the feds’ job to source and procure in emergencies. Trump has abdicated the power of the feds in favor of each state for itself. Hundreds are dying daily but yet Republicans want everyone back out.
The stock market is representative of what we’ve become: a nation that has no use for its population.
