Bret Stephens: To reopen, or not to reopen. Gail, that is the question.
Gail Collins: No question for me, Bret. It would be insane to pretend to go back to normal, when we’d just be triggering a surge in infections.
Can’t imagine what would happen if Andrew Cuomo told everybody to go back to work and pile into buses and subways. He’s clearly dreaming about it day and night, but I have confidence he’ll wait until it’s really safe.
Bret: I think we need to start thinking hard about how we flatten two curves: coronavirus infections and unemployment numbers. Right now the two are inversely correlated. That needs to change.
Gail: You’re saying the infections go down and unemployment goes up? I tend to lose my way whenever the word “inversely” appears on the horizon.
Bret: Right. The good news is that projections about the number of expected deaths have come down sharply in recent days, from a median of about 93,000 by the summer to around 60,000 now — and these projections already factor in full social-distancing measures, meaning the decline is not attributable to changes in behavior.
Obviously that’s not a reason to be anything less than serious about the crisis or devastated by the losses. But thankfully the worst-case scenarios of a few weeks ago don’t seem to be coming true.
Gail: Yeah, but I also want to avoid the just-really-terrible scenarios, healthwise.
Bret: On the other hand, the unemployment figures are leading swiftly to a different kind of disaster. Our colleague Nicholas Kulish had a gut-wrenching story last week about the rush on food banks across the country as people no longer have the wherewithal for groceries. And this is after only one month of lockdown and closures. The idea of doing this for six months, never mind the 18 months that people like Zeke Emanuel have suggested, strikes me as a recipe for national suicide.
Gail: The obvious answer is government subsidies. Working people who’ve lost their jobs should be made whole — or at least close to it. And we should funnel a ton of money into charities that take care of folks who’d be left out.
When it comes to making up for the money, of course I’m good for raising taxes on the rich. But for me, the only thing that matters right now is the health end. We have to keep social distancing going.
Bret: There is no way that the federal government can keep pace with the scale of need, even if someone a whole lot more competent than Donald Trump were in charge. We have a $4 trillion federal government trying to hold up a $20 trillion economy: That’s unsustainable. If you taxed the 400 richest Americans down to their last cent — about $3 trillion or so — that would only get us through a few months of payments to unemployed workers or cash-strapped businesses. The government can always print money, but at some point that would start showing up in all kinds of toxic ways, likely including inflation.
Gail: I’m not envisioning a shutdown of the total economy for months and months. But we’re not nearly ready to go back to normal now. And seeing the president wringing his hands on TV every day doesn’t help.
Bret: I agree that there won’t be any going back to normal until we have a vaccine or effective medication. I’m just asking for seminormal. The alternative is just a nonstarter. An underground economy would begin to emerge as people became more desperate. Breaking quarantine rules would become more widespread, and so, probably, would crime.
And I can’t even begin to imagine the desperation of our undocumented population, much of which was already living paycheck to paycheck and won’t have ready access to government benefits.
Gail: As I said, we’ve got to have a charitable infrastructure with enough funds to take care of the undocumented and the people who’ve been working under the table.
Bret: I agree: That’s essential. I just think we’re inevitably going to have to accept some risks in order to mitigate others. We should maintain bans on large gatherings, like concerts or sports events. We need wide-scale antibody testing, so that people who have had the virus and are probably immune from it can, whenever possible, get back to work. We ought to enforce strict quarantine rules on people with the virus, including imposing fines or criminal penalties. And we need to preserve a culture of social distancing wherever possible, so that we all just get in the habit of staying six feet apart no matter where we are, and of wearing face masks as a matter of routine, and of keeping disposable gloves handy.
Gail: Well we agree on the widespread testing. Once we have it, things are going to change. And although you don’t have to go into it now, I know you agree with me about whose fault it is that we weren’t better prepared.
Bret: Donald Trump is like Paris for us, Gail: We’ll always have him.
On the other hand, we should re-examine the wisdom of shutting down workplaces, especially those where people can stay fairly far apart. We need to rethink at least some school closures, so that some parents can go to work, while giving families opt-out options by maintaining digital learning. We ought to focus our efforts on protecting the most vulnerable citizens, especially the immunocompromised and the elderly, while easing the burdens on those who can take greater risks with their health.
Gail: School closures are pretty much a done deal in some places. But there needs to be a much larger structure in place for quality child care.
Bret: How about quality teenage-care, too?
I get that this is far from perfect and that it will lead to more people getting sick. But that’s a risk more people will also be willing to accept as they lose their jobs, watch their businesses collapse, wade through bureaucratic miasmas for government help, or find themselves on bread lines to feed their families.
Gail: All of which reminds me of a message our editorial board has been sending — we need to turn this terrible social disaster into an opportunity to improve the country we’ll gradually be going back to.
Bret: Making lemonade out of lemons and finding silver linings in clouds — I’m all for it. (And what choice do we really have?) Personally, I intend to sign up for all those cooking master classes by Gordon Ramsay or Wolfgang Puck I see advertised on YouTube so I can learn to chop veggies faster and swear more piquantly at the same time.
Gail: And if I can distract you to a less painful part of this subject, do you think handshaking is gone forever?
Bret: I wonder about that myself. Maybe we’ll adopt Roman handshakes — you know, the ones where you grasp the other person’s forearm instead of the hand. Or maybe we can return to the courtly 18th-century bow, or blow air kisses from across the room.
Gail: Some of the health experts we’re seeing every day seem to think it’s a bad custom germ-wise even in normal times.
I’m thinking maybe something totally non-touchy: waving or saluting or something.
Bret: What else do you see changing on account of this? Will people give up on public transportation and stop going to overpriced movie theaters? Will kids start speed dating on Zoom?
Gail: Well it’s certainly a blow for mass transit. And the poor movie theaters were kinda staggering along even before this. We’ve definitely moved onto a new level of online living. There’ll be more working from home and zoomed meetings from now on.
Which reminds me: Want to get together for a virtual drink?
Bret: Absolutely. I have a really nice bottle of red I’d love to pretend to share with you.
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