Quarantine

Like many people in the past month, I have forgotten what the sun looks like. Our current quarantine as a result of the Corona virus and the disease Covid-19 has led to many living a sort of half-life where many our unable to perform activities thought to be essential to life as they knew it. This climate is bound to breed the question of when this is going to end, but the answer is fairly complicated. Many states have opened public places under the #Liberate, only for a rush of new cases top spring forward as a result.

Many advisors from the White House have urged against reopening the economy to early, as they feel this will ruin the projected upswing some experts believe will come this fall, and having a come-back narrative that Trump can promote to the public in time for elections.

Trump has expressed, on multiple occasions, that he wishes to reopen commerce as we knew it with the interest of saving tax money for Military and education budgets. He and many others in congress have expressed concern that a prolonged period of stagnation in the economy will have lasting effects that could lead to another recession. While I would argue that Trump’s management has already assured a recession that he doesn’t seem to care about judging by the quote “I won’t be around much longer, why should I care?” the primary issue that I would like to argue is that human lives should be seen as more important in this matter.

The economy has already taken a severe hit indirectly because of the virus, Sephora has decided to fire rather than lay-off all of their part time employees, and Amazon has fired thousands of employees who expressed concerns for their safety. Even if the economy were to reopen, many don’t have jobs to go back to, and to those that do, or who are even still working, the situation would be too dangerous for them to risk it, even if they are in need of the money.

The tests available are still in a very small quantity for all of those who need to be tested, and it has now been proven that people infected can asymptomatic. Many people, even those who do show symptoms, will not go to the hospital out of fear of the bill. Or they will go, get the bill, and they have to return to work while still sick in order to pay for it. Our countries economy and healthcare system are unfit for taking care of those in need during a crisis of this matter and scale.

WHO and the CDC have both released statements making clear that our nation returning to business as usual will at this point only exacerbate the problem. We are by far and large the worst affected country on the planet, and the situation is barely yet beginning to die down. Many recommend we adopt a form of the strategy used by South Korea, a country used to severe annual illness surges, and that has already returned to life as relatively normal. But as this will require more time and money to implement, many in the white house are uneager to treat it as an option.

I am of the firm belief that the government should put the lives of its citizens first, the economy will be of little good to the millions dead, especially considering that more infected gives the virus more chances to potentially mutate into something worse. But the issue of the economy has to be addressed. Many countries have placed an embargo on U.S. good due to the high rate of infection coming from the country, with this in mind, loosening restrictions will only make global trade worse.

That being said, 3% of restaurants have had to close permanently as a result of the strain from trying to operate during the quarantine, this lock-down is going to predominantly hit small businesses that were already struggling. Delivery services are only available to some store who have an online store front, places like your favorite second-hand bookstore or an indecently owned boutique have no way of making money during this crisis.

The solution to this, however, is to give more support to the general public. Bailouts have been given to larger corporations, but this will do as little to promote the economy as dropping millions of people's bonds did for the stock market. We are a country composed of individuals, and we have a duty to look out for each other. An economy is only as good as the people who exist to utilize it. The question of how to fix the problem of a now hopelessly faltering economy is one that needs to be asked, but in that same country where millons would be asked to put their lives at risk in service to that economy, we have to question if perhaps it is doing more harm to us as a nation than good.

ABC News, ABC News Network, abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-pushes-economic-reopening-health-risks-key-questions/story?id=70186206.

Gillespie, Nick. “We Will Regret Not Taking the Economic Effects of Mass Quarantine More Seriously.” Reason.com, Reason, 24 Mar. 2020, reason.com/2020/03/23/we-will-regret-not-taking-the-economic-effects-of-mass-quarantine-more-seriously/.