[I wrote and scheduled this post before I found out that the White House has released its plan for Opening up America Again. I could pick apart the plan, but instead I will just stick with what I already wrote, which stands up pretty well.]
What is going to happen when governors give the go-ahead to “re-open the economy”?
One way that I think about it is to ask whether I would go dancing. I really miss dancing. Some session leaders have arranged virtual sessions using Zoom or Facebook Live. Zoom allows the session host to move the “spotlight” around, letting you see different dancers in their basements and dens. Facebook Live is better for keeping the audio and video in synch, but you only get to watch the session leader dance, so it does not feel as social.
The other day there was a non-stop 24-hour marathon run by a sequence of session leaders from around the world. It started in Boston, moved to Brazil, California, Australia, Israel, the UK, and eventually back to the U.S. It was beautiful, and maybe some day we will see a combination of live and virtual sessions that captures that multinational spirit.
What would I do if live dance sessions re-started next week? My personal inclination would be not to go, and my wife would probably feel even more strongly about not going. What confidence could we have that we would not become sick as a result of going? If my favorite dancers were texting me urging us to go, then I would feel bad about letting them down, but I still think in the end I would not go.
I think that this same sort of ambivalence will affect every activity. Parents will be tired of having to deal with their children at home, but not all of them will feel comfortable about sending the kids to school, and school administrators will not necessarily want to force the issue.
“Non-essential” businesses may ask workers to come into the shop or office, but they probably won’t insist on it. If schools are still closed, can you expect parents to come to the workplace? And consider the liability issues if there is an outbreak at the workplace.
What proportion of laid-off workers will be recalled? A lot of organizations will still be worried about conserving cash. They may try to get by with minimal staff until they see how things shake out.
The only way I can see the economy recovering strongly is if the threat from the virus abates. If nobody seems to be getting sick from dancing or other regular activities, then my wife and I can be persuaded to go back. But if sickness and death continue to “hit home” because we hear about it in people that we know, or we continue to read about outbreaks occurring, then we most likely will pass on dancing.
What percentage of economic output and jobs does dancing provide in the overall economy? Something approximating 0%? The analogy appears to fail on this fact alone. Hint: there are a lot of activities that can resume with masks, distancing and other protocols.
More than 0%. You drive there, they might serve refreshments, maybe they have live music (which could be compensated). On the way home you might stop for ice cream.
A world where you don’t go out dancing is a world where none of those activities occur.
And an anecdote: many of the gun ranges (indoor and outdoor) are open again here in North Texas. Business is doing just fine with masks and other protocols in place.
I think the key point here is about the economy recovering strongly. Dancing/dance studios are part of larger overall, healthy, economy.
Agree that some activities are easier to reopen than others. Shooting sports have advantage of being indoor or outdoor activities and, other than observers (spotters or attendees at a match) the shooting sports lend themselves to social distancing.
A strong economy though includes activities for all people, including folks who prefer options which require closer contact. There isnt a good alternative to some aspects of our economic output and it will he interesting to see how this void is filled.
It seems easy to continue on a voluntary, self-enforced basis the practices of hand-washing three times an hour, wearing masks and gloves, sanitizing one’s work surfaces and devices frequently (provided the availability of convenient cleaning products increases or we get used to diluting bleach and using paper towels), and voluntarily isolating oneself when sensing the onset of any symptoms. Those who fail to comply can be barred from facilities or shunned.
In my final assignment as a government contractor in mid-2018 the agency I supported allowed liberal work from home to the extent that on many days fewer than 25% of the feds and contractors were present in the office. All the work got done, including processing in the office, at home, and on the road of sensitive information on government-issued laptops with full-disk encryption and pushed security updates every time these devices connected to the Internet.
In my opinion, however, not enough is known about the transmission, unknown levels of risk presented by the ill-defined range and severity of short-term and long-term effects of active infection, and possible existence of variants of Covid-19 to make decreasing social distancing constraints a rational choice at this time.
Since I and my father are high risk, we can’t resume any normal activity until there is a vaccine.
asdf,
I appreciate your concern. I’m high-risk myself.
I appreciate also your desire for a vaccine, but I am concerned that one vaccine may not be enough.
The annual influenza vaccination protects against four strains selected based on a prediction of which of several influenza strains are most likely to strike in a given season. I always take it. These predictions are not perfect, and the result is that those vaccinated may still get sick from a strain for which the flu shot provides little or no protection. For those with underlying risk factors, the result can be severe illness or death.
Scientists in China have identified “L” and “S” variants of SARS-Cov-2, or Covid-19.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/health/familyhealth/are-there-two-types-of-covid-19-viruses-what-a-new-study-has-found/ar-BB10N7qT
What we do not know is whether there are other variants of Covid-19 yet to be identified and reported.
In my opinion, this matters because, while I have had the flu in the past, I am not aware of any permanent impairment to my health after recovery. In cases of Covid-19 infection, however, there have been reports of loss of sense of taste and smell as well as lung, heart, and kidney damage. It is not the flu, and the need for vaccines to cover all variants seems critical.
Scientists have been monitoring the mutation dynamics of the virus since the start. See, here.
The good news is that the rate of change is very slow compared to other similar viruses, especially for the coding for the most important protein, the key antigen.
The bad news is they did find one case where the change was to the important antibody-binding area of that spike surface protein. If a vaccine confers immunity to the virus with one version of spike, but not a different one that is still common out there, then you are still at risk.
That one case was super early (Jan 27) and from Kerala State, India, so it might have been a total fluke, and even if it wasn’t, if it didn’t bind to the same antibodies, we would be seeing lots more people get deathly ill again, which fortunately we don’t.
Regardless, this is one of those instances that Cowen mentioned in which the “return to speed” is truly enormous, because we are in a literal race against time. Not just a race to save lives and lift restrictions on economic activity, but a race against mutations. The virus is a moving target, but we can’t lead it – because we can’t tell where it’s moving – and we also can’t adjust our aim quickly. So it’s only a matter of time until the thing we need to shoot is no longer in our sights.
We are lucky, however, in that this particular moving target moves very slow.
I’m sorry to hear that. I just read Derek Lowe on <a href=https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects<why we will be lucky to get a vaccine in a year.
Imagine the following spectrum.
On the one hand we have “Gritty NYC” from 1970-1990 (“Taxi Driver” was 1976, “Escape from New York” in 1981), with huge numbers of muggings and murders and the subway being the most dangerous anywhere, “By September of 1979, just over 250 felonies per week were being recorded on the subway. The crime rate was far above any other mass transit network anywhere in the world.” (Bernhard Goetz was in 1984)
Who wants to go dancing? Who wants to ride the subway? Or walking alone, especially after dark? People justifiably felt it wasn’t safe, they cowered in their homes.
That problem was solved (by better state action), but slowly, it took a long time, and people only gradually came back out. It didn’t have to be done that slowly, but there were political and legal constraints. NYC is now one of the safest big cities in the world, from the crime-virus, but not from the virus-virus.
At the other extreme is some combination of the end of prohibition V-J Day in Times Square, in which the dam broke and people flooded to party together right away.
I think somewhere in the middle is something like Dalrymple’s description of a typical British town on a drinking night. The fearless young go out and fill the bars and restaurants and streets, while the old don’t want to be around any of that and respond in ways that resemble house arrest.
My guess is that it will be like that. Low-risk people and many small businesses are going to respond to the lifting of restrictions like the end of prohibition. High-risk people are going to try to stay away. As time goes by, low-risk people get herd immunity, and we get closer to a vaccine, and as the risk-tide slowly goes out, the high-risk people gradually rejoin normal life according to appetite for risk, like like the residents of NYC gradually came back out as the crime situation got better.
I think Handle is probably correct here, as is usual. People under age 50 will respond very differently than people over the age of 50 (I am 53 myself).
The young who live with an elderly relative will probably behave somewhere in between, at least for the first 6 months, but since life must go on, even they will eventually return fully to public life.
We are all mortal in the end, and at some point even the elderly will realize that isolation during the last years of their lives isn’t worth it either. Without a vaccine or treatment, I predict that a year from now most people will return to public life, young and old alike. Even Arnold will be dancing again a year from now.
And, I will just state my observations from the height of the panic just a couple of weeks ago- the elderly weren’t shutting themselves away- they were over half of the customers I saw at the grocers, and they were less likely to be wearing masks than the younger people. I think that Kling is probably an outlier in his age group, not the norm.
“Shall we go folk dancing?” is not a question they’re asking in Las Vegas, a.k.a. New Chernobyl. Many adaptations will be necessary to co-habit with the virus; my concern is that those adaptations may not be permitted once we’ve resolved to become the world leader in workplace safety. It’s an a election year; I can foresee many more ill-conceived fixes coming out of Washington as the unpleasant statistics start accumulating. Rexford Tugwell, Wesley Mouch, and a host of minions stand ready to deliver prosperity (and, of course, equality) to us – and this time, money is no object. We’re not even allowed to sell apples no street corners this time ’round.
My impression is that people outside of hotspots (i.e. in rural areas) will very quickly respond to a reopening of the economy. I have noticed that several small businesses are closed permanently in the small towns around me. Meanwhile, many rural counties in this area are at single digits (or zero!) infections. It’s starting to feel a bit like we’re trading economic costs in rural USA for health benefits in television USA (NYC, SF, etc.).
Indeed, rural areas of the West are pretty much in the condition where the Newsome/Brown/Inslee triumvirate says it will start applying it’s “phase 2” to of reducing closure mandates in favor of an still imaginary “test/trace” regime. Those areas will certainly meet those criteria well before the urban parts of the states will.
But will they deploy the scarce testing resources in counties that didn’t vote for them? Or instead pretend all parts of their states are identical? You know, they are driven by Science. They say so themselves.
There is a lot to be gained by letting different people respond differently instead of coercing almost everyone to obey one rule.
Good post! A few weeks ago, I would have only mildy agreed with you…there was just a little too much uncertainty. But, we seem to know a lot more now.