Wall Street Journal: Economic Lockdown Is the 'Catastrophe'
By: Eric Mack
The Wall St. Journal is right. We need to get the economy revived now! If we wait too long it may never fully recover. It’s all about policy now. Deregulation, tax cutting, infrastructure, and reviving energy, agriculture, tourism. The fact is at this point that keeping the economy closed down will cause far more economic damage than the virus can cause at this point.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Those saying we had to sacrifice the economy to save lives have succeeded in only the former, The Wall Street Journal writes in a scathing rebuke of lockdowns at all costs amid the global coronavirus pandemic.
"The tradeoff isn't between lives and livelihoods," the Journal editorial board concluded. "The policy goal has to be to protect both as much as possible.
"Deploy more personal protective equipment, greatly increase testing, build surge capability to handle flare-ups, and isolate society's most vulnerable to keep hospitals from getting overwhelmed.
"But for heaven's sake reopen the economy so we don't consign millions to years of poverty."
The op-ed was in response to those denouncing a past call back on March 19, " Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown ," when the shutdowns were only beginning.
"Well, after Friday's horrific jobs report, how do you like the shutdown now?" the Journal wrote. "The people who said we have to sacrifice the economy to crush the virus have succeeded in the former even as the virus will be with us for many more months or longer."
April's unemployment rate showed 14.7% of Americans out of work, the highest rate in record U.S. history, until 6.4 million workers were added to the unemployment line.
"Much of the media continue to treat the economic destruction as a sideshow and present a false choice between saving lives and jobs," the board wrote. "But this is the fastest jobs collapse in modern history. The Great Depression drove millions of Americans into poverty and caused many suicides, and there's a substantial risk this could happen again."
And, most notably, even hospitals are cutting essential frontline workers, as elective surgeries have put healthcare facilities on life support.
"Congress has appropriated $175 billion to shore up hospitals, but this won't help small physician practices much," the board wrote. "Many healthcare providers warn they may not survive if their privately insured patients lose jobs and sign up for Medicaid, which doesn't cover their costs."
The board even rebuked Democrats' plan to keep paying Americans' unemployment indefinitely, until a vaccine that may or may not come.
"The crowd that demands the economy remain locked-down until there's a vaccine, miracle therapy or daily testing of everyone in the country seem to think the government can replace the private economy," the board wrote. "That's a fantasy, and they are betraying the very low- and middle-income workers they claim to represent. Average wages in April rose sharply because so many low-income workers were laid off."
The Journal went as far as sharing President Donald Trump's mantra, "Americans need to work to make a living, and they want to work," even amid the desire to "blame President Trump for the economic pain."
"It is important to stress that the strict lockdowns were a government policy choice," the board wrote. "But the damage is done, and our focus isn't on recriminations. The issue is what to do now, and the public is wise enough to know that public health can't be sustained without a healthy economy.
"Americans can see the destruction all around them. They know the virus will be with us for a long time unless there's a vaccine, so we have to learn to live with it and have a functioning economy."
the left wanted to destroy our economy and blame trump
epic failure
if blue states want to stay blue? they had better get it in gear
cheers
Funny you could concern yourself with blue state's political well-being. As it seems your "John Wayne" president in the White House is so distraught and paranoid that the virus is in the White House, he wants testing there done daily. Then, laughably, he states that testing can't work if you can not have the virus one day, but get it the next day—he still orders the testings! For himself and everybody who comes near him!
Trump new shtick is calling everybody in the fight against the virus, "warriors." Warriors. He won't properly outfit the warriors. He won't mandate their proper equipment. He won't order or fund strategic testing of communities throughout the country. He won't help bury the dead.
Trump even shut down the CDC Daily Briefings when it was made clear to him that the media did not intend to kiss his big fat 'fanny' just for something to do in Washington, D.C.
Trump is a coward. He wants other people to work with insufficient virus protection outer and inner wear; he won't supply N95 or see that a greater degree of masking is brought into being; He don't want the nation to know where the virus is patterning itself to travel into a community next; he has no space in his empty head to give a damn about the newly infested, sick, dying, and freezer dead from this virus.
Trump is a coward who wants everybody to forget themselves and go back to work, while he stays crumbled and folded up in his safe-zone indulging in coronavirus testing for himself, his wife, and son. What a coward! Hiding in the folds of the nurses' skirts and pants.
Tell Hanson to just shut up. He sounds unremarkable and stupid. Let the seriously sincere people fix these crises. Chumps are not welcome with their negativity.
March your ass right over to New York City and take a walk downtown. Kiss a couple people on the way if you feel that coronavirus is contained and they are ready to open. You sit out in your little fuckin house in nowhere California and take potshots at people who actually have to deal with the real shit. You have swallowed all of the poisonous tripe of the hyper capitalist " I need all the money I can get no matter who or what I have to destroy because it is all about ME ME ME ME"
Heaven help you if you had to actually share anyone else's pain. And you call yourself a Christian.
There is no "pro-lockdown" side. There is only us. Trump conservatives desire combat and for it you require an enemy to demonize.
Satan, the Lord rebukes you!
This nation is undivided working together in all matters and extremes.
Asking you to wear a mask so you don't infect others in case you're asymptomatic is such a hardship for someone who claims to value life.
Jesus is shaking his head at you. This is not what he taught you.
You have exposed the shame of fundamentalism: It's lack of compassion and understanding.
Asymptomatics! The other 'shoe' no one is writing about. Thank you for bringing it in!
Okay. This is waaay too much to accept without 'taking the top off!'
Well, you could run for office and put some teeth where you are trying to make your bite! Toothless resounding.
Okay, there are no rights and wrongs then. Your moralizing is hereby wasted on us. Catch as catch can. Live for today for tomorrow we might die! Our conduct is as necessary and equally valid as yours—no matter the consequences. But you don't really want or intend to let anybody (else) live like they have only today: Do you?
Let's cut the BS routine. We can all tell the truth to the best of our abilities (and shame the Devil), or we can all pull a P. T. Barnum's "There is a sucker born every minute." With expectations of having our own cache of fools and believers.
President Donald Trump shut down the Coronavirus Task Force presentations because he was personally offended his 'talks' to the public were not taking. Indeed, those "presentations" illustrated his narcissistic personality disorder in full relief! Now Trump is starting and starring in a new "production."
'Trump & Making the Economy Great Again.' Or, some such imagining. Without missing a beat, Trump conservatives flip the script and are all in on the unfeeling movement to ignore the germ permeating the land-while you talk up returning to work blind, a little less cognizant, and disrespectful of the sick, dead, and dying—they may as well be 'fodder' in the Trump theater of all smiles from the big guy all the time.
Bullshit. I call Bullshit! Trump conservatives jumping to the forefront trying to capitalize on the pains of families and achievements in medical research by creating a new alternative 'state of affairs' is utter bullshit. You will not be respected. In fact, you will be treated with rank dishonor!
This nation does need to get back to work. Yes it does and it will. However, the virus must be treated with a type of respect until it can be eradicated and stamped down and out. We can do both things: Respect the work and workers and eradicate the virus, respectively.
A rant?
Now you are just throwing out words. If you have no moral compass; be advised to stop moralizing. Expect nothing of anybody at all. Fight just for the sake of fighting.
A rant.
Pretend you're not projecting, right now. Then try compromise. It can change your perspective and your worldview. We should want what is best for everybody as often as we can. It is the sure way to advance the country ahead, and not just keep spinning pass each other.
Cut the crap. If you're in a blue state, your "our" people are under the care of a democratic governor-and you can't keep DEMANDING to split your 'share' of the baby from the whole baby. Because when/if baby gets ill it will be a democratic governor's problem without a doubt. Is that what you meant?
I have little patience with engaging in doubletalk.
Glad to see you have a thought out plan to follow. Good luck with that. BTW, have you heard of domestic emergencies and California National Guard? Just saying. You went there-leaving me no choice.
This will be moot anyway. The State of California is coming out of lock-down. Of course, you have your tea-pot brew of 'troubles' to keep stirring.
Try it then. This is all about politics anyway for the Right. Y'all push everything while crying victim-hood. Try it, then.
The moral of the story is this: People who live in glass houses should not litter the area around their walk with rocks, stones, and boulders. This virus could not give a damn about the White House, Donald Trump, conservatism, liberalism, grannies, grandpas, or arm babies. It simply demonstrates that somebody-somewhere will deal with it directly one day-one way or another.
So yes, let's get back to work fixing problems together and not dividing people into parcels of flesh to be demonized and cast down. Until then, God is likely serving up some swift justice to a president and his white house by rendering him null and void. I don't know. It could be just as a I wrote.
From the article:
This comment displays ignorance on the part of the writer. The shutdown was to keep the hospitals and healthcare systems from being overloaded. When you flatten a curve, assuming the relevant actors, the volume under the curve, remain the same, you necessarily lengthen its duration. Now that we have passed the initial onslaught, we do have a long slog ahead of us. Bitching about it won't make it better.
That is what governments et.al. have been trying to do for two months. The initial lack of testing bit us in the ass and we had to work blind. That is why everything had to shut down. The country is reopening.
This is a crank at NewsMax's take on a WSJ article.
. that argument looks good on paper, but in the real world? complete bs.
every hospital in my city was nearly vacant with medical people getting laid off.
in corpus christi, tx
population 325,733 as of 2016
129 confirmed cases of which 39 were hospitalized in 5 huge hospitals.
3 deaths
7 people currently in hospital with 3 of those in ICU
is that overloaded? not even a chance.
we are not going to suicide our economies because a few people might die.
Corpus Christi, Texas is part of a 'universal' response to a world-wide pandemic. You can't run your happy — out and talk about how small and good things are faring now without recognizing the hard work of sending people home to take stock of their lives and the situation- the collective (as a whole) was set to face.
Social distancing worked to slow the spread in as many states and territories that participated in the step. You can not prove quantities of 'survivors' by what did not happen.
No, it is not complete bs. In the beginning of this, we did not know how far the virus had spread because we had absolutely no testing. As a result, we could not track it, we could not isolate the people who had it, we could not trace the contacts of the people who had it. So we shut everything down except those services which were deemed (for whatever reason) to be necessary.
If we weren't such boors, so rigidly bound by the concept of capitalism, so unimaginative in our responses, we would not be thinking that by suspending commerce in the face of a pandemic we were killing the economy. That is for people who have swalloed the belief that for every action that they do, they must be compesated in some way. That is the true bs.
sure social distancing helped... it would against any virus.
keeping seniors at home was also a good idea
but you can't prove closing our business' helped either.
Businesses are now re-opening with social distancing as one in a series of requirements which was not the case. It was not done before, it will be done after. There is evidence of itself "working," "on the job," and "hired."
Seems that there has been a huge change in Sweden since the Ambassador made that comment.
SWEDEN'S CORONAVIRUS DEATH TOLL 'HORRIFYING' SAYS SCIENTIST BEHIND COUNTRY'S ANTI-LOCKDOWN STRATEGY
Oh, their death toll per million is much higher then the US and the GDP is projected to be worse than the countries surrounding them.
Their death rate is 12.34%
Cheers.
yes they are... we have no problem with that.
keeping people's business closed any longer or until we find some cure? stupid
That is horrible. Just horrible.
This is a nasty, mutating, contagious virus with no known cure. I must wonder about their sauna activities and the effects that might have on the spread.
I believe that sauna activities could be responsible for some of the increase.
It seems that they are learning a very hard lesson.
check the math. perhaps that number is associated with people infected?
sweden has 10 million people
if only ten percent of the people died? that is one million people dead / which is not even near the case.
sweden? has had 311 deaths per million people,
the usa? locked down has had 235 deaths per million people.
the UK? also locked down. deaths per million? about 470 per million
5 countries all of which "locked down" their people have higher death rates per million than sweden
obviously some other factors are at play.
cheers
Yet you cannot with any surety state that Sweden's death toll would not be lower if they had taken stronger measures. Your link does not provide that much encouragement, because Sweden has the seventh highest death rate per million out of 140 countries.
it can be proven 5 countries which took stronger measures have higher death rates than sweden.
so as I stated above.... other factors must be at play.
I am not going to dither with you Magic Eight Ball. Businesses did not social distance before this outbreak because their was no outbreak. However, there will be a "new normal" involving much that I need not detail here. You know it, and it does not need or deserve excess talk about it. Nobody mentioned an extreme of an indefinite national business shutdown. Governors want to govern. And democratic party governors are not now or ever will be beholden to Trump's agenda. Besides Trump takes their good and spit it back in their faces and what democrat is going to abide with that?
interestingly.....
belgium, which locked down their people and is top of the list at 746 deaths per million. is also lifting their lockdown.
then why do you reply and continue to dither?
move along.
Done!
The death rate is the number that has died as a percent of those that have contacted the disease.
And that number is 12.4%
According to your link Sweden has the 6th highest deaths per million rate in the world.
It's surrounding neighbors who have enacted a lockdown have far less total deaths and deaths per million. Denmark 10281 total deaths 91 deaths per million. Norway 7996 total deaths, 40 deaths per million. Finland 5573 total deaths 48 deaths per million. All considerably lower than Sweden.
As for the projected GDP which seems to be at the center of this is projected to contract between 6.9 and 9.7%. The argument that their GDP will be better than it's neighbors or Europe doesn't seem to be the case.
Cheers.
Oh good! We, the good people of California, need to stop in for visits and tours. Are you ready for us?
BTW, just for fhits and giggles. "Riddle" me this:
Why are COVID-19 death projections going up to 140,000 nationally because of states opening up?
Are you aware that once people begin moving around the country, no isolation, your county population will definitely be at risk of "penetration"?
Also, are you aware that due to physical distancing and social isolation and masking (maximum and extreme) the people of this nation 'starved' the coronavirus of its abundance of hosts?
What is to stop your county from being overwhelmed if you remove those safe guards from around your people?
So you agree with the governor's actions. Good.
No, Re open the economy agrees with Trump's non-federal coronavirus task force guidelines.
Define "precautions," please. Does it include wearing facial coverings and masks?
Define "guidelines" Does it include testing county people for coronavirus before, during, or after opening up jobs/businesses?
Hold up!
You mean you are acting on "feelings" even though you tout facts (as convenient and expedient). Your county is part of the problem with America. Always intent on being a problem; always looking for the issue to divide on. We're sick of it! We're getting sick and tired of it too. This time many, many, lives are involved and still the "pain in the ass-ism" is ceaseless. If your county falls on its 'sword,' good liberals will pick y'all up (it is the right thing to do) but know this, Trump supporters and the "reddish of republicans" can be royal pains. . . . .
We were starting to agree on some points of 'order.' and then pow! I guess the comments down the line don't synch up well. Sigh. You can understand the liberal 'pain' of dealing with republicans and conservatives who take it upon themselves not to compromise with liberals. It seems we are all tired. This virus pandemic is showing up all just how tired we can be!
Bottom-line, re open the economy. Red states, counties, and communities are going to have an easier time and set of life experiences practicing getting along and living quality lives with liberals than they ever will trying to live with novel coronaviruses.
You will appreciate the phrase, "There but for the grace of God go I." I am sure, in all its 'infamy.'
In this I don't have a 'side' because your county getting coronavirus is tantamount to virus being in this state and vice-versa! We're "in it" together like it or lump it. The interstate highway sees to that. Why can't you understand the interconnectivity, and the character of one unified whole?
If your rural community hurts, and cries out, we will all come running from San Diego to San Francisco to your agency; why do you write myopically about self-interest and county self-adoration? It is irrelevant. Like a raging firestorm, this virus can not manifest interested in state or county lines. It will cut any and all of us down where we stand if it can.
I am pleased that you say your area sought compromise with our Governor. That shows coordination and cooperation. Push and Pull is okay—it is how 'muscle' is developed and how movement goes forward.
Fire season, cold season, flu season, conoravirus season are coming. The "next" wave of destruction. Wishing y'all well as is my norm.
I am not sure what to say, or what you EXPECT me to say and feel about this article. The interplay of activities, policies, and ideas is necessarily dynamic. Compromise or at the least considerations pluses and minuses are par for the course. Courts do have a possible role to play.
What is this gloating overtones about? These are dangerous times right now, dangerous activities, and possibly (probably) risky judgement being made.
We can do both things with prioritization and organization. But Trump. Trump send up a 'flare' to red states to not march in unison with those fighting the virus, but to abandon them on the field of viral conquest, and to open-wide in a state of ignorance so Washington can see if they can 'swallow' the virus whole or not! Trump wants people to imagine they are 'warriors' now. Perhaps they are that, "warriors" -ill equipped, without a unified command, and hauling piss pour equipment around the fields of battle.
All while the "not warrior" in the White House, demands that nobody let the virus get another step. . . in his direction. Inside his White House. The first-line workers can only wish they had a 'warrior' to look after them so well. Indeed.
That's untrue. And you should know Trump is not following his own federal coronavirus guidelines. No mask. Improper social distancing. No quarantining in the White House for him after a risk of exposure. You need to buy a clue. Use this comment as a 'token.'
And you know what I would love: How? Please proceed. . . .
Here is something I know from observation, you support 99.99% of the lying statements coming out of Donald Trump's mouth and the less than 1% of truth therein. What say you?
we all know some on the left want to destroy our economies
Why would anyone want to destroy the economy? Don't we all live here? Don't we all have to put up with the same economy?
Besides, I thought all lib's wanted to suck off the teat of the rich like the leaches they are(sarc)?? Some logical internal consistency would be nice..
And this statement:
That is the captain's first priority. If he has no ship, he is not much of a captain anymore.
being at sea is much more dangerous than being in port.
the number one concern of a ship is shipping not hanging around in port
some on the left will stop at nothing to win this election against trump including putting millions of people in poverty to do it.
why? they have TDS
but I explained that already above.
Shove conspiracy theories. You might be looking for monsters, but the truth is some of us don't have to go very far at all! It is here.
sorry to hear that. if your state is still closed? talk to your governor
also, join a class action lawsuit against china? I did.
sure the lawyers make out best, but id rather an american law firm has the cash than china... LOL
@4.2.17!
cheers
You see, people like Bill Maher and Nicole Wallace have said it - they want to destroy the economy to defeat Trump in November.
Any more questions?
It is the medical profession and the scientist that are bringing the nation through and out the other side of this pandemic (when the time arrives). Conservatives do not sell yourselves on knowing how to bully or buy your way out or through this. Many people will remember how you sat on your hands with your shitty attitudes about death (panels) come this fall! Trump conservatives, I can not respect people who do not respect other people enough to wish them life in/through a pandemic.
tellin it like it is.....
@4.2.17!