No-Brainer
In my world there is something called a “no-brainer”. That means it doesn’t take much thought to think that something is a good idea. For example, Friday night pizza and beer: a “no-brainer”. So when I look at the national response to COVID-19, it seems to me that it’s a no-brainer to maintain the strict guidelines that have dramatically lowered the infection and death numbers.
We have done nothing to “stop” the virus; it’s still out there. But what we have done is protected our population from infection by spacing out, hiding in our homes, and keeping apart. It’s worked, we see it in the statistic that should mean more than any: instead of hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths (so far) we are looking at something closer to sixty thousand.
That number is still abhorrent. But the actions of individual Americans, staying in their homes and following the “guidelines” have saved many.
We have been under the “guidelines” since March 16th, the day before St. Patrick’s Day. That’s thirty-seven days for those keeping count – a long time to hide out. Folks are getting restless, maybe beyond restless, and they want to go back to their “normal” lives again. Who can blame them?
Return to Normalcy
There is another pressure pushing people to “return to normalcy” (thanks President Harding!!). It’s simple: money. Twenty-six million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past six weeks. The state unemployment offices, designed for maybe a few hundred a week, are now face with an overwhelming number of claims. Not surprisingly, they are so far behind, that folks are waiting weeks to get any kind of unemployment compensation.
And on the Federal side, the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program), designed to keep people “employed” in their jobs even if they can’t work, ran out of money in forty-eight hours. It’s being re-infused now by the Congress, but even that will not be near enough to keep folks paid. The numbers are simply beyond the capacity of the program to quickly handle.
And finally there’s the one-time Federal payment, if they’re eligible. It’s $1200, maybe enough to cover the rent and utilities for the month. But that was last month, and now folks are faced with paying bills with money they simply don’t have, and don’t have reason to expect soon. And that’s if they’re qualified for the payment.
A Gig World
There are a lot of twenty and thirty-something’s working in the “gig” economy. The cost of healthcare is so great, that many employers won’t hire fulltime workers. If they did, they’d have to offer benefits, instead they keep more employees on a part-time basis. This lays bare the flaw in our employee based health care system: employers have found a way to “dodge the healthcare bullet”. So a lot of those folks don’t have health insurance at all. And many are working a couple of jobs, maybe a big-box store for twenty hours, and waiting table for fifteen more a week. When everything’s going well, it’s enough money to cover expenses, but when everything falls apart, their left destitute.
It’s been thirty-seven days, and many of them haven’t seen a paycheck or a government check. If they received the Federal payment, it’s gone. And even though a lot of landlords are cancelling rent payments, it doesn’t mean they won’t owe ALL the rent someday – just not today. And zero money doesn’t pay for groceries, or gas if there’s somewhere to go.
What We Want
We want people to stay isolated. We know that if we “go back” to the “good old days” of early March, we will trigger a COVID-19 spike, and be right back in the crisis we avoided. All of us should remember the story of Philadelphia in 1918. The city dodged the worst of the Spanish Flu epidemic, following the same prescription that Dr. Fauci and the rest offered to us. They stayed apart, they shut down, and they kept the infection rates down.
But World War I ended, and they wanted to celebrate with a massive parade. Two hundred thousand Philadelphians came out to cheer “the boys” returning from Europe. Within two weeks, the Spanish Flu was back and thousands more died.
So the answer is to keep up the work. But if we’re going to get that done, we’ve got to get money to folks to keep going. We have to take care of those who slip through the cracks, the “gig economy” workers who don’t show up as “regular” employees. If we don’t, we can’t expect that they will quietly stay at home, with no way for them to financially take care.
Unemployment offices are overwhelmed – we need to help them. The PPP is underfunded, we need to put more in. The $1200 is gone (if it ever showed up). We need to do that again, and maybe more. And for those who say the Federal government can’t afford it, the short answer is that the Federal government can’t afford not to. Yes, the bill will have to be paid, but it’s better to pay a financial bill later, than the butcher’s bill of death now.
