The concern with opening up, of course, is that without social distancing, this disease tends to spread geometrically. Over less than a month, it exploded from the “paltry” number skeptics scoffed at to thousands of deaths per day. The obvious worry is that if we relax preventive measures while we’re still near the peak, the disease will take off again from a much higher base level.
But let’s be clear about one thing: Hardly anyone is actually against reopening the economy—and nobody who is in power advocates against it. (I am sure you will find radical environmentalists who regard the mass shutdown of human activity as their ideal.) Many places are already reopening in phases or announcing their plans to do so. The only disagreement is over the details of when we reopen, how, and how much.
But behind these Butterfield Effect complaints is the notion that some shadowy “they” is plotting to maintain the lockdowns forever. For Strassel, it’s a partisan plot: “Mrs. Pelosi sees in this moment a political opportunity to pin the blame for the natural course of a disease on the White House.” Heather Mac Donald pins it on the Deep State: “The public health establishment is fighting desperately to maintain this degree of hysteria in the populace, in order to prolong its newfound power over almost every aspect of American life.”
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