Lockdown is over. Someone tell the government.

These approaches are the horns of America’s corona-dilemma. Every society has reacted to COVID-19 according to its principles or, if no principles were to hand, its habits. It has been America’s misfortune that its principles and habits are ill-suited to managing an epidemic. The federal system, by functioning as it should, prevented the kind of nationwide shutdown that worked in smaller countries like Austria. The real civic religion of America, business at all costs, can accept the redirection of the economy by the Defense Production Act, but it cannot tolerate the suspension of all economic activity. Yet a powerful counter-impulse — averse to risk, trusting of authority, and hence likely to seek out niches in the economy which are immune to booms and busts — prefers to shelter in place.

It is tempting to identify the risk-takers as pro-business Republicans and the risk-reducers as big-state Democrats. Perhaps this is true among the ideologically committed. I suspect, though, that the split over risk is closer to a consensus position. Americans want to do whatever they feel like doing: what else are natural rights for? They also expect to do it in safety and, in ever-increasing numbers, that the state will compensate them for the consequences of their recklessness.