So now we face a serious dilemma. It goes something like this: We don’t have enough money to stay idle, but we don’t have enough confidence in testing to go out and spend again. The COVID-19 social contract was cobbled together at alarming speed. Everyone quickly adopted three assumptions: First, that the government would compensate — and, as much as possible, make whole — those men and women who, for the sake of public health, lost income, business, or their livelihoods; second, that we would in due course build the kind of mass testing-and-contact-tracing system that would allow us to isolate the sick, rather than locking down everybody; and third, that we would adopt clear benchmark conditions for re-opening, and clear, universal guidelines on masks, handshakes, hygiene, and the like to be followed until we had a vaccine.
None of those assumptions has held up. Congress accepted and arguably exacerbated the mass unemployment the pandemic immediately left in its wake. Its limits on “paycheck protection” loans and other small-business aid turned its relief program into a lottery. Talk of increasing test capacity to millions per day has turned out to be just that — talk. Guidelines for re-opening at the state level have proposed hopelessly vague metrics. And federal guidelines, while more sound upon examination, have not been publicized.
Perhaps it was inevitable that all those hopes would be dashed.
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