If you owned a business, and federal officials announced that the nation was going to be in lockdown for the next 12 to 18 months, what would you do? Would you go into panic mode?
What if you were an employee of a company that was facing a 12- to 18-month shutdown? Would you go into panic mode?
In my opinion you’d be justified in doing so. Under either of the above scenarios, your company is probably toast.
Can we expect the federal government to shut down the economy for the next year or year and a half? I don’t think Trump would give that any consideration at all. But some on the left certainly do.
Ezekiel (Zeke) Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania (Ivy League) and architect of Obamacare and advisor to Joe Biden, has said COVID-19 will be with us for at least a year and a half. Emanuel said the following last week:
“Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more. We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications. I know that’s dreadful news to hear. How are people supposed to find work if this goes on in some form for a year and a half? Is all that economic pain worth trying to stop COVID-19? The truth is we have no choice.”
Is Emanuel serious? I would guess not. I think he’s trying to put Trump in a no-win situation. If Trump moves too quickly, he’ll be criticized, and if he doesn’t move quickly enough, he’ll also be criticized.
Emanuel is like the trial lawyers in that regard. Trial lawyers will be suing many defendants for not taking action in a timely manner. For the trial lawyers, no action is taken in a timely manner. Whatever the government or business does, they will have acted inappropriately…moving too soon or not soon enough.
There are a lot of goofy folks on the left who will buy into what Emanuel has to say. I can only hope there are enough people who realize we cannot wait indefinitely before we open up the economy.
I hope Trump gives our nation’s governors the option to open their states to various activities…and makes that option available at the end of this month. April 30 seems like a great time to pull back the blinds. Do we have to open them all the way? By no means. Let the governors of Idaho, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ohio – or wherever – make those decisions. If they have made the correct decision, we’ll know relatively quickly. If they haven’t, the governors can do what needs to be done.
Would this put American lives at risk? Without a doubt it could. But killing the economy would also take lives. Consider this: Robert Mugabe, the Marist/socialist leader of Zimbabwe, did not slaughter his countrymen on the same scale as fellow socialists Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, but he did ring up one very remarkable accomplishment. He ruined the economy of his country and thereby reduced life expectancy in Zimbabwe from an average of 60 years to 37 years for men and 33 for women.
That’s a record that will likely stand for a long time. I would hope we would not try to eclipse that achievement. But if we decided to do so, the place to start would be to follow Emanuel’s advice.
